The book My Lai: A Brief History with Documents by James s. Olson and Randy Roberts, offers just what the title says--a brief history of the massacre and its aftermath with documents from the era illustrating certain aspects of the case. The brief history includes some analysis of the Vietnamese War itself leading to the events of the massacre and what happened after. The history is disturbing enough, but the documents suggest even greater concern over the way the issue was handled, first in the way the official story was shaped regarding not just the massacre but the entire war, then in terms of the way the military tried to cover the story up, and finally in the way blame was assigned and punishment meted out only to the few, with little direct effect on the power structure that caused so much of the problem in the first place.
The My Lai massacre raises a number of issues related to how warfare is conducted and specifically to how it is conducted by a democratic nation like the United States. For such an event to occur in the Vietnam War made it all the worse, for that war was already under suspicion by much of the public. A segment of the public had long been opposed to the war, and the size of that segment was growing as the war was shown every night on television, leading to concerns about what was seen on screen and about the reasons why America was in this war at all. The massacre only added one more element--now the terrible war was turning young Americans into killers.
The year 1968 was a significant year in American history, especially as regards the war in Vietnam and the anti-war movement in the United States, and the black liberation movement seeking a change in the civil rights status of the black population. By the middle of 1968, the world was talking about the decision of President Lyndon Johnson not to run for office a second time. The war in Vietnam was at its height, and the protests against the war...