Thread by @GregoryDaddis

A 🧵on "sympathy for the devils."

I read @EvansRyan202's excellent thread on Afghanistan this week as I was writing an essay on the end of America's war in Vietnam. Revisiting the My Lai massacre after this and @dtaberski's "The Line," I was struck by some rough comparisons.

Particularly, the level of support Eddie Gallagher & William Calley, Jr. received from (far, far too many) Americans who supported both once learning of their war crimes. After Calley's guilty verdict, Sen. Adlai Stevenson's office was receiving mail 200-1 in favor of Calley.

Gallup polls suggested almost 70% of Americans thought Calley a "scapegoat." A Ga. American Legion Post tried to collect $100k for his defense fund, while the national VFW commander said this was "the first time in our history we have tried a soldier for performing his duty."

One Fla. congressman wanted Calley to address a joint session of Congress. The Wash. Post suggested the massacre only symbolized the "brutalization that inevitably afflicts men at war.” And, of course, "The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley" was popular. ("They made me out a villain.")

Unsurprisingly, none of these apologists had access to the LT’s psychiatric reports, in which Calley stated “he did not feel as if he were killing humans but rather that they were animals with whom one could not speak or reason." We might ask if Gallagher feels similarly today.

I'm struck by how easy it is for Americans, then and now, to be so dismissive of heinous acts, how nationalistic racism so effortlessly allows far too many of us to support-let's be honest-war criminals. Is it reflexive patriotism? A misplaced sense of national guilt? Politics?

I think Ryan was right in asking us to reflect a bit more deeply, thoughtfully on our experiences in Afghanistan. And part of that is asking ourselves how we think about "honor" and "patriotism" when those who wear our nation's uniform commit egregious acts in times of war.

The key, I think, is that a military uniform should not be seen as an inviolable shield to protect those who don't deserve our admiration or sympathy. Perhaps Calley's prosecuting attorney put it best. "You did not strip him of his honor. What he did stripped him of his honor."

For #twitterstorians in the audience, many of the quotations here come from an excellent contemporary source. Tom Tiede, Calley: Soldier or Killer? (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1971).