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The Scapegoat's Apology
I don't begrudge William Calley his remorse about My Lai, but I'm hesitant to acknowledge his apology for it.
If you steal $10 from your mother, you need to apologize. If, as you carry out orders, you lead a raid on a village that slaughters 500 or more defenseless people, something of a higher magnitude is required before you can have your life back.
"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai," Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Columbus, Ga., last week. "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."
It's not that I don't believe him . . . or that I hold him unforgivable. As a matter of principle, I refuse to waste time heaping my allotted teaspoonful of disapprobation on a scapegoat. Calley's "responsibility" for My Lai, though personally enormous, is a minute fraction of the symbolic role — the Bad Apple in an American Uniform — he was forced to fill. He was, indeed, just following orders. And the first order of war is to suspend your humanity.
Just ask Lynndie England — another Bad Apple, another Face of Shame — who was also recently in the news. She had been scheduled to discuss her biography as part of a veterans forum at the Library of Congress several weeks ago, but threats and safety concerns forced the organizers to cancel her appearance.
England once almost apologized for Abu Ghraib, or for her miniscule but high-profile role in that scandal. "Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures," she told an interviewer for Stern, the German illustrated weekly magazine, "and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government. And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did."
The apology came well into the interview, in response to a pressing question about her sense of remorse. It was still tangled with her anger that the photos were made public at all, and was the lamest part of a fascinating interview. Far more interesting, for instance, were her memories of the casual horrors of Abu Ghraib and the moral relativism that was expected of her:
"Of course it was wrong. I know that now. But when you show the people from the CIA, the FBI and the MI (military intelligence) the pictures and they say, ‘Hey, this is a great job. Keep it up,' you think it must be right. They were all there and they didn't say a word. They didn't wear uniforms, and if they did they had their nametags covered. . . .
"It was kind of weird at first. But once I started to see the big picture, I thought, OK, here come these guys, the OGAs (other government agencies), the MIs or even officers, and they don't even look twice at it. If they approve, then I'm not going to say anything. Who was I to argue?"
Poor Specialist England. She was just trying to be patriotic — "as a child I mainly grew up on military gung-ho movies, so that's where I got the idea" (to join the Reserves) — but she got caught up, like Lt. Calley, in the darkness of war, which passeth all understanding. "Who was I to argue?"
It's always the same darkness, is it not? At his trial, Calley protested: "I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job on that day. . . . I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified the same, and that was the classification that we dealt with, just as enemy soldiers."
In both cases, the odd thing was that the darkness got interrupted and they got caught in freeze-frame, enthusiastically carrying out their orders, or perhaps improvising them. But they'd been doing so surrounded by a context — the chain of command — which suddenly vanished when they got caught.
And here we come to the excruciating difficulty of any scapegoat's apology. Their personal regrets, whether sincere or wound through with self-pity, hardly touch the enormity of the role they've been forced to play. They can apologize, or try to apologize, for carrying out their orders, but they can't apologize for the orders themselves, or the special interests of war that bear ultimate responsibility for their implementation.
But let us stop playing with that slight word, "apology," and dig at least for a word that approaches the magnitude of the matter at hand. What if Calley had told the Kiwanis of Columbus, Ga., that he intended not to apologize but to atone for his role in the My Lai massacre? What would that mean?
At the very least it suggests a commitment to do more than clear one's name or somehow pay off a debt for old crimes. It suggests a lifelong commitment to reach for wisdom, and to convey that wisdom to the present moment. To atone is to cry out — with the outsize voice that history has bequeathed the scapegoat — against the big wrong called war that is still worshipped today, and with one's words cut into present policy. We can't change the past but, by God, we can humanize the future.
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21 Comments so far
Show AllScapegoats, sacrificial lambs, & whipping boys have the same basic purpose: they suffer for those higher up whom have been deemed "untouchable." In the cases of Lynndie England & William Calley, the bigger fish got away...and that is shame, amongst other things.
Indeed. And the festering pustule that is Kissinger is still walking around free.
Irony died the day he recieved the Nobel Prize for Peace.
The Nuremberg trials have been characterized to convince people that "I was just following orders" is no 'excuse.'
That's a joke.
The whole purpose of military training is to squash individual thought to a minimum, and learn to follow orders.
In mortal danger, real or imagined, the vast majority of those under arms will follow orders, no matter what, guaranteed.
Yeah, but a lot of the crap people were tried for at Nuremberg wasn't military. It was right to nail those who followed and those who gave the orders.
by the nuremberg standard of war crime the entire american government would be arrested and sentenced to death by hanging in a heartbeat over the iraq war.
war of convenience, war of aggression - these are the "ultimate" crimes and we now know we got into the mid-east debacle based on a shit pile of lies coming from the whitehouse on down.
we just wanted to steal the oil and gas. if we have made a few bucks growing the heroin trade while doing that, so much the better. its all good.
when holder holds these soon to be investigations into cia torture cheney's name will probably never come up.
and so it goes...
in fascist corporate us of a there is just the smell of napalm in the morning
There are 2 Nuremberg principals followed by courts. The first is that "just following orders" is no excuse. The second is "If you are not powerful to kill our gang, but our gang can kill yours with impunity, we can do anything we want". We just don't hear the 2nd one expressed very often.
The role of the scapegoat is to marginalize that which is inconvenient to narcissitic interest. The process of developing a scapegoat does not recognize natural integration of diverified aspects of nature and society. The narcissism is individual and extends to a societal framework.
The perfection of a scapegoat is to make invisible all related to it within an icon, an embodiment, that relates directly to the observer (and potential source of discernment) of the circumstances for which the scapegoat is intended. In so doing the voice of scapegoat has a bizarre singularity of duplicity. In other words, the words of a scapegoat have been coopted by the process.
The deconstruction of a scapegoat cannot occur. What is or is not deconstructed is the original framing of the context. The scapegoat can do this with substantial help. Calley would need to work with a group like Military Families Speak Out, Veterans Against War, etc...
In view of the power of today's military industrial media complex, corporate leaders having a vested interest in war are just as guilty as those in uniform.
Think of the systemic corruption in the chain of command in the military that scapegoated Lindie and her fellow grunts while not allowing her to present a defense that she was doing the bidding of her superior officers.
That she was implementing policies that had been formulated and approved at the highest level of the government of the United States was never presented at her Show Trial.
Granted that bigger fish spit the hook as a matter of course, we'll probably have to wait until the USA loses a war, and some other force conducts the trials, for justice ever to reach Kissingerian heights.
That being said, I can't help but feel a twinge of symapthy for Lynndie England. She appears to have come to grips honestly with her acts ("...those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government. And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did").
Compare that to Calley's mastery of the exculpatory passive voice (""There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai...I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed...").
Robert Koehler,
Thanks. I had exactly the same feeling when I first saw Calley express "remorse" as reported on Democracy Now! And, I agree that more than anything else, is truly the urgency of humanizing the future. I just turned 50. As I look around at the callousness of perpetual war, the progressive desensitization to violence, and an economic system that is heralding in a new age of slavery, I cannot but help do the math as to where our world could have been, were we to have devoted our phenomenal resources for the betterment of humankind instead of for full spectrum destruction advanced technology over the last few decades. That, to me, is the real, and ongoing tragedy. And in today's day and age we continue to numb our sensitivities and cripple our own compassion, by voluntarily bombarding our senses with movies, sports, sex, that is overwhelmed by gratuitous violence. To what end? What possible good can come from a population who has so degraded life that they're able to pick up the morning paper and read about their own tax money being used to drone bomb an Afghan family, killing all. And we sit there. What the fuck is wrong with us? Is that not a reasonable question? In fact, maybe the most pertinent question?. What is wrong with us that we are allowing these atrocities to continue in our name? With our money? With our youths' promise? With no humanity attached to that Afghan family. What flavor Coffee Mate is more important than the laughter in the eyes of that dying Afghan child.
I think the idea of the scapegoat can be expanded to include mindset. We sometimes write here on CD as if we weren't immersed in and a part of this debasing culture. As if it has not infected every corner of the earth, every inhabitant, as if it were not a degenerative disease of the soul.
I am one to look backward. As a boat captain, as a hiker, as a world citizen. I find it is extremely important to always look back. For many reasons. As a captain, to watch for approaching weather and other vessels. As a hiker, to see where I've been and what it will look like if I need to find my way home. And as a world citizen, to see that I don't repeat unnecessary mistakes. I think Obama used this idea of not looking back as a scapegoat mindset, in the process, denigrating the rule of law and any possible sense of moral justice. How absurd can this get? That we can, even for a moment, not recognize this dangerous attitude as a complete, and utter intellectual sellout. "I want to focus on the future." Yeah, me too. And we do so by making sure we sequester the bad apples from continuing to infect rot into the rest of the body politic. That is done by looking back. That is accomplished by applying the rule of law, international treaties and having fortitude. What's missing here? In a just world, we would be conducting these interviews with Calley and England from the other side of the cell bars. That can only be done by looking back. Looking back, in my eyes, is the only way of safely arriving at your desired destination.
I believe the Obama administration has unquestionably taken the wrong path towards a more sane, just and compassionate world. Though I'd really love to hope.
Mr. Koehler,thanks for your article.
The word "scapegoat" has become a little muddy. We use it appropriately, but I wonder whether we really remember (I usually don't) that the role of a scapegoat is not merely to distract attention but to *absolve* the guilty of their guilt.
Lynndie doesn't quite have the full insight into her role, but she comes close when she says (I paraphrase) "the big shots didn't say anything, so I thought it was okay". She was in the same position as the subjects in Milgram's and Zimbardo's experiments. She was, like the real goats sacrificed to take away human sin, and the experimental subjects, innocent. She had no intention to sin, to commit a crime. She was brought up to trust and obey her "betters", so they walked away guilt-free while she metaphorically had her throat cut and bled out in public.
The ritual was carried out, and all was well again in the world.
Pity about the goat.
We should be teaching respect for conscientious objection. We should be teaching conscientious objection. Instead all our narratives teach obedience, patriotic duty, the white hot thrill that comes with killing other human beings. Switch on the television anywhere you like, flick through the programmes, and you will find programmes extolling ruthless and vindictive violence. You won't find programmes extolling kindness, compassion, pacifism. These are the things that the real men mock. We are all complicit in this. We all have to reject it.
Briar
Well said.
"The Pioneers of a Warless world are the youth who refuse military service."-Albert Einstein.
Yes, well said Briar and thanks for the Einstein quote Erroll
"She had been scheduled to discuss her biography as part of a veterans forum at the Library of Congress several weeks ago, but threats and safety concerns forced the organizers to cancel her appearance."
Threats and safety concerns? In the Library of Congress? From whom? In general terms the sort of people objecting to her behavior would be unlikely to imitate it, so probably not from them. Now let's see, who else is in the threatening business? And would certainly prefer her not to relate her story?
Not, I might add, that I have any sympathy for people who do a whole lot of shit, apologize, and then write a book to profit from it, much as I might have sympathy for her having been put in a no-win situation originally.
It is my hope that people will think harder about what the word 'apology' actually denotes. It is essentially a form of rhetoric aimed at re-shaping opinion. Probably it will be unnecessary here to note that these opinions may be entirely valid, factually based assessments of conduct.
As such, this is the only portion of any of the definitions which can hope to satisfy modern conceptions of the word: "...or, a frank acknowledgement of the offence with expression of regret for it, by way of reparation." (OED) Every other definition denotes an intention to gloss or excuse conduct.
Not that it is possible to "repair" the deaths of hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, but the idea of atonement is essentially implied as the greater part of the act of apology to begin with, since the first part is merely the absence of rhetoric in speech (e.g. sincerity).
The thing that perturbs me is the connotations offered by "offence" which seem to me to preclude mass death, however that death is ultimately called.
Never mind the conventions of true forgiveness/repentance, never mind that this seems to be addressed to the wrong people at the wrong place and time (which may yet serve some utility as instruction), and never mind the egotism that necessarily attends the act of taking responsibility: the act(s) of volition responsible for such a massacre are repugnant, and I for one am little interested in the feelings of those responsible if it serves in any way to gloss, conceal, or distract from the facts of the "offence".
The catharsis of apology comes only to those who feel and perform apology, to those who do atone.
Responsibility for Calley's and England's crimes is broadly distributed, but we expect their localized apologies to satisfy.
Fat chance.
Scapegoats cannot deeply and truthfully apologise because they are victims, however horrible in themselves. They must first mourn their own loss.
The guilt and denial of centuries of nearly constant imperial war haunts Americans, who would surely live free of it, but must each confront his or her individual role.
Cheers and bottoms up, my fellows.
..
A relevant interlude from BELLS, by Bill Crandall:
WHAT ARE
feelings
chosen
nightmares misstated
a bull for God
Othello
for graven hopes
justice
right
shade of wrong
bruises left by fantasy
Lt. Calley's guilt is undeniable, he admitted to such. The sacrafice the he made was to take the guilt of all those, above and below his rank, in order that the institution of the US ARMY not be shredded during a time of hostilites. I make no excuses for his actions, but I fully understand his actions. He did what had to be done at the time. SOMEBODY had to take the blame and he offered himself up as that somebody. He did so out of a sense of DUTY, however misplaced that people may believe it to be.
People need not be 'religious' in order to believe the adage, "judge not, least ye be judged". To walk a mile in another man's shoes is a difficult task for anyone, but to TRY to contemplate the effects that war has on the psyche is mind altering, or perhaps even maddening. Don't think about the children that you've been giveing candy bars to each day that show up with two live granades and kill a few of your buddies, or the local cleaning girl who puts blades in the soldiers' boots... just sit at home watching the evening news and know that everybody should have the morality of saints. Yeah, the pays the same for marching as it is for fighting, but the cost is a whole lot different.
Mr. Koeller starts off by saying that he won't waste time heaping condemnation upon Lt. Calley, and then procedes to do so, over the semantics because the word "atone" was not used but the word "remorse" was. Perhaps Mr. Koeller lacks the ability to understand that atonement comes in the form of actions, not words. William Calleys actions, of public acknowledgement of past wrongs, of sharing to others the mind set that lead to those wrongs, the feeling of everlasting "remorse" (YES, that IS the correct feeling), that ALL of this is leading up to atonement. IF Mr. Loeller believes in the "God" that he invokes within his last sentence, that perhaps he will cede that it is HIS power to determine "atonement" and not Mr. Koeller's.
Robert Koeller is beating a dying horse in this article. Had he written about the 'chain of command' rather than give it just a few lines at the end, perhaps he'd have had a worthwhile piece. His "holier than thou" rants appear to be a vile attempt to to "dehumanize" not only Lt. Calley, but Specialist England as well. They were wrong, they admit thier guilt, they will have to pay the price. I would hope that we could use their actions as examples, and learn from them, and better our society, without putting ourselves on platforms looking down.