My Lai probe hid policy that led to massacre
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - For decades, it has been generally accepted that the My Lai
massacre of as many as 400 Vietnamese civilians by US Army troops on March 16,
1968, was a violation of official policy directives on the treatment of
civilians in South Vietnam.
That was the conclusion reached in the most definitive official account of why
My Lai happened - the final report by General William Peers, who investigated
the question of responsibility for the massacre in late 1969 and early 1970 for
the Department of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff.
Documentary evidence from US Army archives shows, however, that the Peers
report misrepresented a key directive from the top
commander in Vietnam, General William C Westmoreland, describing it as calling
for a blanket policy of humane treatment of civilians in villages controlled by
the communist movement.
The directive in question, a copy of which has been obtained by Inter Press
Service, makes it clear that the policy of humane treatment did not extend to
civilians in areas which had been under long-term communist rule, as was the
case with My Lai. That revelation would have placed the responsibility for the
orders on the My Lai operation squarely on Westmoreland's shoulders.
The Peers report found that the troops who entered My Lai and three other
hamlets of the village of Son My had been led to believe that everyone in the
village should be killed. Testimony before the Peers inquiry also showed that
the platoon leaders involved in the operation had been given that same message
by two company commanders.
The report concluded that the task force commander responsible for the
operation, Colonel Frank Barker, had failed to "make clear any distinctions
between combatants and non-combatants in their orders and instructions". The
result, it stated, was that he had "conveyed an understanding that only the
enemy remained" in My Lai.
The report asserted, however, that there was no higher command responsibility
for what happened in My Lai. It concluded that the policy guidance from General
William Westmoreland, the commander of all US forces in Vietnam, was
"consistent in adhering to the humane standard of protecting the civilians
within the combat zone".
The most important document cited by the Peers report in support of that
conclusion was Directive 525-3 from the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
(MACV), called "Combat Operations: Minimizing Noncombatant Battle Casualties".
The Peers report said that one of the "significant points" of the directive,
first issued on September 7, 1965, and reissued in slightly revised form on
October 14, 1966, was that "Specified strike zones should be configured to
exclude populated areas."
"Specified strike zones" was the term that replaced the original term "free
fire zones" created in 1965 to refer to zones where air strikes and artillery
fire could be used freely with the approval of the province chief - approval
which was routinely given to US forces.
That description of a key point in the directive, which avoided direct
quotation from the document, made it appear that the non-combatant population
was to be protected from indiscriminate US firepower in all Viet Cong hamlets.
The report stated without any qualification that "specified strike zones" were
"usually free of any known populace".
But the actual text of Directive 525-3, a copy of which was obtained from the
US Army Military History Institute in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, makes it
clear that the intention of Westmoreland and the US military command in regard
to hamlets like My Lai was exactly the opposite.
The five-page directive was explicit about its concern with minimizing such
casualties in contested areas, where the population had not been under
long-term communist influence. As the directive explained, "The use of
unnecessary force leading to non-combatant battle casualties in areas
temporarily controlled by the VC [Viet Cong] will embitter the population,
drive them into the arms of the VC, and make the long-range pacification more
difficult and more costly."
But the directive made it clear that this motivation for humane treatment of
civilians did not apply to those who had been under long-term communist rule. A
key point in the directive said, "Specified strike zones should be configured
to exclude populated areas, except those in accepted VC bases."
The term "accepted VC bases" referred to large parts of South Vietnam,
including Son My village and most of Quang Ngai province, where the Viet Minh
movement had mobilized the population to fight against the French and where the
communist movement had strong organizations throughout the Diem regime and in
the early years of the US war in Vietnam.
The directive thus made it clear the US military command's policy was to
consider the civilian population in long-term communist base areas as the enemy
which could be subjected to the same treatment as communist military personnel.
The Peers report description - which avoided quoting directly from the document
- effectively covered up the actual intention of the command's policy toward
non-combatants in places like My Lai.
Directive 525-3 is not the only piece of evidence pointing to a military
command policy of treating non-combatants in Viet Cong base areas as subject to
indiscriminate violence. In his own memoirs published in 1976, Westmoreland
himself wrote that, once the "free fire zones" were established, "anybody who
remained had to be considered an enemy combatant", and operations in those
areas "could be conducted without fear of civilian casualties".
Westmoreland was even more explicit in a visit to a unit of the 101st Airborne
Division called the Tiger Force in Quang Ngai province in 1967. As recounted by
members of the Tiger Force who were present, and reported by Pulitzer
Prize-winning Toledo Blade journalists Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss,
Westmoreland told them, "[I]f there are people who are out there - and not in
the camps - they're pink as far as we're concerned. They're communist
sympathizers. They were not supposed to be there."
That message gave the Tiger Force officers the idea that they were authorized
to kill anyone who chose to remain in Viet Cong base areas. Sallah and Weiss
found that Tiger Force had carried out no fewer than 19 killing sprees against
civilians in "specified strike zones". The unit commanders justified the wanton
murder of civilians to army investigators by explaining that the creation of a
free fire zone gave US troops the right to "kill anything that moved".
The Peers report recommended disciplinary action against 30 army officers,
including two generals and four colonels. But when it came to his treatment of
Westmoreland's policy directives, Peers had a strong incentive to absolve him
of any responsibility for My Lai.
James K Walsh Jr, who was special counsel to the Peers investigation, recalled
in an interview with IPS that Peers had hoped to become commander of the 8th
Army in South Korea after his service in Vietnam.
That meant that he had to have the support of Westmoreland, who had become the
army chief of staff in 1968 and thus was in a position to determine whether he
would get the choice assignment he wanted.
Unfortunately for Peers, Westmoreland was replaced as chief of staff by
Creighton B Abrams in June 1972, and Abrams was openly hostile to the whole
Peers investigation, according to Walsh. Peers never got the 8th Army command
and chose early retirement.
Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The
paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of
Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
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