"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[kandrathe]

Decisions were made to prosecute a total of twenty-five officers and enlisted men, including General Koster, Colonel Oran Henderson, Captain Medina.  In the end, however, only few would be tried and only one, William Calley, would be found guilty.

Calley was the only one convicted. I disagree with the Supreme Courts ruling on not holding former military personel accountable for their military actions. In our civilian law there is no Statute of Limitations for murder cases, and I agree that more of the participants in that massacre should have been tried and convicted. Would an International Tribunal have been less politicized? Perhaps more impartial, and perhaps less. Ideally there is little emotion in the interpretation of laws, and whether or not someone has violated one. It seems to me that the Army's Criminal Investigative unit tried very hard to go after anyone culpable in the incident. I think too that we are looking at events from 1968 with the lens of a 2004 world. If the US Army did a My Lai in 2004, the courts martial would be very different. I think you are seeing that with the cases at Abu Garib, although the culpablility of those higher up in the chain of command is still difficult to prove. I at least am hopeful that the MI officers that inspired the perpetrators will be prosecuted. There are many atrocious acts from 1938 - 1945 that went unpunished as well.

I am saying that no country can be completely impartial in dealing with things it has done. Yours included. Mine too.

An international tribunal might be neccesary when a nation refuses to hold its citizens responsible for their actions. Justice for My Lai would have included a few dozen murder convictions of the grunts in Charlie Company, 8 from Baker, along with censure of a handful of senior officers. Maybe an international tribunal would have exacted more justice, but I think the incident was eventually fully investigated and exposed. The results of that incident, and Nixon's, turned a nation that was marginally supporting the war in Asia, against it. The political fallout was enormous, and tainted an entire generation of soldiers as "baby killers" who were not welcomed back home, but rather scorned, and treated with contempt. I think the lesson learned by the US was that had more or the perpetrators been prosecuted and convicted, perhaps that "taint" would not have spread to the entire US Army.