Mark Phillips: The American Question
4/30/04: My Lai.
Images of the massacre at My Lai pulled the ground from under one of the right's most
cherished
narratives
in support of the Vietnam war.
Never after were they able to convince a majority of the American people that our
presence in that suffering country served a noble purpose.
Will
images
of torture at Abu Ghraib have a similar impact?
Similar problem: expect a similar rhetoric. The incidents were isolated;
it was a few bad troops, perhaps a bad commander, if they
can find one stupid enough to take the fall without implicating the entire chain of command.
The purpose is noble, the policy is correct. Stay the course! Ignore the
smiling man and woman, or, if you must see them, ignore those who empowered them and
the corruption which they personify.
After My Lai the problem was to construct a narrative that would make the photographs appear
to be less than what they were: that is, to make the
Phoenix Program
disappear.
("Ideology
is a type of discourse which renders invisible that which should be obvious.")
After Abu Ghraib the problem is in most particulars the same.
Down to the cast of characters. Colin Powell and My Lai...
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More Information
- "An Account of the My Lai Courts-Martial", Doug Linder
- CIA and Operation Phoenix
- Company C Actions at My Lai
- Documents From the Phoenix Program
- "The Forgotten Hero of My Lai", Trent Angers
- "The Heroes of My Lai"
- Vietnam and Other American Fantasies, H. Bruce Franklin
- "What Happened at My Lai?", Seymour M. Hirsh
- "All roads lead to Tehran", Phillips
- "Complexity", Phillips
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