You’ve seen the movie, now read the book! But seriously. If you haven’t seen Four Hours in My Lai, you should, because it’s a really good movie, and the book is just as good. In a different way, of course. If you’re at all interested in the events of My Lai, I would highly recommend both. I’m kind of sad, actually, that I didn’t read this book when I was in college and, you know, studying the military, because it had all sorts of awesome information and insights.
I really like the way this book was organized and broken down. The authors really detailed not just the events of My Lai, but the things that led to those events. They did their homework, and it definitely shows in the book; we’re talking meticulous research, here. I was especially interested in the analysis of military culture during the Vietnam era, with a heavy focus on meeting the threat in Vietnam. In fact, a lot of the discussion of asymmetrical warfare and guerrilla activity reminded me a lot of what’s going on Iraq right now.
In a way, I think this book should be required reading for people who are confused about what’s happening in Iraq, because it talked about the psychology which leads to events like My Lai. It’s incredibly hard to engage with an enemy which hides among civilians, and hard to separate the enemy from civilians when both look alike, especially when the enemy is being consciously dehumanized by your superiors.
One of the points the book raised was the fact that the Holocaust is still very much alive in the German consciousness, but My Lai is definitely not part of the American mind. I had always assumed that most people knew about My Lai, until we read In the Lake of the Woods* in a college literature class, and a couple of students were clearly deeply puzzled by a huge section of the plot, until the situation was explained to them. And I remember thinking that was very odd, that people could not be aware of such a huge event in American history.
It makes me wonder if, in 30 years, people won’t know what happened at Abu Ghraib and Haditha, if these incidents too will be erased through a process of “willful forgetting,” as the authors put it.
Incidentally, smokers who take out library books, when you douse yourselves with cologne, the stenches of both cologne and cigarette smoke remain on the books you check out. And this causes other library patrons to want to kill you.
Demographics:
Four Hours in My Lai, by Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim. Published 1992, 430 pages. History.
*That book is good too, by the way. I read it every few years, maybe I’ll pick it up again later this year and write all about it.