My Lai Massacre the Milgram Experiment, Philip

My Lai Massacre

The Milgram Experiment, Philip Zimbardo, and Understanding the My Lai Massacre

In the twentieth century the United States military was engaged in numerous wars and the U.S. government depicted these wars as forces of good, freedom, and morality (Americans) fighting against forces of evil, tyranny, and barbarism (America's enemies). The realities of American military behavior in these wars, however, did not always justify such a simplistic characterization. American troops at times committed war crimes and atrocities such as My Lai massacre in Vietnam and sexualized torture against Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. When these crimes were revealed to the public, American civilian and military leaders tried to minimize their significance by suggesting that what happened at My Lai and Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents committed by a "few bad apples." But the "few bad apples" thesis does not fully explain the My Lai and Abu Ghraib scandals since there were many other similar incidents that took place both in Vietnam and Iraq. By analyzing the case of the My Lai massacre, I argue in this paper that such incidents take place because of command structure that normalizes such practices and the psychological effects of continuous warfare.

My Lai was a village in the Son May area in Vietnam where U.S. troops, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley, murdered around five hundred Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968. There were unarmed men, women, children, and the elderly among the Vietnamese killed. According to a testimony by Ronald Haeberie, an Army photographer, one soldier shot dead two boys who Haeberie thought were about five years of age. Other accounts told of children having their throats cut and bodies mutilated, while one of the soldiers admitted during an interview a year later that he had killed "ten of fifteen men, women, and children" at My Lai ("My Lai Massacre"). Among the participants in the massacre, only Lieutenant Calley was charged and imprisoned for life prison though he was released three years later.

When the massacre was disclosed to the public, many people were outraged and asked why the U.S. soldiers behaved in that manner. To understand the My Lai massacre, we first need to look at an experiment conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram who summarized his findings in Harper's in 1973. Milgram recruited a group of volunteers and assigned them the role of a "teacher" who would ask questions from a "learner" sitting in a different room (the "learner" in reality was an actor who would simulate the role of the "learner"). If the "learner" gave the wrong answer, the "teacher" was supposed to give the "learner" an electric shock and keep increasing voltage if the "learner" kept giving the wrong answer. At a certain moment, the participants refused to continue participating in the experiment but most continued after being assured by the experimenter, an authority figure, that it was all right to continue (Behrens and Rosen 692).

While experts at the time predicted that most of the participants would not continue shocking victims beyond 150 volts, Milgram stated that all those "predictions were unequivocally wrong. Both college students at Yale and adults from the general population in New Haven were fully obedient roughly 60% of the time" (695). Milgram concluded that ordinary people would be willing to participate in immoral acts when they believe that they are not responsible for their actions and that an assurance given by authority figure would normalize morally questionable behavior. This was certainly the case at My Lai because U.S. troops, including Lieutenant Calley, believed that they were simply following orders. Seymour Hersh, the reporter who uncovered the My Lai massacre, said that Calley was "as much a victim as the people he shot." And Calley himself stated: "nobody in the military system ever described them [Vietnamese villagers at My Lai] anything other than Communist" ("My Lai Massacre"). Calley and his troops believed that they were given a go-ahead by their superiors.

Milgram argued that an obedient person followed morally questionable orders because "a person comes to view himself as the instrument of carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions" (Behrens and Laurence, paragraph 108). U.S. troops at My Lai believed that they were carrying out the wishes of the U.S. government -- that is, eliminate communism. But Milgram's theory on obedience cannot fully explain the May Lai experiment either, for troops under the command of Calley did not simply shoot Vietnamese villagers but also mutilated their bodies. No commander had ordered that. So, there must have been some form of social or psychological breakdown among troops that they ended up perpetrating those atrocities.

We need to compliment Milgram's experiment with the one conducted by Philip Zimbardo in Stanford University to fully understand the My Lai Massacre. Zimbardo recruited volunteer college students into a mock prison experiment where students took the roles of either prison guards or prisoners. Initially intended for two weeks, the experiment was abruptly cancelled after six days because many students performing the roles of prison guards became sadistic and brutal, subjecting prisoners into torture and sexual humiliation (Behrens and Rosen 729). As the experiment continued, prison guards began to initiate new and more perverted forms of punishment. Zimbardo argued that the specific social setting in which both prisoners and prison guards acted "de-individualized" them (paragraph 17). Psychological effects of the prison setting led to the diminishment of moral inhibitions in the actions of prison guards.