Assignment task: Read "The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience."
1. What's your reaction to this reading?
2. What is the crime of obedience?
3. How did authority understand My Lai and what was to be done about it? How did Calley and others interpret this understanding of My Lai and their mission?
4. What can the My Lai Massacre tell us about authority and obedience to it?
5. What do you make of the enlisted men who didn't follow orders, such as CWO Hugh Thompson, who protected some of the Vietnamese who were being shot at?
6. What do you make of the men of Company C inviting the two girls to lunch roughly an hour after carrying out the massacre? (Hint: Remember the Thomas theorem?).
7. Do you think most people would have reacted the same way the soldiers at My Lai did? Why or why not?
8. Beyond the issue of authority and obedience, what were some other contextual factors that contributed to the massacre taking place? (Hint: What was the measure of military success? How did military strategies and tactics treat civilian populations at this time?).
9. Have you ever been in a situation - not on the scale of harming a person or people - where you were being ordered to do something that went against your moral compass? If so, what did you do or not do? What were the consequences? What does the example you gave suggest about the power of authority?