Thesis (LL. M.)--Judge Advocate General's School, U.S. Army, 1972. / "March 1972." Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-81). Also issued in microfiche.

This thesis uses the referent “My Lai Massacre” to refer to the mythic memory of what happened in Son My on 16 March, 1968. It argues that it is a fitting name for the way it captures the ethnocentrism of the memory in the name by perpetuating an American misnomer rooted in ignorance. It also singularizes the scope of horrors of the day, and fails to differentiate ‘the massacre’ from the domestic turmoil with which it was conflated. The My Lai Massacre narrative as it currently exists in American history and memory is ‘exceptionalist’ in that it incorporates and excludes story elements in such a way that casts it as a highly exceptional occurrence. The main argument of this thesis is that American history and memory of the ‘My Lai Massacre’ have, to a large degree, been defined and shaped by conservative influences. In the time since the news of the atrocities became public this has manifested itself in a number of way and is not confined to conservative histories of the war. Despite the hold liberal orthodox scholarship has on the history of the war, there remains within it, this thesis argues, a conservative trend regarding the massacres in Son My. Reactions, explanations, and rationalizations that appeared in early conservative responses to news of the massacres have survived into a wider ideological spectrum of Vietnam scholarship and memory than that from which it came. Although it seems at first consideration an unlikely event from which a usable past might be constructed, the My Lai Massacre does get used in a didactic manner. This thesis examines some of the most prevalent ways the memory of My Lai functions as a usable past. The My Lai Massacre has been incorporated into a number of ‘lessons of the past’ that tend to be derived from conservative narratives of the war.

This work is a textual analysis of selected documentary films whose common theme is the inevitable discrepancy between the realities of the Vietnam and the 2003 Iraq War from the perspectives of the veterans and soldiers, and the assumed reality that is constructed in the media. It is at this point that the inextricable link between documentary cinema and reality proved fundamental to the developing discourse of the entire study ahead. Since the manner in which the world is both transformed and depicted strongly depends upon the tools available to the director, the technological innovations and the emergence of portable cameras, by granting the documentary filmmaker flexibility, irreversibly solidified this link between non-fictional act of narrating and its approach and proximity to reality. Four works that are picked among a large body of documentary films are Winter Soldier (1972) directed by Winter Collective; Gunner Palace (2004) directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker; Full Battle Rattle (2008) directed by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss and finally Standard Operating Procedure (2008) directed by Errol Morris. Even though the films are historically ordered, this study's concern is to be systematic thematically than chronologically. In the course of these analyses, discussions of notions like reality and truth, the relations of the makers of the films, the camera and editing process to the subjects of the films, will naturally emerge, as will issues related to the political and social roles of documentary cinema.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-121).

In an attempt to understand the micro-dimensional mechanisms of how some individuals come to perpetrate violence against civilians during wartime, this thesis adopts a theory from organisational psychology. By looking at the military as a professional organisation, violence against civilians perpetrated by state armies during wartime is theorised to be the outcome of a process of script error wherein military scripts of non-combatant immunity fail. The theory is applied on the massacre in My Lai, during the Vietnam war. Findings showed that the mechanism of script error did not play out completely as theorised, however that military scripts did dictate behaviour and that a script error was present to some degree as civilians came to be targeted as if they were enemies. Some mechanisms used in previous research on violence against civilians were supported by this study and could also be integrated into the framework of organisational scripts, showing the explanatory value that organisational scripts have to further understand military violence. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of an important historical case, shows the value of introducing organisational psychology into studies of the military organisation and finally helps us further make sense of situations of violent transgression.  organisational scripts, script error, military violence, violence against civilians, mass violence, atrocity, My Lai