. Common sense leads one todeduce that if causes are extreme the results should be expected, too, to be extreme. Anotherviewpoint is that from the commanding officers. If Lt. Calley really was responsible for the MyLai happenings, one must wonder why he wanted it to happen. Perhaps the officer was simply fedup with the war situation. He may have been tires of having responsibility for not only himself, butfor all the soldiers he commanded. Not knowing the enemy from the ally could cause a situationlike the "fish in water" tactic. This method, which was used highly as a rationalization, stated thatone way to be sure to catch a fish would be to eliminate the water, just as a method killing"Charlie" would be to kill all Vietnamese. It can also be said, however, that the commandingofficer isn’t to blame, but his commanders are. Not being in the war could lead to a sense of"dehumanization" towards the Vietnamese, so it becomes easier to order a massacre fromWashington than to become part of one in Vietnam. One must also remember, however, that thehighest rank in the army is the President, and the citizens are directly responsible for whom thismay be. Through this research, it has been proven that because of events such the My Laimassacre in Vietnam there were certainly psychological changes in those involved. Today’swriters too often get caught up in what the media wants the people to believe. The only way toaquire pure, unedited information is to speak personally to someone who has experienced eventssuch as the one mentioned. No matter what their view of the war is, when asked if war willchange a person the most common response will be "Nobody ever returns the same" (Knowll,127) (Mahan Interview). With the certainty of scarring evident, one must begin to question whythis scarring happens and why people have a threshold for violence. The most obvious and mostcorrect response is that war wasn’t meant to be. If people were de...
