{"id":416,"date":"2009-08-24T00:30:19","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T04:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/24\/officer-apologizes-for-my-lai-massacre\/"},"modified":"2009-09-02T11:42:32","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T15:42:32","slug":"officer-apologizes-for-my-lai-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/24\/officer-apologizes-for-my-lai-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"Officer Apologizes for My Lai Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former US Army Lieutenant William Calley <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=112123605\">apologized for his actions<\/a> in the massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968,\u00a0during remarks to a Georgia Kiwanis club.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai&#8230;I am very sorry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Calley&#8217;s former prosecutor, William George Eckhardt, seemed to indicate that Calley has never apologized to date.<\/p>\n<p>Famous for his defense that he was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/2009\/08\/ap_army_calley_apology_082109\/\">just following orders<\/a>, <!--more-->Calley appears to have at least acknowledged that he was still responsible for his own actions:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When asked if he broke the law by obeying an unlawful order, the newspaper reported, Calley replied: &#8220;I believe that is true.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a second lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them \u2014 foolishly, I guess,&#8221; Calley said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The actions of Calley and his unit continue to be a tool for teaching ethics, personal responsibility, and lawful orders in the military.<\/p>\n<p>Calley had contended he was merely &#8220;following orders.&#8221;\u00a0 His conviction at court martial affirmed that there is a <em>moral standard<\/em> to which military members will be held accountable, even if they feel they are only obeying the dictates of a superior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former US Army Lieutenant William Calley apologized for his actions in the massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968,\u00a0during remarks to a Georgia Kiwanis club. There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai&#8230;I am very sorry. Calley&#8217;s former prosecutor, William George Eckhardt, seemed to indicate that [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}