Wartime photographer prefers tough questions to denial

powerful.

Now retired, Haeberle, 78, lives in northeast Ohio. He was a combat photographer who accompanied Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment on March 16, 1968, when unarmed villagers in My Lai were shot and killed by U.S. soldiers and their officers. Haeberle had two cameras, one Army and one personal camera. Images taken with his own Nikon were first published a year and a half later in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.

Haeberle’s sobering message on midterm Election Day: It’s human nature to cover up bad things and deny they exist, but we’re better off knowing the bad as well as the good.

That simple point, a half-century after My Lai, is as relevant and meaningful today as any time in our history as we struggle to comprehend climate change, foreign influence on elections, the fate of columnist Jamal Khashoggi and more.

For Haeberle, talking to students on Election Day in Athens was a homecoming of sorts. He was a photography major at Ohio University in the 1960s before being drafted. As a young photographer with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, he recorded a massacre that changed the course of the war.

When Haeberle returned home from Vietnam to the Cleveland area, he showed slides portraying good deeds of the American military in Vietnam and also the bodies at My Lai. He would ask audiences for questions; he recalls that there were few, if any.

Those who saw Haeberle’s slides did not want to believe those haunting images from My Lai, which is normal. In disbelief, people would tell Haeberle that Americans don’t do those things.

A cousin of denial is coverup. Haeberle says, almost matter-of-factly, that coverup is an organizational instinct in the military and elsewhere. Without hyperbole or much inflection, Haeberle says that transparency beats the alternative of ignorance, half-truths or fabrication.

Vietnam, to the college class of 2022, is ancient history, says Tom McBride, professor emeritus at Beloit College. McBride and colleagues Ron Nief and Charles Westerberg assemble an annual "Mindset List" of college freshmen.

Their current list points to the fact that modern American presidents have visited Vietnam, another confirmation that the Cold War is over. As Vietnam fades from America’s memory, Professor McBride reminds us that it was the single most divisive foreignpolicy issue in the country’s history, with the possible exception of debate over America’s entrance into World War II, which was short-lived and settled by the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Blunt-talking Haeberle says war is war, and bad things happened all over Vietnam. His advice: Curiosity is a good trait. Understanding our history and guarding against amnesia are patriotic.

When Haeberle tells his story, he expects and respects tough questions. Why didn’t he stop the killing in My Lai? Did witnessing slaughter damage him emotionally? He seems reconciled to his wartime assignment to record events. But Haeberle makes an important point for the rest of us, and our republic. Tough questions are not only fair game but also fundamental to finding truth.

A half-century later, he points out that we’re still learning about My Lai and Vietnam. Haeberle admires those who dig in the archives.

Curiosity and tough questions, he says, sustain us against coverup and denial.

That is a potent lesson on Election Day, or any day.