Time for a Jubilee?

There is a rather disreputable ghost haunting the U.S. departure from Viet Nam--Lieut. William Calley Jr. Last week the Army Court of Military Review upheld his conviction for the My Lai massacre, and approved his sentence of 20 years at hard labor for ordering "subordinates to participate in the mass summary execution of unarmed, unresisting men, women and children." The decision will be appealed still higher, to the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, and President Nixon has said he would make the final ruling himself.

A group of clergymen, led by Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr., has suggested a strange linkage between Calley and the young Americans who evaded the draft--a "new jubilee" in which amnesty would be extended to both Calley and draft resisters, in which all would be forgiven, regardless of individual guilt or degree of turpitude.

True, one may suspect that it is unjust for Calley to be the only man imprisoned for the My Lai affair. True, one may wish that clemency eventually be shown to the draft evaders. One may wish, in addition, that both the righteous right and the righteous left soften their positions. Yet the Coffin proposal smacks as much of an ill-considered trade-off as it does of Christian forgiveness. The two situations are really unrelated, both legally and morally. Each therefore deserves to be judged on its own merits, not as part of a jubilee.

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