During the Vietnam War, a unit of US Army soldiers invaded My Lai, a South Vietnamese village believed to be an enemy stronghold of the Viet Cong. On that day in May 1968, an estimated 347 unarmed civilians died, “including women and children” (Cantrell, 2007). My Lai became one of the most controversial situations of the long Vietnam War. When the truth came out through letters to the government describing the horror, two questions arose. Understanding why some young American soldiers killed so many innocent civilians that day and why so few in the unit tried to save the lives of as many people as they could requires moral clarity. Although obedience to authority has hurt and killed innocent people, the lack of moral clarity is the crux of what happened in My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968. Americans want moral clarity. Moral clarity is often more a testament to the idea than a living reality. In the case of the My Lai incident, America faced a moral dilemma in trying to understand what went wrong and why it happened. Testimony during the ensuing trial of those who participated in the massacre raises more questions than answers. “In addition to flaunting our moral presumptions, we come to believe that we act more morally the less we think about it,” states Cotkin (2010, pp 1).” Kendrick, (2006) states: “Nearly forty years later, however, the massacre's status as a historical linchpin is unclear, not so much because it is explicitly contested, but because its memory is attenuated” (Kendrick, pp 37). Ending a war, keeping America free presupposes that these are moral actions, but what one acts upon to achieve this goal in the face of what is moral then becomes “problematic.” Accept that there is an inherent difficulty in acting morally… at the center of the paper… Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America. Dougherty, William Frederic. Testimony of SP 4 William F. Doherty, RA 11 620 737, Co B, 2d Bn, 41st Inf, Fort Hood, Texas, taken at the Office of the Inspector General, I11 Corps, Fort Hood, Texas, at 2:22 pm on May 5, 1969, by Colonel Wilson, IG http://www.virtual.vietnam.ttu.edu/cgi-Milgram, Stanley. “The dangers of obedience”. Writing and reading in the curriculum.11th ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. Boston: Longman-Pearson, 2011. 692-704. Print.Oliver, Kendrick. Coming to terms with the past: My Lai Kendrick Oliver revisits the scene of an infamous massacre that became a watershed in public perception of the Vietnam War and asks what it means for America, nearly forty years later. History today. COPYRIGHT. History Today Ltd. COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group. February 2006. 36(2); page 37