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Sack enters Galley's head at crucial moments to deliver other thoughts that often seem inconsistent with the man-is-only-a-cog theory that permeates the book. Calley decides to tell the truth at his trial, says Sack, because "a lie violated the inner consistency of what every soldier did in Viet Nam." He is thus viewed as a loyal robot unable to make moral distinctions, while at the same time Sack tells us about Calley's intelligence and honor. Few readers are likely to swallow such contradictions. Despite Sack's intent to exculpate Calley, the My Lai triggerman (still confined to base at Fort Benning) comes across as a very shrewd robot, cynically using the truth to embarrass the Army and deflect his own guilt.
Sack never actually denies either the need for or the possibility of free will and individual guilt and responsibility. Instead he slides into the sticky, popular claim that "We are all William Calley." The preposterous implication being that none of us cogs can be guilty of anything. "To absent oneself is the only innocent act," says Sack sententiously, "to accept uncertainty, to trust oneself and to walk quietly out on the great dictator, the incontestable expert, to undo every organization and let every organism turn to the rhythms within." For a man who apparently operates very well within the man-eating machine, this is anarchy at its most chic. ∙R.Z. Sheppard