These atrocities may very well have occurred. So what. When the enemy runs a guerrilla war then these sorts of things are the inevitable results. Such is the cost.
It does not demean the service of those who fought there. Those that died, nor does it reduce the nobility of the purpose of that war...which was to stop the spread of communism.
Collateral damage is the responsibility of the aggressor. Which was not the USA or our fine soldiers who served.
Emotionally I'm tempted to go along with so what, but I disagree. She's not writing about collateral damage, rather consciously committed atrocities.
I'm not going to dispute the question of whether there are "excuses" for atrocities, I simply don't believe her thesis that atrocities were institutionalized. As I noted earlier, I’m basing that on anecdotal evidence, friends there, and people I served with who were there, but this just doesn’t wash.
Were there individual cases, sure, there’s misconduct, but that’s quite different than systemic criminality. And the authors book is based on the existence of the investigation of those cases of misconduct. Yet the only evidence of systemic collusion was Nixon’s order to keep these things off the front page by investigating any allegation thoroughly. I’d never heard that before, it explains the My Tho (sp?) incident, chalk one up for Nixon.