home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
|
|
|
Questions Labor's Leaders Daren't Ask: Where and Why Did We Go Wrong? by JoAnn Wypijewski; Oil on Ice: How Bush Won ANWR, with an Assist from the Dems by Jeffrey St. Clair; The Self-Rehab of George Kennan by Alexander Cockburn; The State and Terri Schiavo: a Conversation with Ralph Nader; Lisa Frittko: She Escorted Walter Benjamin Across the Pyrennes by Lawrence Reichard. Remember these stories are available exclusively in the print edition of CounterPunch. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
|
Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY  Today's Stories April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Bill Glahn Mickey Z. Stephanie McMillan Josh Mahan David Russitano Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales Tom Reeves
April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Pat Williams Jessica Pupovac Joshua Frank Jerzy Mankowski Talli Naumann Antony Loewenstein Virginia Rodino Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen Website of the Day
April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Mike Whitney Terry Jones Dave Lindorff Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Kurt Nimmo Don Fitz Tom Crumpacker JG Jack McCarthy Kevin Zeese Jeffrey St.
Clair
April 12, 2005 John Wheat
Gibson Kevin Zeese Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Nelson P. Valdes Dave Zirin Website of the Day
April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Saul Landau Monique Dols Phil Gasper Mike Whitney Edwin Krales Paul de Rooij Website of the Day
April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair William A. Cook Gary Leupp Alan Maass Laura Carlsen Joe DeRaymond Nikolas Kozloff Dave Lindorff Greg Moses Fred Gardner Justin Smith Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Alam Ira Kay Elizabeth Schulte Jackie Corr Christopher
Brauchli Leslie A. Fiedler Ben Tripp Poets Basement Website of
the Weekend
April 8, 2005 Rob Eshelman Hom Raj Acharya
/ Sally Acharya Felice Pace Neve Gordon Mike Whitney Don Monkerud Adam Engel Vicente Navarro Website of the Day
April 7, 2005 Joshua Frank Yitzhak Laor Alan Maass Steven Sherman Dave Lindorff Gerry Adams John Chuckman Michael Dickinson John Ross Website of the Day
April 6, 2005 Peter Camejo Kevin Wehr Matt Vidal Robert Creeley
/ Bruce Jackson Nikolas Kozloff Sea Shepherd Crew Brenda Child Terry Eagleton David Swanson Cindy Ellen
Hill Website of
the Day
April 5, 2005 Jim Connolly Paul Craig
Roberts Gary Leupp Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Dan Smith Mark Engler Richard Oxman Greg Moses Website of the Day
April 4, 2005 Kevin Zeese Paul Craig Roberts Larry Birns
/ Sarah Schaffer Karyn Strickler Joshua Frank Michael Dickinson Surendra R.
Devkota Derrick O'Keefe Uri Avnery Website of the Day
April 2 / 3, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Stan Goff John Ross Saul Landau Robert Creeley Mike Roselle Joshua Frank Fred Gardner Greg Moses Fran Quigley Kurt Nimmo Nicole Colson Chris Genovali Alan Farago Lawrence Reichard Ben Tripp Avantika Regmi Lee Sustar Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 1, 2005 Tom Barry Rahul Mahajan Charlie Cray
/ Jim Vallette Dave Lindorff Zeynep Toufe Suzan Mazur Michael Dickinson Stan Cox Ra Ravishankar Daniel Wolff
March 31, 2005 Sharon Smith Ron Jacobs Tariq Ali Michael Dickinson Kanak Mani
Dixit Mitchell Zimmerman Xuan-Trang
Ho Dave Zirin Joe Bageant Jeff Halper Website of
the Day
March 30, 2005 Gary Leupp Ralph Nader
/ Kevin Zeese Chase Madar Toni Solo Jackie Corr Ahmad Faruqui Mike Roselle Jude Wanniski Francis A.
Boyle Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of
the Day
March 29, 2005 Ralph Nader Gary Leupp Sonia Cardenas Stew Albert Mark Weisbrot Dave Lindorff Carl G. Estabrook
March 28, 2005 Jeremy Scahill Sonali Kolhatkar Sasha Kramer Kevin Zeese Tom Stephens Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Newton Garver Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
March 26 / 27, 2005 Gary Leupp Peter Linebaugh Marc Robert Laura Carlsen Saul Landau
/ Puja Patel Dave Foreman Fred Gardner Jennifer Matsui Dave Lindorff Dharma Adhikari Joshua Frank Patrick Barr Christopher
Brauchli Ramzy Baroud Jackie Corr Ben Tripp Dr. Susan Block Mickey Z. Justin Taylor Richard Joseph Poets' Basement
March 25, 2005 Scott Richard
Lyons Yoshie Furuhashi Pat Williams Mark Engler Rahul Mahajan Lance Selfa Ralph Nader John R. Llewellyn Jo Guldi
March 24, 2005 Joshua Frank Talli Nauman Martin Espada Dave Lindorff Elaine Cassel Jack McCarthy Jack Random Barbara Ferguson Suzan Mazur Dorreen Yellow Bird Andrew Wimmer
and Mark Chmiel
Patrick Bond Mike Whitney Becky White Michael Donnelly Niranjan Ramakrishnan Ashley Smith David Swanson Derrick O'Keefe Paul A. Moore Dalton Walker Patrick Cockburn
March 22, 2005 William Blum Jim Vallette Greg Moses John Farley Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Alam Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Dave Lindorff James Petras
March 21, 2005 John Walsh Werther Mike Stark David Swanson James T. Phillips Mike Ferner Robert Jensen Paul Craig
Roberts Stew Albert Website of
the Day
March 19, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Tom Reeves Saul Landau Alan Maass Ron Jacobs David Green John Blair Steve Greenfield Ben Tripp Mike Roselle Joshua Frank Mark Weisbrot Dave Lindorff Sarah Schaffer Warren Hastings Poets' Basement
March 18, 2005 Dave Zirin Richard Thieme John Walsh David Swanson Ben Terrall David Boyle Dorreen Yellow Bird Mokhiber /
Weissman Greg Moses Website of
the Day
March 17, 2005 Christopher
Brauchli Bill Quigley Brian Cloughley Gary Bass / Adam Hughes Dave Lindorff Jude Wanniski Alexander Billet John Ross Website of the Day
March 16, 2005 Ralph Nader William Cook Kevin Zeese Jackie Corr Alan Maass David R. Kolker Cindy Ellen
Hill Paul Craig
Roberts
March 15, 2005 Gary Leupp Dave Lindorff Greg Moses Hadas Their
/ Katrina Yeaw Alison Weir Matt Koehler Evelyn Pringle Harry Browne
March 14, 2005 Ralph Nader David Miller Stan Cox Mike Roselle David Swanson Simona Sharoni Dave Lindorff Dorreen Yellow Bird Tom Barry Website of the Day
March 12 / 13, 2005 David H. Price Noam Chomsky Laura Carlsen Stan Goff Valentina Nicoli Michael Leonardi Saul Landau
/ Sarah Anderson Joe Bageant Manuel García,
Jr. Greg Moses James J. Brittain Ben Tripp Joshua Frank Fred Gardner Walter Brasch Ramzy Baroud Christopher
Brauchli Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Richard Oxman Poets' Basement
March 11, 2005 Jerry Fresia Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff William James
Martin Muqtedar Khan Kathryn Ledebur Mike Whitney Dave Zirin Website of the Day
March 10, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts John Marc Leas, Colleen McLaughlin
and Ashley Smith Larry Birns Michael Donnelly Luis Gomez Jackie Corr Uri Avnery Website of the Day
March 9, 2005 Jeffrey St.
Clair Ward Churchill Robert Fisk Bernice Powell Jackson Mickey Z. Dave Zirin Michael Donnelly James Reiss Vijay Prashad
March 8, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Fisk Kurt Nimmo Suzan Mazur Evelyn Pringle Giuliana Sgrena Elaine Cassel
March 7, 2005 Dave Zirin Brian Cloughley John Chuckman Mike Whitney Mark Weisbrot Fred Gardner Richard Neville Uri Avnery
March 5 / 6, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Tom Reeves Jenna Orkin Tom Barry Joshua Frank Moshe Adler Jane Stillwater Omar Barghouti / Jacqueline
Sfeir Christopher
Brauchli John Pilger Raúl
Zibechi David Krieger Three Takes on Nepal Surendra R. Devkota Bhishma Karki Joseph Pietri Ben Tripp Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
March 4, 2005 Frederick Hudson
March 3, 2005 Pat Williams Brian Cloughley Dave Lindorff Amira Hass Greg Moses Lynne Landes Nelson P. Valdés John Ross
March 2, 2005 Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen Mike Roselle M. Junaid Alam Suzan Mazur Jackson Thoreau Michael Donnelly Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
March 1, 2005 Scott Richard
Lyons David Lindorff Patrick Cockburn
/ David Enders Ron Jacobs Tanya Garcia Joseph Pietri Kona Lowell Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
Hot Stories Alexander Cockburn Subcomandante
Marcos Norman Finkelstein Steve Niva Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams Steve
J.B. Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber Wendell
Berry CounterPunch
Wire Cindy
Corrie Gore Vidal Francis Boyle
Subscribe Online
|
Weekend Edition Fear and (Self) Loathing in LubbockHow I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and IraqBy ROBERT BUZZANCO Houston, Texas The U.S. lost the Vietnam War because "the American people came to hate the war" and, hence, "they hated themselves." Normally, one might think that such an observation would come from a talk-show host or new age guru, but those words were uttered not by Dr. Phil of TV fame, but Dr. Keith Taylor of Cornell University, one of our more esteemed historians of Vietnam studies.1 Dr. Taylor's belief (I'm reluctant to call it an analysis) reflects an increasing trend in studies of the Vietnam Warnamely the rehabilitation of southern Vietnam2 and its leaders, a renewed justification of the American war on Vietnam, and increasingly stronger alibis for the failure to defeat the Vietnamese communists and retain a state below the seventeenth parallel. Taylor's expressed his views recently at the 5th Triennial Symposium on the Vietnam War sponsored by the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech. That Taylor would offer his views at Texas Tech is not surprising, but it is a cause for concern that such ideas have become the de facto party line at the Vietnam Center in Lubbock and increasingly popular in public discussions of Vietnam. Unlike the Vietnam archives there, which remain a valuable resource with well-trained and professional archivists for anyone studying the war, the Center clearly resembles a right-wing think tank. On the surface, its ideological underpinnings are not a probleminstitutions should be able to reflect a variety of opinionsbut the Center also seeks academic legitimacy and claims to represent, as its director James Reckner says, opinions all along the spectrum of views on Vietnam. While it is true that Reckner has given a voice to officials from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and some antiwar groups, such as the Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW], the vast majority of voices heard at Center events tend to represent the far right to the near right. Since it was established by a number of Vietnam Vets and has included a number of influential retired officers and government officials on its board, this might not be surprising, and is not illegitimate. But it seems to be imperative that the representatives of the Center in Lubbock make clear what their mission and purpose is. In the past decade or so, the Center has featured, among others, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, William Colby, Sam Johnson, a right-wing congressman from Texas, General Vang Pao, Laotian commander and alleged drug lord in Southeast Asia, many officials from the government and army of southern Vietnam, a number of representatives from POW-MIA groups (in fact, with Bruce Franklin's discrediting of the POW-MIA issue, Texas Tech seems to be the last refuge for people in that particular cottage industry), Stephen Young (who argued that everyone who protested against the war in Vietnam should be brought up on charges of treason), the Swift Boat Veterans, and a host of scholars defending the war and castigating those who opposed it.3 Indeed, at the conferences I have attended, well-established and respected scholars like George Herring, Randall Woods, and David Anderson seem to have constituted the left fringe of the proceedings, probably a unique experience for any of them. But the issue is also bigger than what goes on in Lubbock. Over the past few years there has been a revival of Vietnam revisionism. While the war was undeniably unpopular while it was being fought, it was politically and intellectually rebuilt in the early 1980s, when candidate Ronald Reagan called it a "noble cause" and Army Colonel Harry Summers published the best-selling On Strategy to defend the war and give impetus to the "stabbed in the back" thesis that has become de rigeur among many conservatives. Just in the past half-decade or so, scholars like Michael Lind, Lewis Sorley, Ed Miller, Mark Moyar, Ron Frankum, BG Burkett and Glenna Whitley, and of course Keith Taylor, among others, have written and delivered papers arguing, on many points, that the war was indeed a noble cause, that Vietnam below the seventeenth parallel was a viable and stable state, that the war was not fought disproportionately by the poor, that the U.S. military won in the field but was undermined at home, and that poor decisions and leadership in the United Statesnot the skills and appeal of the Vietnamese communistswere the main reason for American failure. Today, with the United States facing uncertain, if not dismal, prospects in the aftermath of its invasion of Iraq, such messages are not only poor history but bad politics, for they are being used to justify more than the war in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s but American foreign policy and intervention sui generis.
In the decade or so after the Vietnam War ended, most scholars wrote critically of the U.S. intervention in Indochina. George Herring's America's Longest War (1979, 4th edition 2001) was the first serious scholarly entry in the field and remains a standard today. While not an overtly harsh indictment of the American intervention, it certainly presents the decision to fight in Vietnam and subsequent involvement and escalation as clear mistakes. More pointedly, George McT. Kahin's Intervention (1986) and Gabriel Kolko's Anatomy of a War (1985) were early and powerful denunciations of the war, from two scholars who were also active in the antiwar movement and familiar with many of the Vietnamese leaders on a personal basis. Since that time, most scholarly books on Vietnam have tended to be critical of U.S. policy on many levels. Recently, however, there has been a drift away from those approachesnormally a good sign in historiography but one that also holds peril. In the early 1990s, historians began to reappraise John F. Kennedy's role in Vietnam, and began to argue that the young president, had he not been felled by an assassin's bullet, would have withdrawn American troops from Indochina, or at least not escalated the conflict into a major war. Not only old Kennedy standbys like Arthur Schlesinger but also Robert Dallek, Howard Jones, Fred Logevall, David Kaiser, Lawrence Freedman, and others have made this claim. No mind that Kennedy's death should have logically closed this issue, there is now a fairly significant public belief, especially promoted by the Oliver Stone movie on JFK, that Kennedy was a dove on Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the eventual tragedy.4 More recently, the revival of the war has gone further, with Philip Catton, Ed Miller, and others claiming that America's hand-picked leader in southern Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, was actually a capable leader and his ouster and death, sanctioned by the U.S., was a major mistake in retrospect for he was developing a stable regime below the seventeenth parallel. Indeed, at a session, chaired by Keith Taylor, during the 2004 meeting of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations [SHAFR], Ron Frankum and Mark Moyar spoke glowingly of Diem, with only a few concerned questions from the audience of experts.5 At the same time, BG Burkett and Glenna Whitley, Lewis Sorley, and Michael Lind, among others, put out forceful justifications of the war and revised interpretations of the men who led and fought it. American soldiers suffered from "stolen valor" and had their "history" and their "heroes" robbed from them by the media, politicians and activists who opposed the war. Lind and Sorley moreover contend that the United States actually won the war militarily, but lost due to weak politicians who were unwilling to defend southern Vietnam against the northern onslaught from 1973-1975, and that the intervention in fact was essential to the containment of communism in the Cold War.6
Despite these recent efforts to rewrite the war positively, most recent work on Vietnam continues to be critical. It would be a mistake, perhaps a grave error, however, to write off the previous authors as a fringe element. In fact, the positions they have taken received powerful reinforcement in the public sphere during the2004 campaign, when for the first time a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, Massachusetts Senator, 3-time Purple Heart winner, and Navy Lieutenant John Kerry, was the nominee of a major party for president. Kerry, trying to compensate for public perceptions that the Democratic Party was weak on issues of war and terrorism, highlighted his Vietnam service, traveling with a "band of brothers" who had served with him on a Swift Boat in the Mekong Delta and turning his nominating convention into a military parade, complete with tales of heroism from "the 'Nam," supportive officers on the dais, and a symbolic salute and "reporting for duty" introduction. What Kerry left out, as is often the case, was more important than what he included. In 1971, as a representative of VVAW , Kerry spoke eloquently and harshly about the war before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and then threw away military medalslater revealed to be those of another soldier, a World War II veteranat an antiwar protest at the Capitol. At the time, Kerry's compelling remarks were applauded and they represented the views of a significant numberprobably a majorityof Americans. Yet in 2003-2004, nary a mention was made of his role in VVAW or opposition to the war in Vietnam, and Kerryto show his gravitas as a military manhad voted to authorize war in Iraq and to increase funding for hostilities there, and vowed to "win" in Iraq if he became commander-in-chief. If Kerry had hoped to use his experience in Vietnam as a campaign asset, he was in for a huge surprise. A Texas Republican and wealthy developer, Bob Perry, became the principal funder of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," a group of anti-Kerry veterans who charged that the senator had lied to receive two of his purple hearts and a decoration for bravery and had been disloyal and anti-American in his 1971 testimony to the senate. No matter that Navy records and Kerry's former crew mates disproved the allegations and his views in 1971 reflected the mainstream, even within the military,7 the media took the Swift Boat story and ran with it, and Kerry did little to respond for nearly a month in August and September 2004. Nearly thirty years after the war ended in victory by the National Liberation Front and Democratic Republic of Vietnam in April 1975, Vietnam was once again a compelling national political issue. Kerry had hoped to use his story of Vietnam to take him to the White House, but the Swift Boat vets created an alternative version of both Kerry's service and the war. The battle over a war in Indochina that had been so painful and costly decades ago was once again joined.
Amid the backdrop of the election and power of the Swift Boat attack on Kerryironically in defense of an administration headed by two draft-dodgers themselvesthe new rehabilitations of Vietnam take on an urgency and importance that should be recognized. If a war that was so unpopular and tragic while it was being fought can be presented so positively and affect a presidential campaign in a subsequent generation, then there are historical forces at work that need to be recognized and reckoned with. And that's where Keith Taylor comes in. Taylor is not the most important historian of the Vietnam War nor even recognized as a leading scholar of the war periodhis specialty is in Vietnam's early history, before the tenth centurybut his views are presented strongly, well-received by those who are already defensive about the war, and cumulatively representative of a much larger body of scholars and public figuresfrom Texas Tech to the Swift Boatswho are spoiling for a fight, or a re-fight, over Vietnam. Accordingly, it is essential to look at the type of arguments Taylor is making and to repudiate them forcefully and quickly.9 As these new versions of Vietnam are presented, and more importantly taught in high school and university classes, then future foreign invasions, such as Iraq, are facilitated. If Vietnam is indeed seen as a "noble cause," then American forces can more easily and aggressively intervene elsewherein Iraq already, and perhaps Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela in the future. What is immediately striking about Taylor's critique is its passion and anger. He's mad at Kennedy and Johnson for their apparently half-hearted efforts to win in Indochina, upset at those who did not have his "sense of honor" and dodged the draft, disturbed by those in America who did not support the war, even if it was " . . . a consequence of poor leadership." But listen or read more and that anger does not dissipatewhich by itself is not a problem, and I personally think we could use more passionate scholars debating vital issuesbut neither, however, is it supplemented by evidence. Taylor's arguments, like those of many other revisionists, is based on emotions, on what they feel should have happened, on their sympathy or pity for soldiers or the southern Vietnamese, or their detestation of hippies, or disrespect for political leaders who did not wage war vigorously enough, or contempt for scholars who now write disparagingly about the warhence Taylor's analysis about self-loathing Americans as the cause of failure in Vietnam. While I'm not an expert in psychology, neither Dr. Freud nor Dr. Phil, I do know that it is quite a leap to say that virtually an entire nation, an entire generation, hated America and hated themselves. In fact, the vast majority of those who opposed the war did so within the American tradition, and many of the most radical showed their respect for our society and our customs by refusing draft induction and accepting the consequences of it. With a few extreme examples like the Weather Underground, which had but a handful of adherents, those who protested the war did so legally and peacefully, and they included ministers, businessmen, "average Americans," students, military officers, and a lot of soldiers. To determine that Americans came to hate their society and themselves is intellectually immature as well as an emotive outburst and an insult to those who tried to stop the war in Vietnam because of the way it was ripping apart Vietnam and American society. And yet Taylor continues. He is proud that he is "not among the self-loathing Americans who notice people in other countries looking to us for leadership and see nothing but neocolonialism and imperialism." Just where are all these people who are looking to "us" for leadership? Apparently Taylor has not seen surveys showing vast majorities, often over 90 percent, of people in other countries holding negative views of the U.S., or is unaware of the level of hostility aimed at American institutions or symbols. Perhaps he should take a look at a document entitled "Anti-Americanism in Arab World," which begins "anti-Americanism is resurging in the Arab world" and then lists a series of recent incidents such as bombings, "vitriolic public statements," and "diatribes and fantastic rumors" which "all testify to the rekindling of Arab animosity against the United States." That particular document, by the way, which could have been written in the past few months by Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice, was produced by Dean Acheson in May 1950.10 Or perhaps he should look at, say, southern Vietnam, where so many people were apparently so eager for American leadership that they took up arms, with the Viet Minh and National Liberation Front, to attack their countrymen who collaborated with the Americans, staged a series of coups d'etat to oust American client regimes, and waged a long-term and brutal war against U.S. forces. Taken to a logical conclusion, Taylor's opinions on Vietnam sound much like those of George Bush and others who, in the aftermath of 9/11/01 decided that the attacks in New York and Washington occurred because "they" hate "us" because "we have freedom" or because "we're so good." Perhaps that's trueI doubt it, but I'll concede it's possiblebut it would be nice to have some evidence to back it up. When considering the way the war was fought, Taylor's emotive views again surface. One of the bigger flaws in American planning for Vietnam, we learn, was a "lack of attention." As Taylor says, "I believe that Kennedy made bad decisions about Vietnam because he was not paying sufficient attention and Johnson did so because it was not his priority." Hmmmm . . . Ask anyone who had done research on the Vietnam War, and he or she will tell you that one of the problems that we face is the sheer mass of documents, oral histories, interviews, and other data on the war. I doubt any conflict in history has had so many documents produced while it was being conducted. The Kennedy and Johnson Libraries have, I would suspect, many millions of pages of reports, analyses, and other information produced by virtually every agency, military branch, and diplomatic official. This massive record of the war, one would easily conclude, is testimony to the vast levels ofattention given to it by national leaders and its priority in state affairs. Yet Taylor "believes" that American leaders suffered from attention-deficit disorder, that Kennedy, who saw Vietnam as a way to reclaim lost credibility lost in Laos and Cuba, and Johnson, who agonized over the war daily and went to an early grave probably due to the stress it caused him, did not take Vietnam seriously enough? Taylor's emotions also flow freely when he tries to put Vietnam into a larger cold war context. In discussing the way he teaches Vietnam, Taylor sets up straw men and then knocks them down. First, he claims that his students today know nothing about the Cold War and think it was an effort by somewhat crazed American leaders to gain world power by threatening war against a non-existent enemy. Perhaps such a view is predominant among those who just read John Gaddis's work for the first time, but it, again, ignores overwhelming evidence otherwise. What of the establishment of the national security state and massive military budgets, the power of the red scare after World War II, the Sputnik scare, the cultural impact of the cold war on education and entertainment, or the "bipartisanship" that takes precedence when the U.S. goes to war? In 1980 polling, 73 perecent of Americans believed that the goal of the USSR was "global domination" and 39 percent thought the Kremlin would risk "major war" to gain it; in 1985, 54 percent said Moscow posed a "real, immediate danger"; and even in 1988, after the Reagan-Gorbachev thaw, 60 percent still saw the Russians as a "serious threat" to American security due to "Soviet aggression around the world." More recently, a February 2005 Gallup Poll showed that Americans consider Ronald Reagan the greatest president because he, they believe, "won" the Cold War.11 So, if Taylor believes that Americans are too self-critical about the Cold War, he needs to produce some evidence to back it up. In addition to his caricature of cold war critics, he tries to play the race card. At Texas Tech, Taylor claimed that opponents of the Vietnam War believed that the U.S. intervention was wrong because it was trying to modernize a people "not ready for democracy," which, he said, was "a racist argument." I agree. I think the Vietnamese were capable of self-determination, as demonstrated in 1945 and 1954, when Ho Chi Minh and his communist and nationalist supporters tried to develop a free and independent Vietnam, only to have the French and especially the Americans undermine them. But Taylor should look at the mirror before calling the antiwar movement racist. At the core of Taylor's feelings about Vietnam is the idea that American leaders lost the war. By putting the onus for failure on Kennedy and Johnson's ADHD and the antiwar movement's self-loathing, Taylor, by deduction, takes agency away from the Vietnamese, who, one has to conclude, were not able to gain democracy on their own, but then saw the Americans mess it up as well. But that's not racist . . .? Taylor, who believes that the U.S. was trying to help the southern Vietnamese establish democracy, seems to have a strange idea of that concept, though. He laments the notion that the "governments opposed to a non-communist Vietnam were able to mobilize their populations without regard to dissent." Considering that only Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea assisted the U.S. in Vietnam, should we assume that the nations of western Europe and Scandinavia opposed to the war were also "opposed to a non-communist Vietnam" and did not allow political dissent within their systems? But Taylor continues that line of argument, asserting that "one of the fundamental long-term aims of the United States was to develop the right to dissent" in southern Vietnam. One cannot really mock this view, because it is too repugnant to be humorous. In Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Indonesia, many nations of the Middle East, and most of Latin America the United States used its military and economic power to crush liberation movements and keep in place some of the more murderous juntas of the modern era. Are we to really believe that Castillo Armas, the Shah of Iran, Suharto, Pinochet, Middle Eastern monarchs and Israeli authorities in Palestine, Pol Pot or others supported by the U.S. were developing the right to dissent, or that the very authorities who produced McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, and "Homeland Security" were trying to extend democracy? One really expects to hear such opinions on right-wing talk radio rather or the books of John Gaddis12 rather than in the lecture halls of Cornell. And the sentiments do not stop at Vietnam. Taylor has brought his analysis up to the present, emoting about 9/11 and the current war. Ever since Vietnam, since we have hated ourselves, America has become weak. Because of that continued self-loathing, terrorists knew we were vulnerable and "9/11 happened because we were weak." Now, with the war on Iraq foundering, Taylor is having a bad flashback of a bygone era, as the so-called Vietnam Syndrome is resurging: "I saw people at pointy-headed universities indulging as self-hating Americans" and "it seemed awfully familiar."13 Again, emotions run into the brick wall of history. While I would deny a "Vietnam Syndrome" ever really existedlook at arms sales in the Nixon years or continued meddling in Latin America or Asiaor, if it did, that it lasted more than a few yearslook at Carter's attempt to deny the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua, his early intervention in Afghanistan, his defense budgets, and the emergence of Brzezinskione cannot seriously look at U.S. global policies for the past two-and-a-half decades and proclaim it weak. From Reagan's illegal wars in Latin America, bankrolled by illicit arms shipments to the outlaw government of Iran, through the attacks on Grenada, Libya, Panama and elsewhere, into the Gulf War and attendant sanctions of the 1990s, up to the present invasion of Iraq, American military power has not been quiescent. On top of that, U.S. military spending remains enormous. Indeed the current $400 billion annual pentagon budget exceeds the next 24 highest-spending countries combined.14 But, more than that, the idea that terrorists struck in September 2001 due to America's "weakness" is, again, fundamentallyanti-historical. It replaces an analysis of "our" historical role in the world, and especially in the Middle East, with affective concepts like weakness and evil. No one should try to justify al-Qaeda's actions, but it is perilous to ignore the motives, or history, behind them. To untold numbers throughout the world, the proximate causes of 9/11the presence of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, continued U.S. support of Israel's repression of Palestine, and the destructive sanctions against the people of Iraqrang true. To most people across the globe, 9/11 did not happen because the U.S. was "too weak" but precisely |
