Fire in the Lake
Turner, Robert F.
"Fire in the Lake" Kai-shek through such insidious devices as the "Marshall Mission" will always remain as a blot on our honor. And third, contrary to what Patterson intimates, Taft was never a serious...
...In spite of all of the attractive promises which helped the Viet Minh win enough noncommunist support to gain power, the people of North Vietnam do not have the freedoms they were promised, the tillers do not own their own land (almost all of the land has been collectivized), and the traditional family is only a memory...
...174...
...He was a great man...
...That Laqueur stands astride or beyond such distinctions is apparent from the themes that recur throughout the essays, often in unexpected ways...
...she visited South Vietnam twice as a journalist (for a total period of about one year...
...Unfortunately, he was not at this time the match for a World War II hero who didn't know what "parity" or "closed" or "open" shop meant...
...The best thing you can do for your families is to fight for the Liberation...
...FitzGerald's explanation of the Vietnamese character is complete and convincing--certainly it is responsible for much of the attention which the book has received...
...In the first place, the name "Vietnam" was in the name of Ho's party in 1930, before the Comintern ordered that the name be changed from "Vietnam Communist Party" to "Indochinese Communist Party...
...It was only after the communists refused to agree to adequately supervised elections that the United States and South Vietnam objected...
...It is doubtful that Willy Brandt could have conducted the Ostpolitik, or even that he could have become Chancellor under such conditions...
...This is, of course, a simple extension of the revisionist apologia for Stalin's notion of security in Eastern Europe after the war...
...She has made a gallant effort to explain an extremely complex subject --Vietnamese culture--but she has not succeeded...
...others consider the relationship between liberals and the extreme Left...
...Many, myself included, after the decision of the Convention wept unashamedly in the stench of the stockyards...
...FitzGerald reasons and writes well, and her book--while not essential reading--is quite good in parts and is recommended if read with caution...
...174] "In the month that they occupied Hue the Front and the North Vietnamese forces murdered some three thousand civilians, including not only 16 The Alternative November 1973 government officials, but hundreds of Catholics and members of other antiCommunist political parties and sects...
...an improvement in everyone's living conditions...
...In this instance, FitzGerald has simply misinterpreted her source (McA1ister and Mus, The Vietnamese and their Revolution, Chapter 7...
...The lists of GVN officials to be assassinated or spies to be executed had to undergo long bureaucratic scrutiny before they could be put to use...
...Still, she charges: "Already in July [1955] Diem had repudiated the Geneva accords and, specifically, the article proposing a free election between the two regroupment zones" (p...
...Much of Laqueur's writing is devoted to a description of the political foolishness of which intellectuals are capable...
...429--'The land and the family were the two sources of national as well as personal identity...
...And third, contrary to what Patterson intimates, Taft was never a serious contender for the Republican nomination until 1952...
...Having seen captured Viet Cong documents providing guidance to communist securety elements for the preparation of the "blood-debt" lists to which FitzGerald is referring, and having been told by very senior Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army defectors that several million South Vietnamese citizens are eligible for inclusion on these lists, I am personally not very impressed by arguments that the murders are ~carefully calculated for maximum political effect," or that they are carried out coldbloodedly by specially trained units (although FitzGerald is correct on both points...
...The United States also insisted that elections be under UN supervision "to insure that they are conducted fairly...
...Had the NPD attracted several thousand more voters, it would have gained access to a national forum in the Bundestag...
...12.50 For some time now it has been fashionable to explain American failures in Vietnam with clichds about understanding the Vietnamese "mind," "character," "culture," or what-have-you...
...The modern German Left is obsessed with %he Palestinian cause" to a degree that distinguishes it from radical movements in other western countries...
...Similarly, she asserts (p...
...by removing the people from the land and depositing them in the vast swampcities...
...As an honest and capable scholar, she is forced to acknowledge: "If a landlord refused to cooperate, or if the NLF felt his death would serve a political purpose, he would be assassinated-and usually in public" (pp...
...for Barraclough bears out Laqueur's prediction that the epidemic of revisionist historiography on the Cold War was bound to spread to World War II...
...At about the same time, a similar alliance showed signs of developing in the United States...
...Some of the essays in this collection were written as topical articles in response to the events of the previous decade...
...and, on page 220, where she writes: "Upon bringing the name Vietnam into the name of his party, Ho Chi Minh took the concomital step of changing the phrase indicating socialism and his future social policy...
...If any one of the articles is vulnerable to second-guessing with the aid of hindsight, it is "Bonn is not Weimar...
...Barraclough now tells us that the Japanese, and apparently the Germans as well, were compelled by considerations of security to establish a military empire...
...The author is a living reminder of the arbitrariness of our convenient but conventional distinctions between historian and journalist, scholar and essayist, expert and popularizer...
...The topic is too complex to entertain seriously in a few paragraphs of a brief review, and this writer is hardly qualified for the task even under ideal circumstances...
...In spite of its having been selected as one of the five most important books of 1972 by the New York T/rues, it is not a bad piece of scholarship...
...What is remarkable, therefore, is not that the book is "uneven" (as it is), but that it holds together as well as it does...
...By performing the ceremonies of marriage and burial, by promising to support the crippled soldiers, to help the families of the dead and the wounded, and to pay special attention to those of the fighters' families who lived in the Liberated areas, they relieved the soldiers of their most pressing economic worries...
...156157...
...Another aspect of the double standard, although one which is perhaps more understandable, is FitzGerald's practice of comparing the often weak and corrupt practices of an existing government (the GVN) with the promises and temporary policies of a movement trying hard to win enough popular support to gain power...
...As Laqueur has recently noted, Ulrike Meinhof paid tribute at her trial to the "progressive" character of Hitler's extermination of the Jews...
...Perhaps the most impressive undertaking along these lines is Frances FitzGerald's Fire in the Lake (the title of which is a metaphor for "revolution" from the I Ching...
...Having done this, she finds it necessary to fit these acts of terror into her orderly portrait of the NLF as being the "good guys" by asserting that the Front is careful in deciding who to murder: "[T]he Security cadre did not kill indiscriminately, but carefully calculated each of the assassinations for the maximum political effect...
...In reading Fire in the Lake one cannot help but recognize a double standard in FitzGerald's analysis...
...For example, she criticizes the United States for destroying the sources of Vietnamese identity (p...
...and---among other things--'to safeguard the interests" or '~to show gratitude" to every conceivable interest group from office workers to soldiers...
...It is here that FitzGerald attempts to explain the Vietnamese character, and to introduce the reader to the history, organization, and operation of the National Liberation Front (NLF...
...A number of essays touch on the comparison of America to Weimar Germany...
...What whe neglects to tell the readers is that: (1) It was Pham Van Dong, head of the communist Viet Minh delegation to the Geneva Conference, who first proposed that Vietnam be divided...
...Certainly this is true, because the NLF Program promises: freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion...
...Even if these farfetched claims were true, one would expect the "liberal" Barraclough to applaud the Allied policy of resistance to regimes whose security depended on military conquest of their neighbors...
...442...
...187...
...It is impossible to understand the communist movement in Vietnam without first understanding thought reform...
...438...
...Although he is an intellectual, he does not share in the view that his class is the natural guardian of private or public morality: "In [the intellectuals'] seclusion there is a constant temptation to devise political constructions firmly rooted in mid-air, in which everything seems possible, in which governments and political authority in general are replaced by communes of free and equal individuals, in which society exists without repression, and domestic policies require no sanctions, diplomats always tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and a foreign policy is pursued in which the wolf lies down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid, all presumably under the strict supervision of Professor Noam Chomsky...
...Fire in the Lake The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald Little, Brown & Co...
...How can you help your families, the cadres asked, if the nation is in such trouble...
...FitzGerald is perhaps at her best when discussing the organization and operation of the National Liberation Front, although this section, too, must be read with caution...
...438) that "the struggle of the NLF was an assertion of the principle of national unity that the Saigon government had endorsed and betrayed...
...Repeatedly Laqueur defends the writing of what he calls "contemporary history," that form of erudite political journalism which is exemplified in Europe by Pierre Hassner and Raymond Aron but which in America is at home neither in the universities nor in the media...
...223) that the North Vietnamese "land reform" was undertaken in 1956 (in fact it was undertaken ,:n 1953 and concluded in 1956...
...Two examples are her assertion (p...
...Frances FitzGerald is an intelligent and honest scholar, who has produced a highly readable and thought-provoking study of the Vietnam war...
...rather they played them down in a number of important ways...
...It emerged from the election with its energies spent and its fortunes declining...
...Harold Laski, for example, was able to write in 1935, "Basically I did not see much difference between 18 The Alternative November 1973...
...The transfer of responsibility thus helped them to rationalize the breach of filial piety that they had made in the very act of joining the NLF...
...FitzGerald prepared herself more thoroughly than most people who write about Vietnam: she benefited from the experiences of her late father, Desmond FitzGerald, a senior CIA official with considerable experience in Asia...
...The difference between the propaganda programs advocated by the Vietnamese communists, and the actual policies they implement once they gain power, is explained by Vietnam Worker's Party First Secretary I.e Duan, who wrote in 1960: "Only bY winning over the peasant masses . . . can the working class conque r the leadership of revolution . . . . That is why the Marxist-I~ninist parties . . . must have suitable programs, policies, slogans, and styles of work to The Alternative November 1973 17 win over the peasantry" (Le Duan, On Some Present International Problems, Hanoi, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1964, p. 44...
...But that is Barraclough's problem, not Laqueur's...
...Perhaps she is right, but, if so, it will be more a consequence of superior organization and proselytization than of moral virtue or consonance with traditional Vietnamese society...
...In the second place, the Vicar Nam X~t HOi D~ng (Vietnam Socialist Party) created by the Viet Minh in July, 1946, was not Ho Chi Minh's party at all...
...Her discussion of "criticism" and "self-criticism" (thought reform)--ki~m thao, which she consistently but incorrectly spells Khiem thao (one of numerous misspellings in her employment of Vietnamese terms)--is too brief but otherwise quite good...
...The final section of the book is devoted explicitly to what Laqueur still calls, without embarrassment, The Jewish Question...
...and (2) The representative of the noncemmunist State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) asked that there be no division of Vietnam but, instead, that the United Nations assume administrative functions throughout the entire territory and supervise the conduct of genuinely free elections...
...While it is true that the party's leadership often sounded more Gaullist than fascist, it is no less true that the NPD was a gathering point for unreconstructed Nazis and their youthful admirers...
...yet she refuses to take the communists to task for the same offense...
...However, when one notes (1) the control that North Vietnam exercises over the NLF, and (2) the fact that the NLF Program is virtually identical in substance with the various programs used by communist fronts prior to the takeover of North Vietnam, it behoves us to take a look at what happened once the communists actually got into power...
...It is, in fact, this premeditated nature which makes them all the more detestable and augments the NLF's culpability vis-&-vis the American government and the horrible crimes of rage of a Lieutenant Calley...
...In any case, a comparison between the Federal Republic and Weimar would probably benefit as much from an analysis of the modern German Left as of the Right...
...Patterson, at the very least, tells us why this is so...
...Fire in the Lake is certainly not the final word on the subject, but--if read with caution-it can provide a great deal of valuable information which can help us to understand Vietnam, the Vietnamese, and the Americans in Vietnam...
...This alone is credit to Taft...
...It might then have developed along the lines of Italy's MSI, now that country's fourth political party...
...Ironically, Laqueur's farsightedness is illustrated by the very article in which Barraclough made this unfortunate remark...
...yet they still read surprisingly well...
...If political morality has held its own in the twentieth century, it has frequently been despite rather than because of the guidance of the universitied classes...
...It was a puppet organization created by the communists to rally more people to the Viet Minh Front, and it was clearly identified in its program as being the Vietnamese version of the Social-Democratic Parties of the Second International in Europe...
...George Carey R iew...
...This discussion of the possible reemergence of Nazism in West Germany was written in 1967, at a time when the right-wing NPD showed disturbing political strength...
...FitzGerald obviously has considerable difficulty with the subject of Viet Cong terrorism...
...Perhaps it will suffice to note that even anti-Vietnam war scholars have labeled the FitzGerald analysis of Vietnamese national character as "little short of disastrous" (David Marr, Journal of Asian Studies, May, 1973, p. 564), and to invite readers who desire a more detailed critique of this portion of Fire in the Lake to peruse the first few pages of Ngo Vinh Long's "Fizzle in the Lake" (Ramparts, January, 1973, pp...
...The destruction of the traditional family is apparently acceptable because "the NLF had offered them a new kind of family" (p...
...Republican," a man dedicated and loyal to his party through the darkest of its years, could not win nomination over a contender who really did not know whether he was a Republican or a Democrat until it was convenient to do so...
...Tens of thousands of similar '~incidents" of political terrorism have taken place throughout South Vietnam over the years, and although each act may seem inconsequential in comparison to Hue-when considered in the aggregate they dwarf the horror of the 1968 massacre...
...174...
...This is not because she is unaware of the destruction of the traditional family by the NLF: "Unlike the ARVN [South Vietnamese army] soldiers, who usually settle their families near their fixed bases or in an accessible town, the Front fighters rarely saw their families more than once or twice a year . . . . The cadres did not attack the soldiers' filial ties directly...
...In retrospect it seems that Laqueur understood both the fascist character of the NPD and its potential importance in German politics...
...The enthusiasts of the Soviet new order included not only the hapless American Ambassador Davies but also western scholars, "experts" on Russia and the Soviet Union...
...The Socialist Party, like the puppet Democratic Party, remains active today in North Vietnam...
...202-203...
...the right to private property and free enterprise...
...The unity of this collection of essays, diverse as they are in origin and subject matter, reflects the unity of Walter Laqueur's thought...
...Far from repudiating the proposed elections in July, 1955, the Diem Government (represented at Geneva by Tran Van Do) made it clear from the start that it did not oppose the concept of unification elections, but it would not participate in any plebiscite with a more populous communist neighbor without adequate international supervision...
...The author's own credentials place him above accusations of anti-intellectnalism...
...226...
...141...
...67...
...It does little more than voice wholehearted approval of the policies established by Ho Chi Minh's real party, the Vietnam Worker's Party (D~mg Lao D6ng Vi~.t Nam)--the actual successor to the Indochinese Communist Party...
...It is therefore understandable (but not forgivable) that Geoffrey Barraclough, the target of a critical but courteous review essay in this book, recently dismissed Laqueur's concern with Nazi respensibility for the war with the observation that "Laqueur, who was born in Wroclaw, can not see beyond the end of his European nose...
...The killings were then carried out in a cold-blooded manner by specially trained Armed Reconnaissance Teams" (p...
...While the book is written with a distinct anti-Vietnam war bias, it lacks the elements of dishonesty found in many such volumes...
...and she familiarized herself admirably with the English- and French-language literature of the field...
...The first half is, as the title implies, about Vietnam and the Vietnamese...
...In spite of its flaws--only a few of which have been discussed above--Fire in the Lake is a worthwhile book...
...Xa Hoi Dang was the name of the socialist party within the Viet Minh...
...By this point, few readers should be surprised to learn that FitzGerald is confident that the "good guys" (i.e., NLF) are going to win...
...Robert F. Turner B ok R iew Out of the Ruins of Europe by Walter Laqueur Library $12.95 Out of the Ruins of Europe is a collection of previously published essays written over the course of twelve years...
...Certainly Hue was the largest massacre in one place and at one time (it was, after all, the only city of any size that the communists had held for any length of time prior to the publication of Fire in the Lake), but what occurred in Hue was not an exception to party policy...
...And herein we find the great divide in the Republican Party and, indeed, within the Democratic Party as well...
...On balance it seems that Taft was unwilling to make any deals with the likes of a Harold Stassen, Earl Warren, or Wayne Morse...
...Although her account of Vietnamese history is more accurate than that found in most anti-war studies, she makes a number of rather distracting errors (clearly the consequence of flaws in her scholarship, not in her integrity...
...After a series of strong showings in state elections, the party marshalled all its forces in an attempt to clear the "five percent" hurdle and thereby gain national representation in the general election of 1969...
...The most spectacular article in this book is "Russia through Western Eyes," an overview of western reaction to Stalin's Russia in the 1930s...
...and "Often the Front would assassinate a GVN official as an 'example' to the villagers of what might happen if they decided to work for the government" (p...
...It was the communist regime of North Vietnam, rather than the government of Ngo Dinh Diem, that asked for partition and ruled out genuinely free elections...
...Actually, Fire in the Lake is two books...
...The evidence that the NLF intends to follow the totalitarian footsteps of North Vietnam, rather than the enticing promises of their propaganda Program, is overwhelming, and should make one skeptical of FitzGerald's rosy portrait...
...she studied under the guidance of the respected French scholar, Paul Mus...
...How ironic it is that "Mr...
...As is the case in most totalitarian societies, children in North Vietnam are encouraged to spy on their parents and to report to their Party youth group leaders any violations of official policy...
...The reader cannot but find irony in her assertion when discussing the National Liberation Front: "For a non-Vietnamese to write a full account of the NLF is finally an impossible undertaking" (p...
...land to the tiller...
...Unfortunately, although it may well "make sense" to the lay reader, it is not a very accurate analysis of the subject...
...I console myself by reading Lord Bryce's comments about why great men are never elected to or selected for the presidency...
...Unlike most others, however, she acknowledges that the provisions for the proposed elections were contained not in the signed ceasefire agreement but in an unsigned declaration of the Geneva Conference (p...
...The moment will arrive "for the narrow flame of revolution to cleanse the lake of Vietnamese society from the corruption and disorder of the American war" (p...
...While there is a great deal of truth in the clich6s, all too often they are followed by simplistic interpretations which are of value only in confirming the veracity of the clich6s...
...Thus she notes: "Land reform and a broad program of economic and social justice--these are the policies that gave it [the NLF] appeal to the rural people...
...45...
...For cong san, a phrase of Chinese roots suggesting a secular aggregate of individuals, he substituted xa hoi, a Vietnamese phrase linking the future distribution of wealth with the sacred communal traditions of the old village...
...For years the nominally liberal denizens of West German universities were fascinated by the exploits of the Baader-Meinhof gang, a band of Maoist terrorists whose leaders personified the alliance between intellectuals and common hoodlums so characteristic of radical politics in Weimar...
...The party garnered 4.7 percent of the vote...
...She also notes such large-scale purges as the North Vietnamese "land reform" (which she calls [p...
...223] "an anarchic campaign of terror" through which "by conservative extimate, some fifty thousand people of all economic stations were killed"), and the Hue massacre during the 1968 T'dt offensive ([p...
...She further asserts that the Hue massacre was the only "incident" in which the NLF perpetrated political violence on a massive scale (p...
...Would that she had been as cautious in undertaking to explain the immensely more intricate subject, Vietnamese culture...
...For many of the fighters a sense of obligation was the strongest attachment they had to their families...
...In part two, she introduces the Americans into her analysis and explains why they were destined to fail and why the communists are certain to win...
...The Americans have destroyed these for many Vietnamese...
...For this, FitzGerald deserves our gratitude...
...Like most opponents of American involvement in Vietnam, FitzGerald is highly critical of the refusal by South Vietnamese President Diem to hold elections in 1956...
...The book does not constitute an autobiography, although the opening chapters about the author's youth in Wroclaw (which he still--self-consciously--calls Breslau) hold out the promise of considerable autobiographic material...
...If and when foreign governments cease to dominate the economy of the cities, the NLF program will seem equally attractive to many Vietnamese" (p...
Vol. 7 • November 1973 • No. 2
