Sentenced to Life

...For Roche, an isolationism that abandons the world to totalitarianism is a "moral monstrosity," whether it is the policy of guilt-ridden New Leftists or of the moralistic xenophobes of the Old Right...

...When Roche was a young professor at Haverford, an American Legion official suggested that he be banned from teaching for criticizing Joe McCarthy...

...We Americans, he argues, have a peculiar habit of convincing ourselves that nations we do not want to fight really have decent governments after all...

...He endorses the "essential proposition" of their policy, i.e., if the West holds the line against expansionism of Communist regimes, a transformation will eventually (and gradually) occur in them to undermine their imperialist drives...

...The old political categories are even less applicable in foreign policy than in domestic politics...

...The first section of Sentenced to Life reveals the same clear thinking that the author displays in the other two parts of his book...

...By 1965, for instance, Senator Ernest Gruening had pronounced Roche "unfit" to teach because of his support for the war in Vietnam...

...Section 2, entitled "Education," provides a witty and spirited defense of academic freedom...

...None of these essays, for example, address such recent consequences of judicial activism as busingto achieve racial balance, new mandatory criminal procedures, reapportionment, and so forth...

...The difference, according to Roche, was the pressure American mining and bombing had on North Vietnam (there was less risk of superpower confrontation in 1973 because of the China trip and detente) and the failure of General Giap's invasion of the South...

...Of course, the War in Vietnam was the direct result of these general principles, and the greater part of the author's discussion of foreign policy deals with American involvement in Southeast Asia...

...It is no secret that many liberals have come to think of American postwar foreign policy at best as overzealous and at worst as downright malicious...

...It would be unfair, however, to leave the impression that Sentenced to Life is mere Johnson Administration apologetics...

...He also contests the notions that the Thieu government is a dictatorship, that the "domino theory" is without foundation, and that Communism is no longer imperalistic now that it has become a "polycentric movement...

...But the essential question we must ask about Roche's containment views is how they relate to problems we are likely to face in the future...

...Like many other liberals, Roche thought that a decade of resistance had tamed the yahoos of the Right and had made academic freedom an unassailable American value...

...Sentenced to Life leaves the sense that there is no problem'which the power, the dollars, and the good intentions of the federal government cannot solve...

...Many students of American politics have recently commented that New Deal liberalism is now a thing of the past...

...The Vietnam Negotiations," which is also excellent, focuses on a different aspect of our Vietnam policy, mainly on why an acceptable settlement was possible in 1973 but not in 1968...

...This section contains a fine and accessible discussion of the Constitution's contract clause and civil liberties in the "Age of Enterprise," as well as compendious essays on subjects ranging from the distribution of power to the history of expatriation law...

...Everyone has kind words these days for Harry Truman, but the only politicians whom this reviewer has heard praising his foreign policy recently are Senators Buckley and Dole...

...He defines the university's function as "education, not service," whether that "service" comes under the guise of antiwar agitation or of classified government research...

...Besides clarifying the broad outline and intentions of our Vietnam policy, Roche performs a valuable service in exploding some of the more prevalent and influential myths that have grown up around that policy...

...Still, it is certainly not out-of-date...

...By tracing the step-by-step escalation of our involvement in Vietnam and our repeated efforts to negotiate an end to the war, Roche, in his essay `!The Jigsaw Puzzle of History," offers a fine and complete refutation of the "Orwellian" notion that "a few sinister hawks foisted our Southeast Asian policy on an unwilling but helpless mass of liberal doves...

...Throughout these pages, the author is nevertheless able to maintain his sense of humor as well as the courage, as he puts it , to be "unfashionable...

...Roche never discusses disillusionment with "good" state power that some of his fellow liberals felt after their experiences with the War on Poverty...

...but then the New Left, with many allies among opinion makers and important persons within the university itself, began its war on free thought and free speech in the academic community...

...Relying heavily on his own memos to President Johnson, Roche also provides insights into war and politics as practiced by the dedicated revolutionaries of the North Vietnamese politburo...

...Roche believes that teachers and scholars should not be restrained from expressing their views or be held responsible for the political use others make of their ideas...

...Holding the line" clearly implies that world stability and freedom rest on the "good" state power of the United States...

...Roche's book shows that there is still much to be said for the view of American government that motivated the leaders of that coalition...

...This essay is intriguing because, unlike so many critics of our Vietnam policies, Roche admits his fallibility in the difficult task of reconstructing complex events...

...casualties resulting from our effort to maintain South Vietnamese independence, many of us transformed Ho Chi Minh from a ruthless Leninist into a benevolent nationalist...

...Roche, a former chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, describes himself as an "antitotalitarian liberal...

...Roche bravely cites the cruelties visited on the Vietnamese people by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, cruelties that led Reinhold Niebuhr to describe the regime in the North as a "grotesque dwarf...

...Roche also shows how some policy makers, with the selective and disingenuous use of government documents (classified and declassified) have absolved themselves of all responsibility for a war policy of which they were the principal architects...

...At one point in Sentenced to Life, Roche writes that liberalism "stands for rational authority, not anarchy, and that while rationality is vital, authority is no less essential...

...It contains musings on the importance of the Kennedy Administration for modern politics, on the peculiarly nonideological nature of the American electorate, and on the relation of intellectuals to the Presidency...

...Roche, as an adviser to President Johnson, was an early supporter of that involvement, and in his book he makes no excuses for that support...

...This brand of anticommunism, however, is not unrestrained by moderation or prudence...

...They behaved like "opportunists," to use Leninist terminology, as ruthless as Nazis but without any of the self-destructive recklessness of their fascist counterparts...

...The quiet that reigns on college campuses today does not necessarily arise from any renewed respect for academic freedom, and using his own career as an example, Roche demonstrates the need for continuing affirmation of the principle...

...By changing our perception of his intentions, we could justify any abandonment of the South to Ho as merely the recognition of a widely popular, democratic leader...

...He eloquently describes the fight for a "colorblind" Constitution, but never hints at whether "affirmative action" is compatible with that concept...

...Roche is an informative guide to the events of the middle sixties, reiterating views he expressed to President Johnson about the military limits of air power and the need for a "strategy" in Asia in addition to "tactics" in Vietnam...

...Their ideology, which guided them at every step, mandated any sacrifice to achieve victory or any concession to assure self-preservation...

...His subsequent experiences were even more discouraging...

...His effort to encourage moderation in politics is admirable...

...we could not come right out and say that the South Vietnamese, our deserving allies, were costing us more blood and treasure than they were worth...

...In international affairs, John Roche is a disciple of those two Deans of the " ontainment" school, Secretaries of Sta Acheson and Rusk...

...It would also be helpful to learn how those principles that have guided us in the past apply to the issues of detente, troop levels in Europe, and SALT...

...Above all, he gives explanations, not excuses, for the tragic delay of Vietnamization during the Johnson years, and he sets the Vietnam War in the broader theoretical context of whether democraticnations are capable of fighting limited wars...

...Thus, as we grew sick of the long list of U.S...

...Because of these open questions, John Roche's book is not quite up-to-date...

...His comment is a good guide to republican government for all of its well-wishers, whatever their political persuasions...

...We could be relieved of the uneasy conscience that comes with that genuine cost-benefit analysis so necessary for successful and sensible foreign policy...

...It is a political persuasion he has held to firmly throughout the 1960s and early 1970s and one that provides the main theme of his essays...

...They contend that the interests and ideas which held the diverse segments of the Roosevelt coalition together have in large part dissolved...

...The defense he provides of constitutional procedures and rule of law as protections against the impulses of angry majorities and self-righteous minorities is, as always, much needed...

...The corollary of the "essential proposition" of "containment" theory is that "to refuse to intervene is itself a form of intervention...

...And his writings display both his abhorrence of all forms of "right-think" and his firm faith in learning as a humanizing process, worthwhile for its own sake...

...Roche fails to discuss not only the domestic issues already mentioned but also the fascination "redistribution" and "equalizing incomes" hold for intellectuals today...

...Roche's doubts about Congress' ability to deal with problems, expecially foreign policy problems, again reflect the opinions of Dean Acheson more than the current mood among liberals...

...The long (nearly 200 pages) final section of the book focuses on law, and reveals the author's confidence in the effective use of "good" state power...

...The essays on foreign policy, however, are the most interesting in the section, and the major contribution of the book...

...Nevertheless, the "antitotalitarian liberal" consensus is breaking down, and Sentenced to Life would be an even better book if Roche brought his experience and intelligence to bear on the "new consciousness" that has seized the liberal Left...

...It would be interesting to hear where he thinks it would be wise or possible to thrown down that gauntlet again...

...Roche's legal essays are subtle and intelligent, they are distinctly historical and the issues he deals with have comparatively little relevance to current constitutional and political questions...

...While morally as "liberationist" as John Foster Dulles', it avoids bombastic rhetoric like his that blurs all distinction between actions that are necessary, those that contain imperialistic iniatives, and those that merely antagonize our enemies...

...But unfortunately, while Mr...

...In turn, many Republicans have traded Robert Taft's isolationism for the McNamara policy of "flexible response...

...Incidentally, we learn that "Lyndon Johnson wanted privacy with his staff, even at the expense of historical exactitude," and that he forbade Roche and his other advisers from taping their conversations with him...

...He admits that the practical value of preserving South Vietnamese independence rested not so much on the strategic importance of Vietnam as on the fact that it was there that we chose to "throw down the gauntlet" to Communist expansionism...