Peace Is Not at Hand

...Thompson carefully goes through the figures for every election of significance in South Vietnam since 1966—figures which reveal surprising popular support for the current administration, and more importantly, surprising commitment on the part of the South Vietnamese to the supposedly "alien" idea of democratic self-government...

...First, he points out that the highest total of all prisoners (save some twenty-seven thousand prisoners of war) held at any time from 1968 through 1972 was slightly under forty thousand...

...Whatever our current or future rationalizations, America's final policy in Vietnam will prove no exception—as a hundred disturbing possibilities today and thousands more disturbing choices in the future may well attest...

...Only then, in a transparent effort to save face, did the United States negotiate a settlement, and withdraw from Vietnam to ponder the weighty, oft-proclaimed lesson that "America cannot be the world's policeman...

...One suspects that the only thing this rhetoric may have succeeded in giving us is that which all too many people (as Bert Gordon tells Eddie Felsen in The Hustler) are looking for—an excuse to lose...

...And in a related incident reminis:ent of the late 1960s, a radical "underground" group has bombed the State Department to articulate its disapproval )f...

...The implications of the ultimate handling of our commitment in Vietnam, as Peace Is Not at Hand suggests, go far beyond the immediate results we may witness in Southeast Asia in the foreseeable future (although Thompsonsuccessfully debunks as well the rather naive view that the United States should blithely write off the vast territories and populations of that region since it "doesn't affect our interests...

...In Thompson's words, the North had successfully continued to fight "until the American will had been so eroded that the terms of the settlement would not be enforced against the...

...And most importantly, that pre-settlement invasion was simply defeated...

...He was forced, in other words, by "increased pressure in Congress and the United States to accept a ceasefire on any superficially acceptable terms which would immediately end direct American involvement...

...It cost untold billions of dollars and the lives of fifty thousand American soldiers...

...As Thompson notes, "The honesty of this election was never questioned but received little coverage...

...On the question of the military situation of the North at the time of the ceasefire, Thompson's documented conclusions are even more startling to one long steeped in American reportage...

...Strategically, the book argues, we have put ourselves in the position where neither the Communists nor our allies have good reason to believe the seriousness of American commitments...

...Indeed, on the level of specific charges and allegations, one is led to doubt the intellectual integrity of many of those who reported to the American people on Vietnam...

...And as a result, we obtained not peace, but a two-year lull—during which the North has been able to rebuild its war-making capacity in preparation for precisely the activities in which they are now engaged...

...But however silly the doomsday projections of the radical Right, they should not lead the rest of us to lose sight of one fundamentalfact: for nations as well as individuals, acts do indeed have consequences...

...Of course we are not going to "fall to the Communists tomorrow," or any such nonsense...

...And only the eventual fall of South Vietnam to the Communists (which, it is said with confidence, must surely occur now that American fighting men are no longer there to prop up the regime) remains to close out this sordid chapter in American history...

...First, "Communist countries are off-limits while the rest of the world is a free-for-all...

...Yet, like a sore that will not heal, the conflict in Southeast Asia refuses to go away...

...Moral excuses offer, no doubt, the highest potential fot .nmediate personal gratification...

...It is frustrating because one realizes that most people will completely ignore the book, * and that those who read it will make little headway in combatting the current complacent majority view...

...Our leading intellectuals loudly dismiss th( former statement as naive while ascribing huge measures of moral sensitivity to the author of the latter...

...Thompson, a British military expert who is intimately and personally acquainted with Southeast Asia, is particularly at home in this task...

...Second, "in a free-for-all, a Communist party (or a Russian ally) has only to win once...

...It is rather that North Vietnam was, for the first time, in a"can-lose, can't-win" situation—a predicament which brought them scurrying to the bargaining table...

...The Communists, having taken such respite as they deem sufficient from the ceasefire, are actively re-engaged in...

...This will happen not because the viewpoint expressed is correct or especially perceptive—it is neither—but merely because America's intellectual community almost totally subscribes to it and will brook no dissent, while the rest of the country no longer wants to hear or think about Vietnam at all...

...All of this was done to support a corrupt, dictatorial regime against the otherwise irresistible force of a popular revolutionary movement which represented the legitimate aspirations of the Vietnamese people...

...Thompson similarly takes on the frequent allegations that up to two hundred thousand "political prisoners" were being held by South Vietnam...

...Thompson correctly points out that Americans have never really been tested in a situation calling for extreme and painful self-sacrifice—in contrast, for example, to the trials undergone by Great Britain in World War 11...

...and despite the fact that American troops are no longer in the South, and American aid has fallen off to the point that the South is unable to engage in replacement even at the permitted one-for-one level...

...Finally, it is worth noting that this "corrupt" regime has not perished, though so many were sure it would collapse post haste following American withdrawal—this despite the fact that the North is continually violating the Paris agreement by moving more troops into the South, by replacing weapons and material at a pace greater than the "one-for-one" basis allowed by the accord, and by deliberate attack...

...A large portion of Peace Is Not at Hand is devoted to a careful, virtually point-bypoint refutation of the now standard assertions about the war in Indochina...

...Ironically, the furor resulted in substitution of American-type prison cells, which, Thompson notes, turned out to be "ovens" for their inhabitants...

...How perfectly fatuous of us to think that such superficial sloganeering represents even a serious approach, much less a correct one, to either Vietnam in particular or the more general strategic choices and commitments we must make in the remainder of this century...

...Meanwhile, the "tiger cages" were "taken over by militia families as the coolest accommodation on the island...

...The United States Senate, in the meantime, debates whether even continued monetary, support represents too great a :ommitment to our beleaguered SEATO ally...

...All this in what is claimed to be a "dictatorship...

...Moreover, of these, nearly half were "normal" criminal element (whose numbers, as a percentage of population, compared favorably with that of the state of Massachusetts), leaving the total number being held for investigation or for specific acts of terrorism at around twenty thousand—about 0.12 percent of a population of nineteen million...

...Again, however, the facts belie such "observations...

...and second, to illustrate that Thompson is both knowledgeable and adept at the patient and difficult task of taking on such widely and erroneously believed allegations one at a time to set the record straight...

...Even without attempting an exhaustive recapitulation of his arguments, it rapidly becomes apparent that his comment about the "abysmal ignorance" which marked Western attitudes towards the conflict is an understatement...

...In Peace Is Not at Hand, Sir Robert Thompson has amply demonstrated that lesson, while giving serious students of American foreign policy an excellent volume of historical exposition and analysis...

...Thompson is content to reply by quoting from Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "The proven brutal mass murders in Hue are only noted in passing, almost immediately pardoned, because society's sympathy inclined to that view point, [sic] and no one wanted to go against this inertia...

...It is important because it demonstrates, in detailed, articulate, and documented fashion, that the standard view of Vietnam is simply false...

...The point of all this, according to Thompson, is not that we were on the verge of "wiping out" the North...

...Only a few examples are necessary to demonstrate the point...

...In fact, the cages were merely a small disciplinary unit of an island penal colony (Con Son) where the vast majority of prisoners were kept busy at public works projects, while being allowed their own gardens, their own farm animals, and in general, relatively great freedom of movement...

...The result was the election of some eighty to ninety government supporters, fifty-five to sixty opposition candidates, and about ten to fifteen independents...

...Throughout the latter period of the war, for example, a great deal was made of "American atrocities," such as the incident at My Lai, or the occasional civilian casualties that resulted from the bombing of North Vietnam...

...And yet some reporters, as Thompson notes, would go on record as saying that there was no verifiable evidence of atrocities committed by the North or the VC against women and children...

...So runs the litany of "enlightened appraisal" of our Vietnam experience...

...American policy in Indochina...

...The Communists have successfully established, in Thompson's words, "some advantageous ground rules" in their political struggles with the West...

...It "alienated" and "disillusioned" millions of young people who learned that theirs was a government of secrecy and deception, given to the mindless, atrocious bombing of innocent peasants...

...Despite a necessarily long and complicated ballot, over five and a half million voters (out of seven million registered) voted in a non-presidential election...

...By the time of the signing in Paris, the invasion itself had completely stalled (due in part to the destruction of bases in Cambodia in the much decried Nixonian "incursion"), and the North's industrial war-making capacity was virtually nil (due mainly to the equally decried Christmas bombing...

...As a final illustration, consider the famed brouhaha over the "tiger cages...

...Indeed, the Vietcong were at that time a decimated and literally insignificant force (largely because North Vietnam, as revealed by its own documents, had deliberately thrown the VC to the wolves in several major battles to forestall any in-house competition for political supremacy in a conquered South...

...The last major military campaign before the ceasefire, far from being a "guerilla" effort, was a full-blown and highly conventional invasion in force (much as the current activity, though on a somewhat smaller scale, is purely conventional...

...More concretely, we are currently watching a treaty ally submit to what can only be described as an aggressive Communist invasion, in cynical disregard of an international agreement to which we are signatory, and it is highly doubtful that we will do anything to aid the resistance...

...On President Thieu personally, one might consider the comment of a leading opposition senator that he (the senator) would prefer Thieu, even if he "became" (note the tense) a dictator, to takeover by the North...

...North, and continued American support for the South, after a settlement, would at least be doubtful...

...The supposed popularly based, unbeatable guerilla movement turns out to have been nonexistent at the time of the signing of the ceasefire agreement...

...Indeed, the cages were not even underground, despite the suggestion to the contrary one received from the staged photographs that appeared in publications like Life magazine...

...Far more significant, however, are his analyses of both the political situation in South Vietnam, and the military position of the North at the time of the ceasefire...

...And in time, one supposes, it will no longer be subject to serious challenge...

...And many of our citizens have persuaded themselves that this is a highly moral and laudable course for us to take...

...He was unable to press for withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from the South, or for a supervisory commission with sufficient authority to police and enforce a settlement adequately...

...Item: After the battle of Quang Tri, the North Vietnamese killed or wounded twenty thousand civilians when they fired shellsfrom 130mm Russian guns at the columns of refugees fleeing from the area...

...But by this juncture, Hanoi's politically strong position, particularly within the United States, was in striking contrast to its seriously eroded military situation...

...President Thieu is alternately described as a buffoon and a martinet...

...Nor is the rest of the world "ripe" for an immediate "Communist takeover" or anything of the sort...

...the attempt to conquer the South...

...Nor is this an empty exercise in rhetorical speculation—one need look no further than the Middle East to see a situation where all three factors, particularly the last, could easily prove critical in determining what happens to the interests of America and her allies...

...And why else has it taken this long before the invincible North has felt capable of seriously attacking, once again, the supposedly tottering South...

...One may yet hope, if only faintly, that it will find its proper audience in this country...

...It is now accepted, almost without question, by large majorities in Congress, the press, and academia...

...And third, "revolutionary parties know they will be supported (by Russia, China, or both) whereas threatened governments and peoples do not know whether they will be supported by the United States...

...In twelve short years, the cry of the Presidential standard-bearer of America's majority party has changed from "we will pay any price, bear any burden" in defense of freedom to "I will crawl on my knees to Hanoi...

...Item: In contrast to the American bombing of Hanoi, which was at some pains, using highly sophisticated missile technology, to zero in on military targets, the Communists at numerous times throughout the war indiscriminately fired rockets into the Saigon and Phnom Penh areas—with the result that the Communist attacks, though using weapons of much smaller explosive yield, resulted in much higher numbers of civilian casualties...

...Why else, Thompson asks those who are skeptical of his military data, would the North suddenly accept peace terms which they had casually and cynically rejected for years...

...It was nothing short of scandalous that these accounts leaked out in the free press and for a [very short] time caused [precious little] embarrassment to the frenetic defenders of that social system...

...For example, in the 1971 elections to the Lower House, 1,239 candidates of all parties ran for 159 seats...

...and so each night, sandwiched between vignettes on our impending economic collapse and the latest Watergate trial, we hear of it once again...

...Irritating as these reminders may be to -hose who would have the United States wash its hands of all responsibility and :oncern for the fate of South Vietnam, me can be sure that such individuals willhave little trouble harmonizing these latest developments with the prevailing dogma on "the lessons of Vietnam...

...And it is disturbing both in its eminently plausible analysis of the deleterious effects of Vietnam on America's strategic position, and for the necessary implications of that analysis about the ability of the United States to think and act with either seriousness or courage in a post-Vietnam world...

...In short, the mindset described earlier in this review had, as we are all aware, firmly taken hold...

...How mature of us to `recognize our limitations,' to 'have the courage to admit a mistake and get out,' how moral to eschew all involvement in anything as brutal and barbaric as an actual war...

...After all, one only had to look at the pictures...

...But they are excuses nonetheless...

...Thompson readily concedes, of course, that these things occurred, but he points out something which should have been apparent to any observer but was in fact seldom mentioned, much less emphasized—namely, that My Lai was indeed an "incident," an "aberration," that civilian casualties were indeed both occasional and unintentional, and moreover, that both paled in significance next to the deliberate, continual infliction of civilian casualties by the North and the Vietcong as an element of calculated strategy...

...Only after years of such idiocy did America finally realize that its clumsy, heavy-handed intervention could not succeed, that the war was "unwinnable," that we could not and should not impose our parochial ideals of "freedom" and self-government on a populace whose cultural heritage left them totally uninterested in the airy abstractions of democratic political theory...

...Thus, President Nixon could not exploit the strong bargaining position in which he found himself after the final bombing of the North ceased on December 29, 1972...

...But who can blame a European observer for making such a statement...

...His further observation—that "Americans have always shown a desire to duck and have never been slow to find every excuse to do so, particularly if they can satisfy themselves that the main reason is moral"—is, perhaps, overly harsh...

...Item: At Hue, in 1968, the Communists systematically executed fifty-seven hundred civilians (captured documents subsequently revealed, says Thompson, "much gloating" over these figures, qualified only by disappointment that more had not been killed...

...Ultimately, the most disturbing feature of Vietnam, and of Thompson's book, is what they.say about our national character...

...The clear impression left by American media coverage was that these cages were part of an extensive, brutal penal system, in which men were literally treated like animals...

...such was never our objective...

...The cage-like construction was mainly to allow for greater ventilation in the tropical climate...

...In a few years (if this is not already happening) it will be taught to a generation of high school students as "history...

...He was forced instead to accept a ceasefire-in-place (allowing the North to cash in on its frantic pre-settlement efforts to get in place) and an International Commission of Control and Supervision whose supervisory powers are laughable...

...The former is generally and confidently reported as being a virtual dictatorship, characterized by little popular support and much (ruthlessly suppressed) internal opposition, tottering at the brink of collapse, and held up solely by American money and weapons...

...NOTES In this vein, it is interesting to note that according to Thompson's editor at David McKay, this article represents the first public comment on the book despite the fact that copies were sent several months ago to large numbers of potential viewers...

...In this atmosphere, Sir Robert Thompson's Peace Is Not at Hand is an important, frustrating, and deeply disturbing book...

...I have devoted some time to these specific examples of Thompson's refutation of standard assertions about the war for two reasons: first, to show point out how untrustworthy and undocumented such assertions are...

...It is doctrine that American military involvement in Southeast Asia was the most tragic mistake of United States foreign policy in the postwar era, the reductio ad absurdum of a simplistic and rigidly antiCommunist cold-war ideology...

...In a sense, this is quite surprising, for if there is one topic which both the media and the American public would rather ignore, Vietnam is surely it...