America in Vietnam
Drinan, Robert F.
tion into the near future, he is someone from the past as well. This aspect of the legend the film also takes into account by beginning with the pages of the original DC comic where Superman...
...Yes, much of the prose is overblown...
...Lewy claims that "the picCommonweal: 54 ture that emerges is novel and occasionally startling . . . . " Students of this book--and there will be many--will applaud its scholarship, but will probably find its "startling" feature to be that this first reexamination of the writings of David Halberstam, Frances Fitzgerald and others doesn't really make its point...
...It is not terribly important whether one agrees with everything in this compendious tract...
...But, in his 200 pages of arguments seeking to prove that the Pentagon conformed to the laws of war, this is about the only instance where Lewy approaches credibility...
...What Lewy should find impossible to accept is the fact that on April 8, 1971 the Defense and Justice Departments announced that they would not prosecute violations of the laws of war in Vietnam such as the My Lai massacre...
...But the background objective which Professor Lewy sets forth deserves our attention first...
...This aspect of the legend the film also takes into account by beginning with the pages of the original DC comic where Superman appeared in 1938...
...Perhaps there are even some academic studies that run counter to the blizzard of documentation rained down upon us, and perhaps a total survey of the "literature" in the field (Silberman seems to have read only almost everything) would qualify some of his bald conclusions9 But, the great bulk of the analysis should readily withstand attack, even from the ideologues...
...One of these places is in his set for the planet Krypton, which he imagines to be a colossal snowball hurtling through space...
...Should Superman ever decide to send for his relatives, they can all get jobs here in detergent commercials...
...yes, there are no simple solutions--indeed, his final chapter is a distressingly perfunctory one...
...The way Barry envisions Krypton, we can only suppose that coming to earth is a heart-warming experience for Superman...
...Much of the book is, as Silberman concedes, not even original--for instance his argument that plea bargaining is in effect if not form "just" was anticipated by a wonderful, though little noticed, book, Justice by Consent, published only a few years ago by a law professor and criminologist...
...He is, furthermore, not always entirely accurate on what the internationally accepted rules of war really say...
...At times Lewy seems to assume that there were two distinct Vietnams and that the people of South Vietnam deep down really wanted to opt for a separate existence...
...He is stung with this defeat and angry at those who, in his judgment, have repudiated the validity of containment, but have not offered any alternative...
...Commonweal: 56...
...Presumably these papers will be made available to other scholars who will draw completely different conclusions from them...
...He is, like Odysseus, someone made wiser by having to disguise himself as an ordinary man...
...It is Barry's piece de resistance in this movie...
...It is always hard to look back and try to discover the sources and causes of one's sin...
...Superman is, after all, our Odysseus, a hero from our Golden Age whose remembrance is supposed to buck us up today...
...Trial by cupidity & capriciousness I I I CRININAL VIOLENCE, CRININAL JUS'lICE Charles E. Sill~rnma Random House, $15 [540 pp.] Isidore Silver E VERY SEVEN years, Charles E. Siiberman appears like a plague of locusts to destroy overgrowths of "conventional wisdom" about our most pressing social issues...
...Certainly in other places, where the responsibility was clearly his, the movie shows him to have been astute about Superman's Janus character as both future and past...
...It is not now clear whether America will have the courage to demand a comprehensive inquiry into the longest war in American history...
...He compares them to the guerrilla tactics of the Viet Cong and concludes, against this background, that the "American counterinsurgency e f f o r t . . while often carried out in a selfdefeating manner, generally did not violate international law, did not seek to destroy the civilian population as a matter of deliberate policy and did not cause civilian casualties in proportions uniquely different from other wars of this century...
...If this develops, America in Vietnam will be the locus classicus of all the rationalizations, half-myths, false premises and misconceptions that tormented the American people from 1965 to 1974...
...This book is dangerous because it suggests that America, in its conduct of the war, complied with the necessary legal norms and that any moral questions raised by many Americans concerning the conduct of war are not, in the light of his research, really relevant...
...If America wants to enter a period of agonizing reappraisal of the Vietnam War there are two approaches...
...More than any other American scholar, Lewy has had access to the official documents which directed the war in Vietnam...
...Lewy reviews free-fire zones, the bombardment and destruction of populated areas, the use of napalm and tear gas, defoliation and crop destruction, cluster bombs and the Phoenix program...
...For all the thefts it endures, American business is more sinner than sinned against . . . . " and "Some entire industries appear riddled with fraud...
...This allows us to feel better about being on the planet earth ourselves...
...Vietnam," declared JFK, "represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike...
...That is, if Lewy means to abide by his conclusions...
...the Pentagon to make avai.lable all its documents on Vie'.tnam "now...
...At the same time he almost manipulates his evidence to prove that the United States in Vietnam generally observed the rules of war...
...He notes that for countless Americans "the Vietnam War represents not only a political mistake and national defeat, but also a major moral failure...
...yes, some generalizations (even, on occasion, important ones) are supported by rhetoric rather than real evidence...
...what 9is critical is that it will become the starting point and indispensable reference for all serious future analysis of both American crime and American Criminal and Social Justice...
...This view of the war, Lewy feels, "has contributed significantly to the impairment of national pride and self-confidence that has beset this country since the fall of Vietnam...
...Lewy is very troubled about the "national trauma" left by Vietnam and what he feels is a "major credibility gap...
...Barry has conceived of the hideout, a sort of elaborate bunker like Hitler's, as being built in ruins of the lower level of Grand Central Station...
...The only explanation is that he, like millions of Americans, finds it impossible to believe that his government miscalculated in Vietnam as disastrously as the majority view now holds...
...We know it's Grand Central because the marble corridors and lettering painted over the archways are all familiar, and we know it's a ruin because here and there a balustrade is just a row of uneven marble stumps...
...Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies, Lewy argues, but this only condemns "violence to life and person" and not specifically population relocation...
...If Barry's sets fl)r Krypton are equally dazzling, however, his set for the underground hideout of Superman's nemesis, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), is even better...
...The creeping moss infecting both common sense and academic expertise about crime is particularly impenetrable since it takes two potent forms: a conservative James Q. Wilson-Ernst Van Den Haag strain and a Neo-Marxist-radical chic variety of significant, though limited, appeal...
...If everybody involved had worked as whimsically as Barry, Superman could have been another Star Wars...
...It may well have been Barry who thought of setting the scene and tone for Superman with shots of the original comic book...
...ANEBICA IN YlETNAN Guenther Lewy Oxford University Press, $19.95 [540 pp...
...In fact this seems to be the real unspoken premise in Lewy's study from which most of his conclusions are derived...
...19), the New Republic (Nov...
...Indeed even from the generally benign interpretation placed by Lewy on the secret documents which he inspected, one is continually tempted to think that there are charges that should be brought--or at least investigations that should be made concerning those who led us into the war in Vietnam...
...Lewy quibbles that this provision does not apply to conflicts not of an international character...
...It is America's peculiar mix of macho frontier ethic, xenophobia in the midst of vast waves of immigration, and a physical restlessness (and rootlessness) that have combined with a virulent capitalism (untamed and unrestrained by even minimal aristocratic gracesy to create an unusual criminogenic mix...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Books: TRIAL BY SECRET DOCUMENT T HIS is the first serious book to raise the question that haunts both the doves and the hawks on Vietnam: how could America have so misconceived the realities involved in the one war which America has lost...
...In his heart, Lewy probably agrees with the 1956 statement of Senator John F. Kennedy which he quotes...
...As such, Krypton looks as if it were a civilization more advanced than ours, yet also more primeval--an ultra-technology in the midst of an Ice Age...
...Why has Lewy devoted at least a thousand days of his life to come to such tortured conclusions...
...Lewy cannot understand why this feeling, widely accepted until the late 1960s, should now be so widely repudiated...
...To many readers this thesis will sound preposterous...
...Despite this firm stand Lewy concedes that "American policy-makers not only exaggerated the geopolitical importance of Vietnam . . . but more importantly, their decisions were overtaken by important changes in the character of world Communism, which gradually undermined the premises on which U.S...
...How can he believe conclusions that do not flow from his own evidence...
...But it is possible that Lewy's book will be elevated into a popular tract by those who find America's loss of prestige painful...
...He has an exasperating way of conceding the absurdity of his super-legalistic conclusions--having justified napalm, for example, he confesses that the "rather free use of napalm and attacks upon fortified hamlets with artillery and air strikes can be criticized on humanitarian grounds and, moreover, were often counterproductive...
...yes, some practices (such as sentencing) are too varying and complex to be reduced to easy formulas...
...Lewy's real subject seems to be his attempt to discover what is America's foreign policy...
...He has some hope that a "searching and disinterested study" can change this state of things...
...Robert F. Drlnan So where does a meticulous scholar like Lewy finally come out...
...In the rest of the book, Lewy recalls and, incredible as it will seem to many, seeks to justify that parade of horrors and atrocities--some of which left even hawks in America aghast...
...Another approach, not yet suggested by any anti-war activist, would call for investigations and even trials of those who made those unbelievable mistakes which we are now coming to understand so well...
...It is the job ol imagining the world in which the hero lives that often falls to the production designer, especially on a spectacular...
...Every immigrant group needs a trade--coffee shops or tailoring or whatever--and that can be theirs...
...His best case is for the bombing of North Viet: ham which, Lewy claims, "conformed to international law...
...Why has he felt compelled to write that "American search and destroy operations were not tantamount to a Scorched-earth policy" and then go on to point out that such operations were inhumane and ineffective...
...He is baffled that the policy of containing Communism appears to have evaporated with America's defeat in Vietnam...
...Lewy's frustration and anger at this state of things reflects the mood of millions--some of whom are so bewildered that they might well start a witch hunt to discover "Who lost Vietnam...
...If that occurs, those who fought for years and years against the war in Vietnam may have to relive their nightmares and re-fight that war...
...l l), and theNew YorkReview ofBook~ (De...
...As a result he has spent many months researching hitherto classified records of the military in Vietnam...
...Guenther Lewy, a distinguished professor at the University of Massachusetts and author of The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, makes clear his position: "The American attempt to prevent a Communist domination [of Vietnam] . . . was not without moral justification...
...Because Lewy's book will be used and misused by these millions, it is both significant-- and dangerous...
...For example, he claims that Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Heschel and Harvey Cox among others were mistaken in their joint 1967 statement that the forcible relocation of large groups of people in Vietnam violated Article 49 of the Civilians Convention of 1949...
...Meanwhile, if this is not don~, the rni't!tar~?and specifically persons like" ('3eneral Westmoreland--will be ~pen to'the suspicion that they are guilty of serious misconduct in not insisting on adherence to the rules of war...
...One is tempted, after reading thi s prodigious book, to urge...
...9 . ." are just some of the juicier findings...
...Professor Richard A. Falk of Princeton University and many--perhaps most--other jurists who have written on this issue would be in fundamental disagreement with Lewy...
...That analysis is essentially a liberal one, a critique of American culture and society, phenomena with rather than of capitalism--it is apparent that our capitalism, a particularly avaricious brand, was largely shaped by a broad heritage of what Tocqueville called "cupidity" and that capitalism in turn reinforced certain onerous tendencies (though Silberman is indirect about this...
...Lewy seems to blame the intellectuals of the anti-war movement whose veracity, consistency and even integrity he challenges in a surprisingly unrestrained way...
...One is followed generally by Lewy of interpreting the Pentagon's conduct to be rational and responsible even though unsuccessful...
...Lewy is much too sophisticated to put it that bluntly, but ultimately his position comes to that...
...It may be difficult to accept the idea that the United States, in this war, engaged in a long series of immoral acts...
...Certainly his belief that "Crime and violence are rooted in American life," his masterful dissection of crime rates to show that the low criminality of the 1930-1950 period was an aberration in American history, and his conclusion that "American crime is an outg/owth of the greatest strengths and virtues of American society--its openness, its ethos of equality, its heterogeneity--as well as of its greatest vices, such as the long heritage of racial hatred and oppression" are valid and constitute a vivid introduction to the remainder of his analysis...
...In my judgment Lewy has not demonstrated the accuracy of his contention and.has in fact turned up abundant new material to prove the opposite...
...7) may indicate that we are about to witness a literary autopsy on the April 30, 1975 death of the Republic of Vietnam...
...He concedes that the rules of war are vague and amorphous and that they were never intended to apply to a war of counter-insurgency like Vietnam...
...and a general distrust of facts and figures issued by the American Government...
...Lengthy reviews of Lewy's book in the New York Times (Nov...
...The problem is that Lewy, while anguishing over the shame so many Americans now feel over their country's involvement in Vietnam, does not really make it clear what his own starting point really is as he analyzes and dissects the countless secret documents the government has put at his disposal...
...This is the type of casuistry that dominates Lewy's book...
...policy in Southeast Asia was based...
...Silberman's pugnacious observation that "the follies of the right are at least as great as those of the left" demonstrates both a realization of the power of social myth(s) and a combative willingness to decimate the landscape...
...He asserts that in that "application of American air power 9 targets, munitions, and strike tactics were selected to minimize the risk of collateral damage to the civilian population...
...He puts it this way: "It is the reasoned conclusion of this study . . . that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam War in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of officially condoned [the emphasis is Lewy's] illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance...
...This outmoded landmark of an outmoded city is the perfect place for Luthor, himself an outmoded type of villain, to live...
...His appeal to kids may be fantasy, but his appeal to adults, who must also see the film if it is to return its investment, is nostalgia...
...Never have I seen a place as dazzling as Krypton, particularly the clothes...
...This makes us mindful that we benefit Superman as much as he benefits us...
...But at the same time, making the station an abandoned ruin where it would be possible for Luthor to live suggests that he does so sometime in the future--probably, as in the rest of Superman, the very near future...
...but, because of the evidence, the idea is credible...
...Yet it is--or should be--incredible to accept the notion that the United 2 February 1979:55 States will not prosecute American war criminals in the same way that it punished General Yamashita after the war in Japan...
...He has to live in a world where an individual can make a difference--a world where a s.uper cop-on-the-beat could actually cope with the crime problem...
Vol. 106 • February 1979 • No. 2
