Vietnam and the Left:
Coser, Lewis
403 printed facts, and when, through his automatic command of TV time, the President can transmit his own hvsteria as if it were the truth? On the matter of the draft, I obviously support and...
...They will negotiate when the preconditions for such negotiations seem worthwhile to them...
...which its military forces from Vietnam if this would conceivably support such a prodisastrous chapter in our history is posal and hence it has no chance of finally to be closed, I do not favor being implemented...
...The absolutist ethics of these men seem to me to provide no hold when it comes to specifically political issues...
...Nevertheless, I believe that they are by no means subservient tools...
...Current American policy in Vietnam is not only criminal, it is stupid...
...To get out of the seeming impasse into which Washington has maneuvered us requires disciplined intelligence as well as moral fervor...
...There are no the U.S...
...In politics only a Weberian ethics of responsibility, a politics which is concerned with weighing consequences and assessing concrete results, seems applicable...
...By refusing to recognize them as a valid force in negotiations, we drive the Vietcong further into the arms of Hanoi and Peking...
...This being the case, there is no other decent way of ending the war than ultimate withdrawal...
...Hence the war cannot be won, except, as Hans Morgenthau has recently written "by the indiscriminate killing of everybody in sight, that is, by genocide...
...There has been, in some parts of the Vietnam Protest movement, a strident and shrill tone, a willingness to make the Vietcong our special heroes...
...By neglecting to take advantage of the differences among them, we have impeded a settlement by negotiations...
...Somehow it is typically American of the young "anti-Americans" of the New Left— and some of their older leaders who ought to know better—that they are simply not able to oppose the almost absolute evil of U.S...
...I cannot imagine a situation in which either the Vietcong or Hanoi would refuse in principle to negotiate —the matter is different with respect to Peking which might well be eager to let the war go on indefinitely...
...On the matter of the draft, I obviously support and encourage resistance to the draft...
...This is folly...
...One of the decisive mistakes of current American policy, perhaps the decisive mistake, has been to assume that there is an identity of interests between the Vietcong, Hanoi and Peking...
...Just as de Gaulle finally realized that only direct negotiation with the Algerians would bring results, so we must realize that only negotiations with the Vietcong can bring the war to an end...
...ican involvement in Vietnam, I support, almost literally, every form of opposition...
...We no longer have the option of hoping to install a regime which is "neutral" in our favor...
...I would hope that such absolute opposition to the Johnson Administration could be carried out with a spirit of decency and integrity such as would prevent our being alienated from the general public...
...Realistic policy must articulate the differences among these three powers...
...will have to withdraw all of major political forces in the U.S...
...American foreign policy planners have verbally accepted that we now live in a world of polycentric communism, but they still neglect to draw serious policy consequences from this fact...
...policy in Vietnam without in the bargain seeking Lewis Coser Though I feel that "immediate withdrawal...
...I think that the men leading the Vietcong and the North are basically rational, they are not interested in a Hitlerian Goetterddmmerung...
...auspices, for the rebuilding of the devastated country...
...In fact, confronted by an evil as monstrous as the Amer...
...There are a number of indications that there are policy differences and frictions between the Vietcong and the North...
...Total separation between the ethical and the political sphere leads to nihilistic Realpolitik— but to subsume the political under the ethical leads to political futility...
...the best we can hope for is a regime which is "neutral" though in fundamental ways nearer to Peking and/or Moscow than to the West...
...Concretely, we have so far refused to negotiate directly with the Vietcong under the pretense that they are "directed" by Hanoi and hence not an independent factor...
...I therefore believe that they would be amenable to a settlement which provided for neutralization, phased American withdrawal of troops and weaponry, and major international aid, perhaps under U.N...
...I am aware that the control of Hanoi and Peking over the Vietcong is probably stronger than any controls Nasser or anybody else exercised over the Algerians...
...I have admiration for those who advocate a politics of conscience and favor civil disobedience, but I cannot agree with them...
...Similarly, by refusing to see in Hanoi anything but an annex of Peking we neglect the chance to exploit long-standing antagonisms between the two...
...I take it to be axiomatic that the bulk of the population of the South either supports the Vietcong or is, at least, hostile and indifferent to the Saigon "government...
...They do not enjoy the prospect of seeing their populations and productive capacities destroyed...
...instead we have helped to fuse them together by assuming that they respond to the same motives and interests...
...I do not think that radicals should proffer policies which do no good to anybody and only serve to gratify their own conscience...
...In speaking in various parts of the country on the Vietnam issue I have invariably called on men of draft age to refuse military service, and have urged men now in the armed forces to apply for immediate discharge...
...Our policy ought hence to be directed at assuring as far as possible that a federated and, later on, reunited Vietnam maintains a modicum of independence from Peking and Moscow —possibly by having the ability to maneuver between the two...
...Hence the writings of Walter Lippmann and Hans Morgenthau as well as those of A. J. Muste provide required guidelines for sane conduct...
...they do not wish to preside over a waste land...
Vol. 12 • September 1965 • No. 4
