The Pentagon Papers On Imitating the Communists
Abel, Lionel
There's no law that says that I, wishing to restrain another from tyranny and cruelty, should practice them myself... —From Calder6n's Life Is a Dream T IS NOW BEING SAID everywhere...
...The Communists can...
...Unquestionably...
...I except the crossing of the 38th parallel by MacArthur, but this particular action can hardly be explained by anti-Communism, since Acheson, as anti-Communist as MacArthur, was opposed to this adventure...
...2 Here I would like to answer a recent justification of our Southeast Asian policy by ProfessorWalt Rostow, former adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson...
...What was the difference between the two policies, both of them inspired or motivated by anti-Communism...
...Out of these confusions came the brutality and stupidity of our Southeast Asian policy: the military mistakes and the war crimes, the bombings and the blunderings...
...Thus we could not disapprove of them morally, and this seems to have induced us to become morally inferior to them...
...My point then is that this effort by COMMENTS AND OPINIONS DISSENT must be said to have been something of a failure...
...This is denied to be sure by Robert Shaplen...
...And if the matter of who was to represent South Vietnam had been put to a vote, that vote would have gone to Ho Chi Minh...
...Even on this smaller matter, he was, as Jeremy Lamer has shown, mistaken...
...It explains, if you like, why they held on to wrong policies, but not why they formed them in the first place...
...And I am struck by the fact that Noatn Chomsky now applies to the American government the very term Sidney Hook once applied to the Communist movement...
...Sometimes they say we have to stop being anti-Communist, but as I have shown, if there tion...
...But I must point out here an essential difference between my proposal and the Communist slogan of 1932...
...It is in this unique and single sense that there is some truth to the statement now being bandied about that antiCommunism led us into the Southeast Asia disaster...
...Had we been liberated from "anti-Communism" (and from which those who use the term make it clear they would like to liberate us), would we have been able to frame a "good"—that is to say, an intelligent—Southeast Asian policy...
...But this hardly justified us in supporting against him (after Diem was "removed") Thieu and Ky, former supporters of French colonial rule in Vietnam, and with little backing from the people...
...This has already happened to those who got the support of our government against the Communists...
...Is this indeed the case...
...Our policy-makers—and President John F. Kennedy must be included among them—began to think that we, too, could create a new rulingclass personnel to compete with the cadres being put forward by the Communists...
...Chomsky now says that the American policy-makers engaged in conspiracy, even as Sidney Hook some years ago singled out conspiracy as the outstanding fault of the Communists...
...To go back to the matter of anti-Communism, for a moment: anti-Communism may be said to have been responsible for our Korean policy, which I am inclined to think was in the main correct...
...And how about the Berrigan brothers who called their group "the Eastern Conspiracy to Save Lives...
...Let us never propose to set up ruling-class cadres in areas where the old rulers have lost power...
...and protected them from the Right during the fifties as they did during the thirties...
...We have a duty, a moral as well as a political duty, to be of assistance to all those groups whose urgent need is for democratic processes and forms...
...I bring up this matter because so many ofour left-wing moralists seem committed to a moralistimmoralism not unlike that of their opposites in government...
...In South Korea there was a government, which we provided with military and economic aid...
...Our policymakers decided to do nothing less than to provide a new ruling class for the people of South Vietnam...
...Ifind it impossible to believe that we really took thestep from peace to war to keep two nationsfriendly to and dependent on us this side of atomic power...
...In South Vietnam there was an area, which we provided with a government, and also with military and economic aid...
...In any case, I bring up the matter of Korea because our policy in Korea can still be defended, whereas our policy in South Vietnam cannot...
...The culminating folly in this regard was the attitude of Senator Eugene McCarthy in 1968 when Czechoslovakia was invaded...
...Probably there is an element of the conspiratorial in all grand-scale political and military action...
...Yet this special —and very hurtful—influence of anti-Communism on our policy is hardly ever remarked by the critics...
...This error as to what Communism in Vietnam represented led us to what I have called a moral error, but in which, when one thinks of it, there was also an admixture of intellectual error...
...While it is true that at the present time the problem the American people have to be concerned with is the actions of their own government in Southeast Asia, it is not the case that Americans can be unconcerned with the actions of the existing Communist governments, that is to say those of Russia, China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cuba...
...Here we were involved in doing exactly what we assumed the Communist movement was not merely doing wrongly, but wrong in trying to do...
...There is one point especially where we should not imitate them...
...Perhaps the people did not know their best interests, and that is why they would have voted for him...
...And on the larger matter, I think that President Johnson should have done something far more dramatic than just to convene the Security Council...
...3 They can come whenever people need so many things that they cannot decide which they want most...
...I don't like to admit this, but the truth is the truth, and the best thing now is not to deny it...
...To sum up: the objections to constituting an American Left with the Communists ought to be perfectly clear...
...We assumed— by "we" I mean our policy-makersthat the Communist movement in Vietnam was nothing more than a means for providing new ruling-class cadres in a situation where power had crumbled...
...The United States government should not be in the business of creating ruling-class groups anywhere, and this for several reasons, but here I want to stress only one...
...Moreover, the view I advocate would add to our policies a historical perspective which they have always lacked...
...One unfortunate consequence of the success of the Muste tactic, now being followed by Dave Dellinger, has been to create a more favorable attitude among the youth toward existing Communist governments...
...Once the invasion had taken place he should have proposed through the UN to withdraw our armies from South Vietnam (we are withdrawing them anyway), if the Russians would withdraw from Czechoslovakia...
...Now what was this second error of ours...
...In Czechoslovakia, which is an advanced country, Communism is very clearly a failure...
...SO IT IS TIME TO ASIC DIRECTLY: just what was wrong with our Southeast Asian policy...
...As to the division on the Left: should American left-wingers have tried to get along with the Communists...
...But we can come after the Communists...
...But it of course does not explain why our policy-makers should have thought wrong policies right...
...Moreover, swinging to the other side, that movement on the Left initiated by A. J. Muste, who declared that he was not going to exclude the Communists, has been something of what must be called at the least a partial success, certainly in antiwar action...
...And with the Left divided, it was possible for the imperialist line taken on Asia by our government to pass without serious challenge...
...Today the American government, with resistance to its Vietnam policy mounting, will certainly have to frame some new view of its relations to Asia, and possibly to Europe also...
...in Southeast Asia...
...2 BUT WHAT NOW...
...Certainly we must never again try to set up ruling-class cadres in the power vacuums left by discredited regimes...
...We cannot come after chaos...
...Conspiracy, yes...
...But to give this as a justification for breaking his own oath of loyalty is likesaying that one does not have to pay one's taxessince others are going to pay theirs...
...ONCE AGAIN, WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE...
...About this there is far less agreement among the critics of that policy than about the fact that the policy was a bad one...
...On the other hand, we now see the fateful consequences of not having been able to create, without the Communists, a Left that could be effective...
...Would such a perspective on the part of the Left have led to a different foreign policy perspective on the part of our government...
...He repliedthat if we had not intervened, Japan and Indiawould have been forced to become nuclear powers...
...Our turn can only come if there is no war, for in a real war we and they would both be destroyed...
...If any country ever deserved to be defeated in a military and political operation, it was the U.S.A...
...Is there a single country where the Communists have been in power for more than 10 or 15 years and where the people in the 3 Will we have to fight the Communists if we present ourselves as their probable heirs...
...But North Vietnam also proposed itself as the legitimate government of the people to the South...
...We were guilty (1) of an intellectual mistake...
...From Calder6n's Life Is a Dream T IS NOW BEING SAID everywhere that antiCommunism was in the main responsible for the policy we followed to disaster in Southeast Asia...
...What was wrong with our policy-makers was the policy they decided on, not that they sometimes whispered it, or did not broadcast it...
...They will not accept the view that where the classes we supported have crumbled, we, and not they, can take over...
...Is there another role for us...
...That the framers of our Asian policies did not have to meet the challenge of criticism from the Left I would give as the main reason for the rigidity of their adherence to policies now no longer defendable...
...I do not think we did enough for the East Berliners in 1954, or for the Poles and the Hungarians in 1956, or for the Czechs in 1968...
...Let us resolve never again to imitate the Communists...
...We can only come where the people are quite certain that what they want is us...
...It can still happen to those who seek the support of the Communists against our government...
...It was the idea that we could and should imitate the Communists, do as they were doing, or rather as we thought they were doing...
...And this in turn led to the marked inability of the youth to react, for example, to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...WHAT OF THE FUTURE...
...and the consequences of this were (2) the grossness and immorality of our action...
...But I take it that this is not the sense that the statement "anti-Communism led to the Vietnam disaster" has for most of the people who have written to this effect, or believe this when they read it or hear it said...
...About this the critics of our Asia policy are not too clear...
...Against Sidney Hook's slogan, "Heresy, yes—Conspiracy, no," I can imagine Trotsky thundering, "Heresy, yes...
...And we have been so defeated...
...He pointed it up in his History...
...main do not want democratic institutions like ours...
...The Senator made fun of President Johnson for having convened the Security Council during the emergency...
...And one of these disasters might well have resulted from the adoption of a policy that could have been supported by an undivided Left, that is to say a Left that did not exclude the Communists...
...It will do no good to pretend that it does not...
...I am not convinced at this date that a united front by the Socialists and Steven Kelman the Communists could have defeated Hitler, and I must point out that after Hitler, and the war, of course, the Communists did in fact have their turn, in the Balkans, in Poland, and in Eastern Germany, including Prussia...
...nor can they be unconcerned with the support of the actions of these governments—no matter what these governments do—by those who claim membership in an American Left...
...Our government is one that responds to pressures, and the only serious pressure put on it during the whole period of its "anti-Communist" policies was set in motion by the Right...
...Trotsky never tried to conceal this...
...But I am not frightened by the fact that some resemblance can be found between their slogan and what I am proposing...
...Should we not reflect on the fact—no doubt the Communists have not ignored this—that Communism came first in a backward and not in an advanced country, and that the successes of Communism have been exclusively in backward countries...
...And this we tried to do ourselves...
...Wasn't there conspiracy among Ellsberg and his friends to bring the Pentagon Papers to the public...
...There were alternative disasters to the particular disaster which was not avoided in Vietnam...
...Our characterization of the Vietnam Communists was a false and self-deluding one...
...is the problem of anti-Communism, there is also the problem of avoiding it...
...In this sense I think it true to say that anti-Communism played a part in the unfortunate and even evil decisions made by our leaders over the past two decades...
...When we think of ourselves as the heirs to backwardness we stress, inevitably, our industrial power, rather than our political institutions...
...On the television program Issues and Anwers, Professor Rostow was asked what we prevented from happening in South Vietnam by our military intervention there...
...In any case, is it not better for them to have to fight people who want ourinstitutions than for us to have to fight people whowant theirs...
...Their turn could not come until after a war, as we have seen...
...How in fact did anti-Communism affect our Asian policy...
...Evidently in the Midwest, where the Senator was best known, as he saw the matter, Czechoslovakia was not so important...
...What does Nietzsche say...
...It is impossible for us to claim that we want coexistence with Russia and China—or rather, we can claim it, but we cannot obtain it—if we insist that we, or groups created by us, can be the heirs to social chaos...
...In my opinion, our error in Vietnam was twofold...
...But we did not go to war with Russia in1945 or with China in 1960 to keep these openlyhostile states from becoming nuclear powers...
...Undeniably, Communism presents a very special problem for a leftist not a Communist...
...We have no such obligation to impose a caricature of democracy on people whose needs may be more economic than political, COMMENTS AND OPINIONS and who may prefer the kind of aid they can get from our enemies...
...Hook did not foresee then that the kind of action he wanted against Communist groups might be patterned finally on the actions taken by the Communists themselves, and Noam Chomsky does not see today that in charging out own policy-makers with conspiracy, he is adopting the very style and type of accusation formerly employed by Hook...
...And I am not claiming that I am the only one who was not fooled...
...And in any case, if we do want to compete with the Communists in those areas, we are not to carry competition to the point of imitating their tactics...
...Once again, the important thing was their policy, and not the fact that they did not scruple to conspire in trying to make it effective...
...If we try to take over, they will fight us...
...Now I do not see how any foreign policy for this country that may be called intelligent can do without some elements of anti-Communism...
...But here I want to make more concrete what I mean by not imitating the Communists in foreign-policy matters...
...Perhaps...
...Ellsberg replied that enough people in government hadsufficient motive not to break their oath for our government to function...
...But there are other means of political struggle than open warfare, and the United States government disregarded these means of struggle during the crises in Berlin, in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia...
...So we cannot at the same time try to come to some agreement with them in the SALT talks, for instance, about reducing armaments, and at the same time try to supplant them in the role they consider rightfully theirs, as heirs to social chaos...
...I think it must be admitted that a serious attempt to hold an American left wing together without the Communists was not made in this country...
...All the same, I cannot but grant that there is one particular sense in which it is quite true to say that our policy in Southeast Asia—or rather, what was bad about this policy—may be laid up to anti-Communism...
...If we cannot succeed to chaos we can, I think, succeed to tyranny...
...No doubtthis cannot be excluded...
...In this way: it divided the Left...
...But once it has come, we cannot prevent its exploitation by the Communists...
...Certainly there is an element of conspiracy in revolutionary action...
...So I suggest this alternative foreign policy for the United States to the one we have pursued for more than 20 years: let us stop trying to compete with the Communists in those backward areas of the world where dictatorship can perhaps bring modernization more speedily than can be done by capitalist investment...
...What was our intellectual mistake...
...The Communist claim is that Communism is the heir to social chaos, and this claim the Communists cannot surrender...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS into the abyss or the abyss will gaze into you...
...Gaze not too long Is that what we went to war in Vietnam to prevent...
...Here, perhaps, Irving Howe will disagree with me, and say that DISSENT represented an effort to hold a grouping on the Left together without, and even against, the Communists...
...I knew that this was the case before I read the Pentagon Papers, but the information provided by Daniel Ellsberg makes the point incontestable.' In fact, the whole difference be 1 Asked by a reporter on the Today Show how he justified breaking his oath of loyalty, Mr...
...It seems strange that a personlike Ellsberg, who took such a drastic step on whathe claims moral grounds, should have given solittle thought to the moral justification of his ac COMMENTS AND OPINIONS tween the operation in South Vietnam and in South Korea becomes perfectly clear...
...And by us, I mean our institutions...
...I do not think so...
...Communism does indeed seem to be an alien element in the advanced areas of the world, even as efforts at American-style democracy seem alien in the backward areas...
...To complicate our position further, we had completely misread the character of the Communist movement in that part of the world...
...To be sure our support of peoples engaged in revolt against Communist tyranny necessarily had to fall short of war...
...But how doesthis answer the question: why are you justified in not paying yours...
...Now it may be that there are parts of the world in which the Communist movements amount to no more than this, but in Vietnam the Communists had fought the French for some 20 years, and attracted, in defeating them, most of the patriots in the country...
...But I should like to point out here that while the Vietnam policy was not only a bad but an unsuccessful one, it did not exhaust all the possibilities of defeat or of immorality that were open to the American policymakers...
...Yes, they deceived Congress to some extent, but still I must insist that I was aware of what their policy was, and I had less information than Congress...
...There's no law that says that I, wishing to restrain another from tyranny and cruelty, should practice them myself...
...But didn't the opposition conspire...
...If we think of ourselves as the heirs of Communists permitting them to be the heirs to backwardness in the undeveloped countries, then we may see ourselves in a clearer politicalhistorical perspective, one that will stress our capacities as creators of policies and institutions, rather than as makers or tenders of machines...
...Moreover, as Russian economic development advances, the Russian political structure seems to decay...
...We should try to prevent social chaos wherever it is possible for us to do so...
...But on the other hand, should we not respond more interestedly and more forcefully and more dramatically to those countries already under Communist tyranny who have indicated a desire for freedom...
...Am I preaching something like what the Communists themselves advocated in Germany before Hitler, when they advanced the slogan, "After Hitler our turn...
Vol. 18 • October 1971 • No. 5
