"The Ugly American"
Buttinger, Joseph & Burdick, 'Eugene
I am one of the authors of The Ugly American. The one, who as Mr. Buttinger so graciously puts it, "calls himself a political scientist." The editors of DISSENT describe the essay by Mr....
...As proof of this plot he cites a public letter by Senators Kennedy and Engle, Bishop Pike, Morris Ernst, Julie d'Estournelles and Harold Stern which they sent, along with a copy of the book, to each U. S. Senator...
...This year southern Vietnam is importing, not exporting, rice...
...Burdick's article in which his opinion that South Vietnam is about to become a "police state" is presented as a "simple fact...
...In the same way that nightmares or pure acts of imagination cannot be "proved" I cannot prove that the essay is fallacious...
...And, of course, total knowledge is both impossible and unnecessary at least at this stage of our development...
...They are neither illegal nor immoral...
...He does not, for example, mention that Diem is widely regarded by most Asian leaders as being an aspiring oriental Franco...
...I can conceive of no basis on which the essay can be refuted...
...I am asserting that Mr...
...I can hardly be expected to follow in Mr...
...Buttinger wishes to prove, but let us ignore that...
...Indeed, it is too late for Mr...
...Our book says nothing of Bowles or India...
...Buttinger dips into "sources," newspapers, the Ellender hearings, magazines and with rising excitement concludes that he has effectively destroyed "the basis upon which Lederer and Burdick attack American foreign aid...
...His persistent outrage and anger on this point only serve to confuse the main issues...
...As recently as 1957 millions of dollars of American aid have not produced one viable industry in southern Vietnam...
...He quotes me in order to take exception to my criteria for substantiating certain statements, namely (as my essay reads) statements "about the successes or failures of American overseas operations in the field of technical assistance and economic aid...
...Second, as evidence that high French army officers came to understand Mao's tactics he quotes C. L. Sulzberger...
...One does not have to read The Ugly American, however, to detect that this onrush of style contains a basic fault...
...He states "whatever statements...
...Buttinger apparently believes that political reality is discovered by assembling or quoting what he calls "sources...
...It has nothing to do with logic, with standards of proof, with evidence...
...He devotes a good fraction of his essay to Vietnam and that is proper for he has been there often...
...Buttinger's case is more difficult because he accompanies untruth with a kind of rowdy and enchanting ignorance of logical presentation and a soaring imagination which alternates strangely with a harsh Prussian bark to believe something because he asserts it...
...For this reason, I have been of two minds ever since I was asked to reply...
...Burdick's task was easy to perceive...
...Buttinger does much to illuminate this argument or process quite regardless of what he has to say about The Ugly American...
...In a very negative way I think Mr...
...Once Mr...
...Lederer and I were, from the start, fully aware of them...
...Let me give two examples...
...Burdick felt that he should have done this but had to persuade himself that it could not be done...
...We wrote the book hurriedly, with a sense of great urgency, and while separated by a great distance...
...An example of the use of elenchi, which is simply arguing beside the point, is contained in Mr...
...His Comtean faith that a mountain of documentation must inevitably squeeze out a drop or two of truth is not inferred, it is made explicit by Mr...
...These are obvious excuses...
...Buttinger mounts...
...Before I discuss what Mr...
...Here I would like to discuss a more complicated example, one in which Mr...
...None of these "sources" would reveal this although it is a fact...
...But I have done all this in my essay, and see no reason to repeat what I have already said...
...For this would mean that in addition to simply not knowing facts essential for sound political judgment, Mr...
...Aid in this form can often be inexpensive and involve a high degree of self-help...
...I know (and have tried to explain), that liberals in favor of foreign aid have praised The Ugly American, but this contradicts my assumption as little as Lederer's and Burdick's claim to be recognized as defenders of a cause to which their illinformed and denunciatory book has done considerable harm...
...Buttinger seems persistently incapable of perceiving, to write a polished literary novel...
...Ignorance of facts due largely to his not verifying what he thinks he knows, characterizes most of his statements that are not mere expressions of opinion...
...One can enter such a weird literary structure only by forfeiting rationality...
...Burdick, in quoting me, changes my text...
...Through study, Mr...
...Buttinger commits the fallacies of petitio principii and ignoratio elenchi with such primitive abandonment and so frequently that he, at least, must be innocent of their commission...
...He is pitifully uninformed...
...Then to the "atrocious" style of the book...
...are made about American overseas policy can be substantiated...
...The task of politics is to make the evaluation...
...In the many pages he uses to describe Vietnam there are so many factual misstatements and so many strange gaps that one is forced to recognize that Mr...
...How is it possible for someone who claims to be informed about Southeast Asian affairs to be so wrong...
...I believe Mr...
...These figures were published in all leading economic journals of the world, and only a person determined to make a fool of himself would question their correctness...
...My sins against all "standards of proof" and my "many factual misstatements," far from making the refutation of my essay impossible, could only have facilitated Mr...
...I cannot quite see why Mr...
...I wish, alas, that this were due wholly to the rigor of The Ugly American...
...Sometimes the essay wheels and addresses itself to problems of India...
...The "source" itself offers no evidence, no statistics and no proof, but Mr...
...The book is vulnerable but not to the frenzied attack which Mr...
...This confusion about facts and reality, about opinion and knowledge, leads Mr...
...Burdick unfortunately makes only a few brief remarks...
...to discuss what I say), would mean "for feiting rationality...
...What seems to me important is the enormous and mystical weight which the essay gives to "sources...
...Burdick's admission of his inability to deal with the content of my critique...
...Politics has always, of course, been complex and intricate...
...But more importantly in his fascination with facts Mr...
...If a "source" is cited the quotation becomes a fact...
...I am no stranger to polemics and would have been pleased to argue the value of our novel as well as the larger issues of politics...
...It is also logical, philosophical and moral nonsense...
...Burdick changes the phrase I have here emphasized to "American overseas policy...
...I am not quarreling with the boring or angry aspects of the essay...
...First, he states flatly that the famous and controversial highway in Thailand serves both a military and economic function...
...As to the need in politics "to move beyond facts," I would be astonished to hear that in my essay, because of its emphasis on documentation, I was left without space for evaluations and opinions...
...For example, his statistics on rice in Vietnam are simple nonsense...
...It is delicious and it is proof but it happens to be a delicious proof of nothing that we ever asserted...
...However, Mr...
...only by producing accurate figures and reliable dates, by citing specific projects and correct names of places, by relating verifiable events and by using many other relevant data, all of which are available to anyone who is willing to work through the growing bulk of official and private publications on the subject...
...The "source" is an official statement by the International Cooperation Administration to that effect...
...And let no one say that this is too absurd to serve as an explanation for his categorical statement that South Vietnam exports no rice in 1959...
...His suggestion that south ern Vietnam is industrializing efficiently is also nonsense...
...Buttinger suggests these parties were hostile to foreign aid...
...Buttinger's private nightmare...
...It has a kind of fractured, rambling, change of pace style which is so audacious and irrelevant and chaotic that one is tempted to believe that there must be an orderliness which is only slightly obscured...
...I shall discuss this below in some detail...
...An example of the use of petitio principii, the trick of surreptitiously introducing an assumption and then proceeding as if it were fact, is his description of the "plot" to promote initial sales of the book...
...When Mr...
...Because of my other writings on Vietnam there is no need for me to explain why I disagree with this opinion...
...Let me give one example of each...
...WHAT SURPRISED me most is Mr...
...The book advocates "relevant projects...
...Is he willing to produce some kind of evidence to show that this story is true...
...In this I may be mistaken...
...Burdick mixes prejudiced opinion with possible fact...
...Leaving aside the serious and significant conflict about the meaning of verification and relevance of which Mr...
...Buttinger has invented new categories of fact, opinion and knowledge...
...Burdick, if it fits his arguments, decides to what degree an established fact shall be permitted to exist...
...I am afraid this is what Mr...
...This discussion is supposed to be concerned not with me but with the facts of foreign aid, about which Mr...
...Buttinger may not be aware, does he honestly mean to assert that before I can state that a peasant must "pay off" four different sets of officials before marketing produce in Saigon I must read all of the "growing bulk of official and private publications...
...In conclusion, I shall try to state the reasons why I think that Mr...
...I also apologize for not being "more responsive" to Mr...
...Buttinger as a "sustained polemic" against The Ugly American...
...In his eyes my assertions are so senseless and my conclusions so contrary to all logic that to "enter" my essay (i.e...
...He enters into a Kafka-like world in which arrogance becomes identical with authority, suspicions once voiced are accepted as "facts," dark revelations are promised and their darkness becomes their proof...
...Let me also state that I think there are substantial errors of emphasis and interpretation in The Ugly American and I have tried to acknowledge them publicly whenever I have been convinced they are demonstrated...
...Ernst, and it was the only large private order which the publisher received...
...Because verifiable facts and figures are so essential to determine the truth in regard to foreign aid, and form such a substantial part of all my arguments, Mr...
...Buttinger could have verified this by a single phone call to the publisher's office...
...Also new facts can, deliberately, be produced...
...He says nothing of constitutionalism, liberty, a free press, political parties or, in fact, anything "political" about Vietnam...
...Burdick does not realize...
...We argue that in many countries "little things" like literacy, an adequate diet and a minimum Ievel of health must be undertaken before industrialization can proceed...
...He im plies, quite wrongly, both that this is a novel situation and that one cannot move politically until one has "full knowledge...
...His chest swells with ritualistic liberal anger when he states that were Lederer and Burdick responsible for Philippine policy we would fire Ambassador Bohlen...
...I, for one, always tensed with a thrilled anticipation at each threatened demolition...
...Burdick has not come across these figures, and impossible to take him seriously if he made his statement while knowing them...
...ONE LAST COMMENT about the "mood" of the essay...
...Joseph Butfinger replies: I find Mr...
...Buttinger does not enter into a polemic...
...He goes even further, he freely predicts how we would act in situations which he invents...
...The persistent problem of politics is to move beyond facts...
...Yet this would not lead me to conclude that my critique of The Ugle American was unfounded...
...The only thing that distinguishes the present political era is the paralyzing belief that sheer intricacy paralyzes action...
...Burdick is not just unwilling, but really unable to refute my essay...
...Burdick no fresh cause to complain about my "harsh Prussian bark...
...But he seems unaware that spending good names is not really evidence...
...Some facts are adamantine and some are flexible...
...Like the editors and the readers of DISSENT I am much more interested in the general political discourse and ways in which it might be made more tough-minded, meaningful and general...
...Buttinger can work up a real enough rage...
...This is why he depreciates the value of sources, ridicules my alleged faith in "mountains of documentation," accuses me of "gross empiricism," and lectures me on "the serious and significant conflict about the meaning of verification and relevance" of which he suspects I must be unaware...
...In speaking of pre-publication sales and bulk sales after publication, I nowhere say or imply that there was a "plot," let alone one to which either the publishers or the authors were a party...
...Buttinger accepts it as a form of reality...
...I could pick up these remarks and show that The Ugly American does condemn "big" and request small projects, or prove that the book has something to say about India (something so embarrassing that Mr...
...Things have causes and precedents...
...One symptom of this disease is a tendency to confuse fact and opinion...
...Buttinger's assertion that The Ugly American advocates "little projects" exclusively...
...Buttinger's essay is literally senseless...
...My reluctance is intensified by Mr...
...Burdick really means with this statement, I shall take it literally and say that I can easily conceive of someone undertaking a thorough study of the subject and showing me in error on so many points that my essay would in fact be refuted...
...Once having demonstrated, by the felicity of elenchi, that we believe only in "little projects" the essay launches into a most detailed examination of little projects scattered around Southeast Asia...
...It consisted in demonstrating (by using, if possible, better sources, and by applying better logic than I), that the facts I described were wrongly presented, the figures I used dated or incorrect, the documents I quoted insufficient, and the conclusions I drew therefore wrong...
...the informed reader can then reexamine the essay and see for himself what an appallingly large part of Mr...
...To do that one would have to enter into Mr...
...But Mr...
...This is simply not so...
...No one can miss seeing that these terms are clear and simple...
...P. s. I discovered only after I had written the above that Mr...
...Each, alas, turns out to be a disappointment...
...Let me confess that Mr...
...But in the strange world of "fact" in which he operates an extensive plot has been proven...
...Burdick, although he states he cannot refute my essay, does not really mean that my arguments are too solid to be disproved...
...Rovere in Senator Joe McCarthy talks about McCarthy's use of the "multiple untruth" and the impossibility of "refuting" McCarthy once you enter the labyrinth of his assertions...
...The nature of proof and verification I have chosen is related to the subject I discussed, which meant dealing largely with verifiable facts, most of them of a kind that can be stated precisely only by giving correct figures...
...The one, who as Mr...
...I regard them as evidence of the book's usefulness as a weapon against foreign aid...
...It is not good form today in political discourse to criticize a flawed logical analysis...
...Burdick would undoubtedly regard this as further proof of my "arrogance" and so I decided to write this reply, hoping to give Mr...
...Buttinger has no such restraint...
...Buttinger's pages are rendered logical nonsense...
...Burdick's footsteps...
...A truer picture than mine may also be a sadder one...
...An example is the passage in Mr...
...IN A SENSE most of the foregoing is marginal to my chief purpose in writing...
...South Vietnam's rice export for the first six months of 1959 was 135,000 tons, against a total of 117,000 for the entire year of 1958, and conservative estimates are that in 1959 it will reach a post-war high of 300,000 tons...
...The Buttinger essay opens by suggesting a dark plot...
...Later he freely refers to the plot as if it were an established fact...
...He freely attributes motives of malignancy, "action," "simplism" to Mr...
...Buttinger is guilty of gross empiricism...
...He states that "thousands" of copies were sold in this stealthy and organized way by rightwingers and isolationists...
...Buttinger into the most practical difficulties when he comes to talk about politics...
...Burdick's extreme sensitivity in reacting to anything I say and how I say it...
...The fact is that our aid pro gram has produced what may become a family dominated police state in Asia...
...Buttinger emphasizes that politics is complex and intricate...
...Burdick had decided to answer my critique, he was obliged to meet me on my own terms...
...It was not our intention, a thing which Mr...
...The credentials of anger and contempt are real enough so, one reasons, the evidence must also be real...
...Frankly, I find it a nuisance that custom allows me to have the last word...
...Burdick is afflicted with a disease of the political mind which is not nearly as rare as most people think...
...Let me state at the outset that I agree with Mr...
...Ideology, as piration, nationalism, normative and value judgments are all examples of things which have profound political effects but are not admissible as facts under Mr...
...Burdick says of my statistics on rice in Vietnam that they are "simple nonsense," adding that "this year Southern Vietnam is importing, not exporting, rice...
...Now all of the signatories happen to be "internationalists," the 98 copies were paid for by Mr...
...Or I could demonstrate that The Ugly American is being used by the enemies of foreign aid to fight the entire program...
...Moreover, for Mr...
...Burdick tried to show that I was unfit to write it...
...For the purpose of showing The Ugly American is untrue to fact, my sources, as well as my methods of documentation, were both necessary and adequate...
...The fault happens to be an embarrassing one to remark...
...But once having invented the fiction, Mr...
...This led him to employ many terms of abuse (in addition to "nonsense," of which he discovered in my essay no less than five different kinds) to which I really cannot reply...
...But if he did, he would make a shocking discovery: the better he is equipped to show me in error, the more clearly he will see the falseness of his own views...
...It is precisely these two fallacies which cause the trained logician to groan in despair, but which can give a shabby analysis a glossy surface...
...He would then recognize that the work required to refute me should have been done before The Ugly American was written, which means, however, that Lederer and Burdick would have produced either no or an entirely different book...
...Emphasis added) This is epistemological nonsense...
...I think there are sound reasons for not making the trip...
...I have never differed with critics who remark the literary imperfections of the book...
...Burdick can prove that his story has some basis in fact, he will be surprised to learn how quickly the culprits will be thrown out of office and after due process of law go to jail...
...Burdick feels that these sales have to be denied or defended...
...It is hard to believe that Mr...
...Several times he threatens to "expose the political inanities of The Ugly American...
...Burdick to teach me that the facts of tyranny can be opposed with action based on opinions and ideas, and too late for me to forget that all our attempts to oppose or modify unwelcome facts are doomed unless we know their weight, measure their scope, and understand their meaning...
...But I am fairly confident that this would make the picture given by Lederer and Burdick no less false...
...I seem to be suggesting that Mr...
...He ends his article by saying that it would have been "irresponsible" of him to meet me on my own terms...
...Burdick's reply to my critique of The Ugly American not at all to the point...
...The simple fact is that I could only have been responsive by meeting him on his own terms and this I consider irresponsible...
...They are not a necessary part of polemics, but they are frequent...
...Some of his facts are simply wrong...
...He seems unaware that Sulzberger is only writing an opinion...
...The picture of American foreign aid operations that emerges from my essay is on the whole more hopeful than that of many other students...
...I am referring to his statement that a Vietnamese peasant can sell on the Saigon market only after bribing four sets of officials...
...My interest was in their political significance...
...It states flatly that our novel had a large initial sale because it was "bought and distributed in unusually great numbers by private parties and organizations" and Mr...
...He would then become only another one of the many serious and respected American scholars who work hard to produce good books which sometimes get published but rarely ever sell...
...Burdick to devote himself to a real study of sources would undermine his concept (and present role) of political agitator and very likely also destroy his chance to remain a popular and successful writer on national and international affairs...
...In another context he says "because I happen to believe Chester Bowles was a splendid ambassador to India...
...he must reject our views on political appointments to ambassadorships...
...He states that "he can conceive of no basis on which the essay can be refuted...
...There is no entailed or implied logic by which we would "fire Ambassador Bohlen...
...I must make one more point to clear up a misunderstanding...
...Burdick would probably become acquainted with enough facts to disprove some of my assertions...
...Serious criticism, and good polemics, do not usually attempt "attribution of motivation" because it has proved to be an undemonstrable and generally feckless argument...
...Instead of discussing the factual content, of my essay, Mr...
...I have no such inhibition...
...Lederer and me...
...Buttinger's estimate of the "literary quality" of The Ugly American...
...The editors of DISSENT describe the essay by Mr...
...I say that if Mr...
...Buttinger's essay...
...Such conditions make for rough work, a lack of polish and some jarring transitions...
...Buttinger lifts his eyes away from The Ugly American, the mere ink fumes of which cause him to whimper with outrage, and looks at the world of reality he sees "facts" in a most alarming way...
...Burdick's ignorance (or wilful neglect) of the relatively simple facts concerning rice does not recommend him as a judge of more complex aspects of Vietnamese life, but the matter is serious enough to deserve examination, and so I shall discuss it under the assumption that Mr...
...It is not...
...But all this is beside the point...
...It would simply mean that Mr...
...We do argue that in politics there is no such thing as an etiological vacuum...
...Burdick's task...
...But if I should refuse to answer, Mr...
...Then to sudden flat assertions...
...Burdick knows why he calls this a fact...
...Buttinger's definition...
...In order to counter my factual statements and arguments, he would have to spend more time on research than he and Lederer, by their own admission, have devoted to the writing of their book...
...To give an example, Mr...
...Buttinger works himself into a position in which any discussion of politics becomes impossible...
...But the sound of intellectual demolition, the slash of a solid idea, never quite becomes audible...
...He need not fear that anyone expects him to quote "official sources," but I would insist on more than the usual Saigon cocktail party gossip, in which fact and fiction are always as hopelessly mixed as in The Ugly American...
...Buttinger does all of this very dramatically...
...We state explicitly in the book and have repeated in articles and speeches, that relevant aid might in some cases consist of enormously expensive and sophisticated developments...
...Each time he mutters off-stage apologies to the cruel but necessary injury he is going to do to the authors and to the "many people who have openly endorsed The Ugly American...
...Burdick is now trying to forget it...
...The citation does not quite prove what Mr...
...I have written too much and for this I apologize...
Vol. 7 • January 1960 • No. 1
