"Freedom, Freedom House and Vietnam"
MORGENTHAU, HANS J.
THINKING ALOUD Freedom, Freedom House and Vietnam By Hans J. Morgenthau In the New York Times last November 30, an advertisement covering seven full columns of a page appeared with the title in...
...It is of course true that Communist governments dogmatically believe that capitalistic governments govern without the consent of the governed, since a capitalistic society is by definition a class society ruled by an exploiting minority...
...As long as it thinks it can win, or can get better peace terms by continuing the war, it will go on fighting...
...Thus, by the standards of this document we are indeed "extremist" and "irresponsible" critics...
...It tells us that we are morally entitled to criticize the government, but not with regard to the fundamental issues it enumerates...
...And the legitimate concern for the effectiveness of the government in times of war does not override this consideration...
...I would have thought????nd there is some evidence in history for thinking so—that a government engaged in war will be influenced in its attitude toward peace by its estimate of the military situation and of the peace terms it thinks it can obtain...
...Their personal prestige, as they see it, requires the perpetuation of error because a liquidation of the war on terms acceptable to the other side would be tantamount to admitting they were consistently wrong in their calculations and forecasts...
...But they are the real moral heroes of this war even though they will never get the Congressional Medal of Honor...
...That the immune foundations are much more broadly defined by totalitarianism than by Freedom House, addressing itself only to the issue of Vietnam, does not affect the principle, which violates the democratic ethos...
...Secretary of State Dean Rusk, appearing last August 25 before a Senate subcommittee, put it this way: "No would-be aggressor should suppose that the absence of a defense treaty, Congressional declaration, or U.S...
...I think the Freedom House document will fare no better...
...Whether or not one describes this as playing the role of "world policeman" is again a matter of terminology, and has nothing to do with the case...
...That manifesto has gone down in history as a prime example of how wrong good and meritorious men can be when their patriotic passions are aroused...
...THINKING ALOUD Freedom, Freedom House and Vietnam By Hans J. Morgenthau In the New York Times last November 30, an advertisement covering seven full columns of a page appeared with the title in boldface: "LEADERS WARN THAT EXTREMISTS COULD DELAY VIETNAM NEGOTIATIONS...
...I must confess that insofar as the statements cited refer to intelligible criticisms of our Vietnam policy, I and many other reputable citizens subscribe to them, and I have expressed them consistently at least since July 1961...
...when it thinks it is likely to lose, or has nothing to gain from continuing the war, it will stop fighting...
...It distinguishes between the arguments against our policies in Vietnam that are legitimate and those that are not...
...But they have begun to hate us as such, and it is that fact that counts...
...Some of them I have counted among my friends...
...military presence grants immunity to aggression...
...Such removal of a body of substantive opinion from the sphere of legitimacy is abhorrent to the Anglo-American tradition of free speech...
...The President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and our military leaders have stated innumerable times that we are in Vietnam to "stop Communism...
...I am reminded of the famous manifesto which in the fall of 1914 was addressed "to the civilized world" by 93 luminaries of German scholarship, art and literature, men such as Baeyer, Behring, Brentano, Ehrlich, Eucken, Haber, Haeckel, Harnack, Hauptmann, Laband, Lamprecht, Lenard, Liebermann, Neisser, Nernst, Ostwald, Planck, Rein-hardt, Rontgen, Schmoller, Vossler, Wassermann, Weingartner, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Willstatter, Windelband, and Wundt...
...But aside from this perverse logic, which blames the opponents of the war for its continuation, the document does not raise the question of whether the responsibility for continuing the war might not at least be shared by those policy-makers who have been consistently wrong in their calculations and forecasts and have since 1963 repeatedly, and finally with success, urged upon the President the bombing of North Vietnam as a sure road to victory...
...There are two others...
...Our leaders have also told us repeatedly that being the most powerful nation on earth, we have a special responsibility to preserve peace and order and to oppose aggression throughout the world...
...If it is referring to members of the Armed Forces who would rather be relieved of their command or court-martialed than be responsible for indiscriminately killing civilians, they are not engaging in "criticism" either...
...It declared that it was "not true" that Germany bore any responsibility for the War, that Germany had violated the neutrality of Belgium, that "the life and property of a single Belgian citizen had been injured" without military necessity, etc...
...This is indeed a remarkable document...
...The Freedom House document, in spite of a ritualistic bow to free speech, effectively limits free speech...
...But I have not deemed it proper in the past to adapt my expression of opinion to the changing winds of Marxist polemics, and I do not intend to do so in the future...
...1. "That this is 'Lyndon Johnson's War' or 'Mc-Namara's War' or any other individual's war...
...Whether or not one calls such a war "holy" is a matter of terminology...
...3. "That military service in this country's Armed Forces is an option exercisable solely at the discretion of the individual...
...And it is exactly because I hold them that I have consistently warned against the policies which first led to our involvement in this war, and then to our inability to extricate ourselves from it...
...It is remarkable for three reasons: for its views on the prospects for peace in Vietnam, for its views on what constitutes "responsible" criticism of our Vietnam policy, and for its conception of freedom of speech...
...4. "That this is a 'race' war of white versus colored peoples...
...The arguments just analyzed are declared to be illegitimate...
...If it is aiming at the draft card burners and those who refuse to be inducted into the armed services without claiming the status of conscientious objectors, it is dealing with individuals who are breaking the law but not with criticism, "responsible" or "irresponsible...
...We can argue that the Vietnamese ought not to hate us as the white destroyers of their country...
...The document condemns the holders of certain opinions as being responsible for the continuation of the war in Vietnam...
...Whatever dissent there is in a capitalistic society, "responsible" or "irresponsible," provides empirical support for that dogmatic assumption and is for that reason eagerly quoted...
...The statement was signed by a former President of the United States, a former Secretary of State, and other distinguished men...
...The dogma would be believed even if there were no dissent at all...
...it does not affect the substance of what we say we are doing...
...It cannot but degenerate into indiscriminate killing, and victory can be won only by incapacitating everybody, guerrilla and non-guerrilla alike...
...Technically, of course, the issue is not freedom of speech, since Freedom House has no power to prevent the expression of opinions it condemns...
...Let us quote and examine them in sequence...
...It could dismiss the question only if it proved that the policies of the government could win the war quickly were it not for the irresponsibility of the critics...
...It is we, a predominantly white people, who tell the Vietnamese that they ought to be dead rather than red, and we are in the process of making that statement stick...
...The subheading continued: "A Crucial Turning Point...
...Thus Communist writers have for two decades berated the "warmongers of Wall Street," myself included, who drag an unwilling American people toward war, regardless of the evidence pro or con...
...The Freedom House document, so extraordinary in its implications, is the result of a misguided sense of patriotism...
...Statistically the document is of course right in claiming that our white soldiers are fighting side-by-side with soldiers who are not white...
...To the Vietnamese, we appear as the successors to the French—whose ranks, by the way, also included non-white soldiers...
...The governments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, with the exception of East Germany, all make a distinction between "responsible" and "irresponsible" criticism, and "irresponsible" criticism is defined as that which attacks the foundations of government policies...
...I hold these opinions...
...The document declares that failure by the responsible critics of our Vietnam policy "to draw the line between their positions and the views expressed by irresponsible extremists could encourage our Communist adversaries to postpone serious negotiations, raising the cost in lives and delaying the peace we earnestly seek...
...This brings me to the last and most important point: the issue of free speech...
...But we are in it, and what can we do...
...As Judge Charles F. Amidon put it in legal terms: "The framers of the first Amendment knew that the right to criticize might weaken the support of the government in a time of war...
...Beyond these limitations, there can be no substantive limits to criticism in a free society...
...it is also limited by the concern for preventing a clear and present danger to public order...
...The dogmatic assumption stands on its own feet, however, being an integral part of the received Marxist-Leninist truth...
...But morally this is indeed the issue...
...Indeed, the argument most frequently heard nowadays in Washington runs like this: "If we had known two years ago what we know now, we wouldn't be in that mess...
...2. "That the American leaders are committing 'war crimes' or indulging in 'genocide.' " A war fought against indigenous guerrillas, either supported by the population or to whom the population is indifferent, is bound to obliterate the traditional distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, soldiers and civilians...
...In other words, the blood of our men who must die in Vietnam is on the hands of the "irresponsible" opponents...
...But considering the comprehensive character of the strictures, it is clear that while the document pretends to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate criticism, its purpose is really to put the stamp of illegitimacy upon most of the criticism—past, present or future—advanced against our Vietnam policies...
...It is both illuminating and disquieting to note that this is how the moral right to criticize is formulated by the enlightened totalitarianisms of the day...
...No person or group," to quote James M. Landis, "is wise enough to be trusted to discriminate between valid and invalid ideas...
...any government, past or present...
...This is but one of the ironies of this document...
...A Freedom House statement signed by 145 distinguished Americans urges the responsible critics of the Vietnam war to dissociate themselves from wild charges being made against the nation and its leaders...
...While I have never used such terms, I have expressed the conviction that our involvement in this war is in good measure the result of the personal shortcomings of our policy-makers...
...They appreciated the value of a united public opinion at such a time...
...It is ironic that an organization calling itself Freedom House should thus, unwittingly and misguidedly, attack the very foundations of American freedom...
...others have been students of mine...
...This charge derives from the assumption that the policies of our Vietnamese adversaries are determined by what some Americans may or may not say about the policies of their government...
...Nor does the document raise the general question of whether those who make policy might not bear a greater share of responsibility than those who criticize that policy...
...If my advice had been followed there would be no war in Vietnam today, and our interests in Southeast Asia and throughout the world would be the better for it...
...This patriotism deems it its duty to support the policies of the government in times of crisis, thus identifying the government with the nation, and in the process sacrifices the interests of the nation upon the altar of conformity...
...The Freedom House document is trying to establish a political orthodoxy with regard to our policies in Vietnam...
...They were men who had experienced all those things in the war of the Revolution, and yet they knew too that the republic which they were founding could not live unless the right of free speech, of freedom of the press was maintained at such a time...
...I know of no proposition of this kind put forward in connection with the war in Vietnam, and I can therefore only guess what the document is aiming at...
...But perhaps this stigmatization is not so much a reflection upon the critics as upon the stigmatizers...
...But what is decisive in moral and political terms is how the war is being experienced by the Vietnamese people...
...That is to say, we are not morally entitled to criticize the government in any meaningful way...
...Free speech is limited by certain specific statutory prohibitions—for example, those involving libel and slander, obscenity, blasphemy, and sedition...
...5. "That this nation's leaders are obsessed with some compulsion to play 'world policeman' or to conduct some 'holy war' against the legitimate aspirations of underdeveloped people...
...For by condemning certain opinions as not only mistaken but as aiding the enemies of the United States and helping to destroy the lives of American soldiers, the document removes them from the sphere of the morally acceptable as assuredly as the courts would be removing them from the sphere of the legally permissible by punishing the holders of these opinions...
...This is not what our policy-makers intend to do, but what they are forced to do by the inexorable logic of the enterprise upon which they have embarked...
...The Freedom House document presents a list of five criticisms which it calls "fantasies" and obviously regards as "irresponsible...
...But beyond these specific legal limitations, speech is supposed to be free both on moral and legal grounds...
...That is another way of saying we are engaged in an ideological war, and we consider "legitimate" only those aspirations that are anti-Communist...
...This is an extraordinary view of the policy-making processes of Hans J. Morgenthau, a frequent contributor, is Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Modern History, University of Chicago...
Vol. 50 • January 1967 • No. 1
