Picking Up the Gauntlets

...Finally, McGee leaves us with some unanswered questions...

...But he attributes these to Hanoi's unexpected escalations, and to the government's natural tendency toward overoptimism, not to a deliberate desire to deceive the American people...

...Thus he charges Edward and Robert Kennedy, as well as some journalists, with conveniently overlooking President Kennedy's professed dedication to Vietnam and his belief in the domino theory...

...to face the issues he raises and compare his views with those of another former academic, Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright...

...actions in Asia, the Senate's most articulate supporter of Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policies has written a book that bravely picks up the major critical gauntlets and hurls a few of its own...

...And presuming the truth of the domino theory, must we undertake new military commitments in Southeast Asia...

...Underlying each fresh commitment of men and material, McGee argues, was the basic policy assumption, reaffirmed by every President from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, that Southeast Asia must not fall under direct or indirect Chinese control...

...McGee is particularly harsh on specific critics in Congress and the communications media, whom he blames for creating an "incredibility gap" by deliberately distorting the meaning of statements made by government spokesmen...

...and who have often tried to silence the dissent of others...

...Will our demonstrated determination to oppose aggression in Vietnam actually deter aggression in Thailand or Laos...

...This leads him to the refreshing notion that whether a militant China is run by Mao Tse-tung or Chang Kai-shek is of small consequence...

...Because that balance in Asia is threatened by an aggressive China, and because China repeatedly cited Vietnam as a testing ground for its own ambitions, Vietnam is, malgre tout, the right war in the right place at the right time...

...McGee pegs most of his argument on the familiar premise that ever since the United States emerged from World War II as one of two superpowers, it has been obliged to help preserve peace in a world where "the only substitute for war which civilized man has yet worked out is the balance of power...

...General Westmoreland's search and destroy tactics receive no scrutiny, the Vietnamese elections are accepted with few questions, and Saigon's civilian and military officials are made to appear a bit more dedicated and effective than one suspects they really are...

...who consider themselves the only true liberals and label every opponent (including McGee) a conservative or worse, regardless of his views or record...

...In an attempt to stimulate such discussion, as well as to defend past U.S...

...Yet the very fact that this book inspires such questions is a reflection of its value...

...His sharpest salvos, though, are aimed at the "arrogance of dissent" displayed by those intellectuals who think they are the sole repositories of truth...

...The Johnson Administration, which considered Vietnam worthy of some 30,000 lives but of little persuasive explanation, must shoulder the initial responsibility for the current dearth of rational discussion on the primary cause of its own demise...

...The Administration's opponents, however, by resorting so often to ad hominem attacks, physical obstructionism and confrontation for confrontation's sake, have similarly failed to promote the sober, wide-ranging examination of foreign policy goals this nation sorely needs...

...For in addition to balancing a public record already heavily weighted on the opposite side, it provokes serious thought about matters we cannot afford to wait to examine in retrospect...

...And the Soviets, he claims, far from being motivated by ideological kinship, are as eager as we are to prevent China from dominating Asia...

...what matters are China's disruptive actions among its neighbors...

...While McGee's conclusions roughly coincide with those of professional anti-Communist zealots, he parts company with them by seeing global and regional power balances in geopolitical rather than ideological terms...

...Senator McGee can be faulted for occasionally overstating points, and for brushing aside certain matters that have provoked legitimate criticism...

...Compared with the deceptive tactics of Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt, he maintains, the last Administration's Credibility Gap appears relatively insignificant...

...America's abiding interest in maintaining a power equilibrium in Asia is used by McGee not only to justify our present and possible future role there, but also to attack those who accuse Washington of aimless blundering, inconsistencies, distortions, and other vices known collectively as The Credibility Gap...

...Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General William Westmoreland were indeed guilty of many "bad guesses," McGee says...

...The effort of Senator Gale W. McGee, erstwhile history professor from Wyoming who has now replaced Eugene McCarthy on the Foreign Relations Committee, will probably earn few laurels for profound scholarship and win few converts to the cause of continued commitment in Vietnam...

...Reviewed by LORNA HAHN Professor of International Relations, American University One of the more distressing aspects of the American experience in Vietnam has been the decline of serious public debate concerning that involvement...

...Nevertheless, it merits the attention of those who still have the guts (or is it the stomach...