Books in Brief: All Quiet on the Eastern Front: The Death of South Vietnam

All Quiet on the Eastern Front: The Death of South Vietnam, edited by Anthony T. Bouscaren (Devin-Adair, 164 pp., paper, $5.95). Recently John Roche artfully skewered Allard Lowenstein who, distressed that some people were raising the embarrassing question of human rights in Vietnam, suggested in effect that we drop that subject as “divisive.” Should our indignation—Roche wondered—be reserved with neat selectivity for South Africa or Latin America? Never mind that Indochina today is “an abattoir” . . . Unfortunately, though, Lowenstein is hardly the only American eager to avoid unwelcome truths about Vietnam of the kind emphasized in the volume under review. But the truth about that unhappy land should not be suppressed. The authors of this excellent symposium underscore the role of American aid cutbacks in fatally weakening our much-maligned Vietnamese allies and finally costing them their freedom. Trapped now in the iron grip of a pitiless Communist totalitarianism, they lack even the meager consolation of Western sympathy. For their tormentors are Marxists and not Latin military men: hence they do not qualify as bona fide “victims” by the criteria of American liberalism. However, their plight is powerfully and sympathetically related here by 14 distinguished authors, including Ambassador Graham Martin, General William Westmoreland, the brothers Buckley, and Drew Middleton. Their hard-hitting Vietnam post-mortem will provide a muchneeded balance to the nauseatingly slanted literature available on the subject.

MC

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Michael Connors

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All Quiet on the Eastern Front: The Death of South Vietnam, edited by Anthony T. Bouscaren (Devin-Adair, 164 pp., paper, $5.95). Recently John Roche artfully skewered Allard Lowenstein who, distressed that some people were raising the embarrassing question of human rights in Vietnam, suggested in effect that we drop that subject as “divisive.” Should our indignation—Roche wondered—be reserved with neat selectivity for South Africa or Latin America? Never mind that Indochina today is “an abattoir” . . . Unfortunately, though, Lowenstein is hardly the only American eager to avoid unwelcome truths about Vietnam of the kind emphasized in the volume under review. But the truth about that unhappy land should not be suppressed. The authors of this excellent symposium underscore the role of American aid cutbacks in fatally weakening our much-maligned Vietnamese allies and finally costing them their freedom. Trapped now in the iron grip of a pitiless Communist totalitarianism, they lack even the meager consolation of Western sympathy. For their tormentors are Marxists and not Latin military men: hence they do not qualify as bona fide “victims” by the criteria of American liberalism. However, their plight is powerfully and sympathetically related here by 14 distinguished authors, including Ambassador Graham Martin, General William Westmoreland, the brothers Buckley, and Drew Middleton. Their hard-hitting Vietnam post-mortem will provide a muchneeded balance to the nauseatingly slanted literature available on the subject.