What Liberals Don’t Understand about Vietnam

Those who ostensibly address themselves to the crucial issue of the day, “why Vietnam?” generally fall into one of two camps: those who are explaining why we should “get out” and those who are explaining why we should “win.” Excepting the more extreme members of each group, it is usually difficult to elicit an exact definition of what is meant by “getting out” or “winning.” It is only on the more immediate and tactical level that they tend to become more specific and explain why we should or should not bomb, negotiate or recognize the Vietcong. In the meantime, the formal object of inquiry, “why Vietnam?” has become lost in the concern for the immediate.

A slightly deeper analysis of the question is attempted on relatively rare occasions. There are those who introduce the falling-domino theorem, sometimes along with the threat-of-China corollary, but these advocates seldom go further and explain why these propositions should mean so much more to us than to El Salvador or Iceland. The “get out” crowd, in all its various guises, is similarly unsatisfactory. Their basic responses, after all the protective rhetoric is stripped away, are “we are led by incompetent and power-blinded generals and politicians” or “we are victims of our own illusions.”

JB

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James Burnham

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Those who ostensibly address themselves to the crucial issue of the day, “why Vietnam?” generally fall into one of two camps: those who are explaining why we should “get out” and those who are explaining why we should “win.” Excepting the more extreme members of each group, it is usually difficult to elicit an exact definition of what is meant by “getting out” or “winning.” It is only on the more immediate and tactical level that they tend to become more specific and explain why we should or should not bomb, negotiate or recognize the Vietcong. In the meantime, the formal object of inquiry, “why Vietnam?” has become lost in the concern for the immediate.

A slightly deeper analysis of the question is attempted on relatively rare occasions. There are those who introduce the falling-domino theorem, sometimes along with the threat-of-China corollary, but these advocates seldom go further and explain why these propositions should mean so much more to us than to El Salvador or Iceland. The “get out” crowd, in all its various guises, is similarly unsatisfactory. Their basic responses, after all the protective rhetoric is stripped away, are “we are led by incompetent and power-blinded generals and politicians” or “we are victims of our own illusions.”