America in Vietnam
Encyclopedia
America in Vietnam is a book by Guenter Lewy
about America's role in the Vietnam War
. The book is highly influential, although it has remained controversial even decades after its publication. Lewy contends that the United States' actions in Vietnam
were neither illegal nor immoral, and that tales of American atrocities were greatly exaggerated in what he understands as a "veritable industry" of war crimes allegations.
The text returned to the limelight during the 2004 US Presidential Election, when it was cited by several groups supporting the reelection of George W. Bush
, in contending that Democratic presidential contender John Kerry
had betrayed his country for his participation in anti-war activities upon his return from service in Vietnam
.
, Mark Moyar
, and Michael Lind
. America in Vietnam is frequently characterized as a "revisionist" history of the Vietnam War. Lewy argues,
The text was praised by US Senator Jim Webb
, a Vietnam veteran then of the House Committee on Veteran's Affairs staff, and by several newspapers, including The Economist, which described it as "in many way the best history of the war yet to appear". Critics have included historians of the "orthodox" school, as well as various anti-war activists. Bertrand Russell
and Noam Chomsky
were singled out for criticism by Lewy in the book; Chomsky would later respond that "every state has its Guenter Lewys".
Lewy contends that the Vietnam War
was legal and not immoral. In recalling the 1971 congressional testimony of some US veterans who were critical of the war, one of whom compared US action in Vietnam to genocide
, Lewy suggests that some "witnesses sounded as if they had memorized North Vietnamese propaganda." The book is broadly critical of domestic opponents of American participation in the Vietnam War. In using the phrases "peace activists" or "peace demonstrations", Lewy often puts quotation marks around the word "peace", implying alternative motivations for the activism. The author suggests there may be a connection between cases of sabotage in the Navy and the anti-war movement:
in the book for his role in proliferating charges of American war crimes through the aegis of the Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars, which Lewy characterizes as part of a "veritable industry" of war crimes allegations. Chomsky replied to the criticism with an article entitled On the Aggression of South Vietnamese Peasants against the United States, in which he suggests that "Lewy is not writing just military history but a moral tract."
In the text itself, Lewy asserts that he is attempting to "clear away the cobwebs of mythology that inhibit the correct understanding of what went on -- and what went wrong -- in Vietnam."
wrote in his 2006 Triumph Forsaken that "Lewy's superb book was the best history of the Vietnam War when it was first published, and [...] remains one of the best." Moyar has himself contended that the orthodox histories of the Vietnam War incorrectly assert that it was unjust, unnecessary, and unwinnable. The political group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth utilized some of Lewy's work in their 2004 publication Unfit for Command, and Norman Podhoretz
has often cited America in Vietnam and written extensively in its defense.
In one text, Podhoretz took aim at those who were attacking Lewy's conception of immorality as illegality in the context of war. "The task Lewy sets for himself turns out to be surprisingly simple, for the laws of war are so vaguely stated and so radically incomplete that a brief for the defense is readily put together", asserted Michael Walzer
; of America in Vietnam, Theodore Draper
added, "It is a continuing shame... that the shamefulness of this war should be incidentally taken up in a book designed to cover up the shame by taking refuge in narrow and dubious legalisms." The wide-held belief that the Vietnam War represented "a dramatic collapse of both reason and morality" or that it was marked by "immoral conduct" was answered by Lewy and defended by Podhoretz:
Podhoretz suggests that the struggle against Communism
is linked to the struggle against Nazism
, because each represents totalitarianism
. The Domino Theory
was, in Podhoretz's eyes, vindicated by the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, rather than being discredited. Of Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam, one critic asserted that "Time and again the footnote for a crucial argument directs the reader to Guenter Lewy's America in Vietnam, a book whose historical objectivity, to put it mildly, is not accepted by all sides."
Lewy describes his conception of legality and morality in the context of war, suggesting that what is legal must necessarily be moral as well: "Because I show that American military tactics are legal, I clearly also undermine [my critics'] assertion that the American conduct in Vietnam was immoral." He suggests also that "immoral conduct must involve immoral intentions", which he believes differentiates the "free-fire zone
s" in Vietnam from the "terror bombing of civilian populations during World War II
".
Restating some of his arguments from America in Vietnam, Lewy asserts that the war in Vietnam does not constitute genocide for a number of reasons, including lack of genocidal intent and "results":
, became controversial in the context of the 2004 US Presidential Election. Presidential hopeful John Kerry
had been involved with the Winter Soldier Investigation; in the context of the campaign, Lewy's suggestion that the Winter Soldier Investigation was dishonest and politically motivated was frequently cited to impugn John Kerry's reputation.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
, the group of which Kerry had been a part, alleged that American troops had committed atrocities in Vietnam. Lewy suggests that the group used "fake witnesses" in the Winter Soldier hearing in Detroit, and that its allegations were formally investigated:
Government officials today have no record of any such Naval Investigative Service report, although they suggest that it could have been lost or destroyed. Lewy later said that he could not recall if he had actually seen the alleged report or simply been told of its contents.
Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy is an author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the...
about America's role in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. The book is highly influential, although it has remained controversial even decades after its publication. Lewy contends that the United States' actions in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
were neither illegal nor immoral, and that tales of American atrocities were greatly exaggerated in what he understands as a "veritable industry" of war crimes allegations.
The text returned to the limelight during the 2004 US Presidential Election, when it was cited by several groups supporting the reelection of George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, in contending that Democratic presidential contender John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
had betrayed his country for his participation in anti-war activities upon his return from service in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
.
Overview
Published in 1978, America in Vietnam argues against traditional or "orthodox" interpretations of the war as unnecessary, unjust, or unwinnable. The book has proven highly controversial. Historians of the "orthodox" school have singled it out for harsh criticism, while the "revisionist school" of Vietnam historiography holds it to be a watershed in the literature on the war. An infamous text among critics of the Vietnam War, the text has found ardent support among the revisionist minority of academics, such as Norman PodhoretzNorman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...
, Mark Moyar
Mark Moyar
Mark Moyar joined as Director of Research in July 2010 after serving as a professor at the Marine Corps University where he held the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism. Moyar is a self-proclaimed revisionist, known for his writing on the Vietnam War.Moyar holds a B.A. summa cum...
, and Michael Lind
Michael Lind
Michael Lind is an American writer. Currently Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., Editor of New American Contract and its blog Value Added, and a columnist for Salon magazine. Lind was a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School and...
. America in Vietnam is frequently characterized as a "revisionist" history of the Vietnam War. Lewy argues,
It is the reasoned conclusion of this study... that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam war in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of officially, condoned illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance. Indeed, detailed examination of battlefield practices reveals that the loss civilian life in Vietnam was less great than in World War II and Korea and that concern with minimizing the ravages of the war was strong. To measure and compare the devastation and loss of human life caused by different war will be objectionable to those who repudiate all resort to military force as an instrument fo foreign policy and may be construed as callousness. Yet as long as wars do take place at all it remains a moral duty to seek to reduce the agony caused by war, and the fulfillment of this obligation should not be disdained. I hope that this book may help demonstrate that moral convictions are not the exclusive possession of persons in conscience opposed to war, and that those who in certain circumstances accept the necessity and ethical justification of armed conflict also do care about human suffering.
The text was praised by US Senator Jim Webb
Jim Webb
James Henry "Jim" Webb, Jr. is the senior United States Senator from Virginia. He is also an author and a former Secretary of the Navy. He is a member of the Democratic Party....
, a Vietnam veteran then of the House Committee on Veteran's Affairs staff, and by several newspapers, including The Economist, which described it as "in many way the best history of the war yet to appear". Critics have included historians of the "orthodox" school, as well as various anti-war activists. Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
and Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
were singled out for criticism by Lewy in the book; Chomsky would later respond that "every state has its Guenter Lewys".
Lewy contends that the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
was legal and not immoral. In recalling the 1971 congressional testimony of some US veterans who were critical of the war, one of whom compared US action in Vietnam to genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
, Lewy suggests that some "witnesses sounded as if they had memorized North Vietnamese propaganda." The book is broadly critical of domestic opponents of American participation in the Vietnam War. In using the phrases "peace activists" or "peace demonstrations", Lewy often puts quotation marks around the word "peace", implying alternative motivations for the activism. The author suggests there may be a connection between cases of sabotage in the Navy and the anti-war movement:
Between 1965 and 1970, the Navy experienced a growing number of cases of sabotage and arson on its ships, but no evidence could be found that antiwar activists had directly participated in a sabotage attempt on a Navy vessel. Cases of fraggingFrag (military)In the U.S. military, fragging refers to the act of attacking a superior officer in one's chain of command with the intent to kill that officer. The term originated during the Vietnam War and was most commonly used to mean the assassination of an unpopular officer of one's own fighting unit...
and avoidance of combat may well have been instigated at times by antiwar militants, though no hard evidence of organized subversion was ever discovered.
Noam Chomsky
Lewy criticized Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
in the book for his role in proliferating charges of American war crimes through the aegis of the Committee of Concerned Asia Scholars, which Lewy characterizes as part of a "veritable industry" of war crimes allegations. Chomsky replied to the criticism with an article entitled On the Aggression of South Vietnamese Peasants against the United States, in which he suggests that "Lewy is not writing just military history but a moral tract."
In discussing the treatment of prisoners, Lewy shows his reasonableness by acknowledging “several cases of US maltreatment and torture.” These are treated with antiseptic brevity, and Lewy takes pains to put them into a context of the “frustration resulting from fighting an often unseen enemy, the resentments created by casualties,” etc. In dealing with Communist inhumaneness, however, he gives a plenitude of detail, with an unconcealed moral indignation totally absent from his grudging admission of US-Saigon torture, and factors that might explain such acts by the enemy are treated with sarcasm. He even matter-of-factly explains Saigon torture: “The police were not highly professional, prison guards were underpaid, and South Vietnamese have a low regard for human life.”
"Revisionism"
America in Vietnam has frequently been assailed as a "revisionist" text. The book has been referred to as "a classic revisionist interpretation of the war", "the first and most impressive of the revisionist accounts" of the Vietnam war, and "one of the earliest and most sophisticated of revisionist works".In the text itself, Lewy asserts that he is attempting to "clear away the cobwebs of mythology that inhibit the correct understanding of what went on -- and what went wrong -- in Vietnam."
Adherents
Among adherents of the text, Mark MoyarMark Moyar
Mark Moyar joined as Director of Research in July 2010 after serving as a professor at the Marine Corps University where he held the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism. Moyar is a self-proclaimed revisionist, known for his writing on the Vietnam War.Moyar holds a B.A. summa cum...
wrote in his 2006 Triumph Forsaken that "Lewy's superb book was the best history of the Vietnam War when it was first published, and [...] remains one of the best." Moyar has himself contended that the orthodox histories of the Vietnam War incorrectly assert that it was unjust, unnecessary, and unwinnable. The political group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth utilized some of Lewy's work in their 2004 publication Unfit for Command, and Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...
has often cited America in Vietnam and written extensively in its defense.
In one text, Podhoretz took aim at those who were attacking Lewy's conception of immorality as illegality in the context of war. "The task Lewy sets for himself turns out to be surprisingly simple, for the laws of war are so vaguely stated and so radically incomplete that a brief for the defense is readily put together", asserted Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is a prominent American political philosopher and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he is co-editor of Dissent, an intellectual magazine that he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at...
; of America in Vietnam, Theodore Draper
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books which he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair...
added, "It is a continuing shame... that the shamefulness of this war should be incidentally taken up in a book designed to cover up the shame by taking refuge in narrow and dubious legalisms." The wide-held belief that the Vietnam War represented "a dramatic collapse of both reason and morality" or that it was marked by "immoral conduct" was answered by Lewy and defended by Podhoretz:
"The American way of war," as it came to be called in the polemics of the period, was based on the motto "Expend Shells Not Men." Was it immoral of American commanders to follow this rule? The antiwar movement thought so, and Lewy's critics still do.
Podhoretz suggests that the struggle against Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
is linked to the struggle against Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, because each represents totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
. The Domino Theory
Domino theory
The domino theory was a reason for war during the 1950s to 1980s, promoted at times by the government of the United States, that speculated that if one state in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect...
was, in Podhoretz's eyes, vindicated by the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, rather than being discredited. Of Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam, one critic asserted that "Time and again the footnote for a crucial argument directs the reader to Guenter Lewy's America in Vietnam, a book whose historical objectivity, to put it mildly, is not accepted by all sides."
Is American Guilt Justified?
One way that Guenter Lewy answered his critics was in an essay entitled Is American Guilt Justified? In the essay he suggests that many Americans feels a sense of guilt for having undertaken the Vietnam War, but that "the American sense of guilt is not warranted by the facts about the war which we known today."Some of my critics have painted me as a kind of moral leper, comparing me to those who deny that the Jewish Holocaust happened, that six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Others say my work is a revisionist job, useful, perhaps, in stimulating debate, but otherwise too extreme to be considered reliable. Of course, I disagree with those appraisals.
Lewy describes his conception of legality and morality in the context of war, suggesting that what is legal must necessarily be moral as well: "Because I show that American military tactics are legal, I clearly also undermine [my critics'] assertion that the American conduct in Vietnam was immoral." He suggests also that "immoral conduct must involve immoral intentions", which he believes differentiates the "free-fire zone
Free-fire zone
A free-fire zone in U.S. military parlance is a fire control measure, used for coordination between adjacent combat units. The definition used in the Vietnam war by US troops may be found in field manual FM 6-20:- Free-fire zones in the Vietnam War :...
s" in Vietnam from the "terror bombing of civilian populations during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
".
Restating some of his arguments from America in Vietnam, Lewy asserts that the war in Vietnam does not constitute genocide for a number of reasons, including lack of genocidal intent and "results":
According to statistics developed by the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, the population of South and North Vietnam, during the course of the war, increased at a rate roughly double that of the United States in a comparable period. That alone makes the charge of genocide--i.e., intentional destruction of a whole people--rather grotesque.
Winter Soldier Investigation
America in Vietnam, which appeared seven years after the Winter Soldier InvestigationWinter Soldier Investigation
The "Winter Soldier Investigation" was a media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War from January 31, 1971 – February 2, 1971. It was intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War...
, became controversial in the context of the 2004 US Presidential Election. Presidential hopeful John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
had been involved with the Winter Soldier Investigation; in the context of the campaign, Lewy's suggestion that the Winter Soldier Investigation was dishonest and politically motivated was frequently cited to impugn John Kerry's reputation.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Vietnam Veterans Against the War is a tax-exempt non-profit organization and corporation, originally created to oppose the Vietnam War. VVAW describes itself as a national veterans' organization that campaigns for peace, justice, and the rights of all United States military veterans...
, the group of which Kerry had been a part, alleged that American troops had committed atrocities in Vietnam. Lewy suggests that the group used "fake witnesses" in the Winter Soldier hearing in Detroit, and that its allegations were formally investigated:
The results of the investigation, carried out by the Naval Investigative Service, are interesting and revealing. Many of the veterans, though assured that they would not be questioned about the atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities. A black marine who agreed to be interviewed was unable to provide details of the outrages he had described at the hearing, but he called the Vietnam war "one huge atrocity" and "a racist plot." He admitted that the question of atrocities had not occurred to him while he was in Vietnam, and that he had been assisted in the preparation of his testimony by a member of the Nation of IslamNation of IslamThe Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
. But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name.
Government officials today have no record of any such Naval Investigative Service report, although they suggest that it could have been lost or destroyed. Lewy later said that he could not recall if he had actually seen the alleged report or simply been told of its contents.