Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [132]
In its 1985 tenth-anniversary retrospective on the Vietnam war, Foreign Affairs presents both the hawk and the dove positions. Representing the more dovish view, David Fromkin and James Chace assert without argument that “the American decision to intervene in Indochina was predicated on the view that the United States has a duty to look beyond its purely national interests,” and that, pursuant to its “global responsibilities,” the United States must “serve the interests of mankind.” “As a moral matter we were right to choose the lesser of two evils” and to oppose “communist aggression” by the Vietnamese in Vietnam, but on the “practical side” it was “wrong” because “our side was likely to lose.” The moral imperatives of our service “to the interests of mankind” do not, however, require that we intervene to overthrow governments that are slaughtering their own populations, such as the Indonesian government we supported in 1965, or our Guatemalan and Salvadoran clients of the 1980s. On the contrary, they observe, the success of our Indonesian allies in destroying the domestic political opposition by violence in 1965 was a respectable achievement that should have led us to reconsider our Vietnam policy. They cite Lyndon Johnson’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, who feels in retrospect that “our effort” in Vietnam was “excessive” after 1965, when “a new anti-communist government took power in Indonesia and destroyed the communist party [the only mass-based political party] in that country . . .,” incidentally slaughtering several hundred thousand people, mostly landless peasants, and thus “securing” Indonesia in accord with our “global responsibilities” and “serving the interests of mankind.”16
Fromkin and Chace define “opponents of the war”—meaning, presumably, critics whose views merit serious consideration—as those who “did not believe that ‘whipping’ the enemy [North Vietnam] was enough, so long as the enemy refused to submit or surrender.” The media, they say, “brought home to the American people how little effective control over the population had been purchased by all of General Westmoreland’s victories,” thus strengthening the “opponents of the war,” dissatisfied by our inability to gain “effective control over the population.” “The media cannot be blamed for pointing out the problem, and if General Westmoreland knew the answer to it, perhaps he should have revealed it to the public.”
Outside of those committed to “the cause,” although possibly skeptical about its feasibility or the means employed, there are only those whom McGeorge Bundy once described as “wild men in the wings,” referring to people who dared to question the decisions of the “first team” that was determining U.S. policy in Vietnam.17
Quite generally, insofar as the debate over the war could reach the mainstream during the war or since, it was bounded on the one side by the “hawks,” who felt that with sufficient dedication the United States could succeed in “defending South Vietnam,” “controlling the population,” and thus establishing “American-style democracy” there,18 and on the other side by the “doves,” who doubted that success could be achieved in these noble aims at reasonable cost19—later, there arrived the “owls,” who observed the proceedings judiciously without succumbing to the illusions of either extreme of this wrenching controversy. Reporting and interpretation of the facts were framed in accordance with these principles.
5.2. “THE WILD MEN IN