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might have been countered by a more enlightened policy under
Eisenhower
is
a matter of speculation. Conceivably, the Communists
might have maneuvered themselves into a strong position even if
we had backed the most progressive elements in the country instead
of the most reactionary and vociferously anti-Communist ones. Sim–
ilarly, are we really so sure that the Communist assault on South
Viet Nam has profited from the undemocratic leadership of Ngo
Dinh Diem? Even if Washington succeeds in pressuring Diem into
behaving better, or even if a competent, forward-looking, democratic
administration were to take over the country, the Communists would
probably still peck away, and we would still be left with the problem
of how to contend with infiltration and subversion in a far-off place
and under unfavorable military conditions.
In other words, while we now know with reasonable certainty
that past American policy in Southeast Asia was not only inhumane
but stupid and futile from a cold-war point of view, we do not know
that a more humane policy would turn out to be any less futile. I
believe that a more humane policy is worth pursuing for its own
sake, and I would support it on those grounds.
If
politicians are
forced to construct
realpolitikische
justifications for actions that are
good (or at least potentially good) in themselves, that is one thing.
But the rest of us are better off with honesty and-shall I apologize
for the word?-idealism.
4-5. I don't believe for a moment that "the intellectual values
and freedoms and the political and civil liberties we all affirm" are
inseparable from the particular complex of political and economic
institutions that now exist in the West. On the contrary, I would
even go so far as to say that certain of these institutions are positively
hostile to the values and freedoms they purport to serve. The real
problem here is the constant confusion in people's minds-a confusion
that the cold war has done much to deepen-between the values
presumably embodied in the institutions of our society and the values
that are actually promoted and sustained by those institutions. What
we need-and what until very recently the extraordinary willingness
of intellectuals to think about everything in cold-war terms (which
means precisely thinking in terms of the assumption that there is a
rough identity between the institutions of American society and the
values "we all affirm") has deprived us of-is an energetic and un-
