The fiasco in the Dominican Republic illustrates, we think,
what is basically wrong with our policies. So long as we are not able
to understand the political and economic problems of rapidly changing
countries, and to support democratic revolutionary groups, we are
bound to find ourselves in a false dilemma, always having to decide
at the last minute whether to intervene, as though that were the only
solution. Military action can be a substitute for political foresight
only
if
we propose to police the whole world, and to imagine that
we can do that
is
to lack even hindsight.
Obviously, the time has come for some new thinking. And
some
of it has to be about what's happening in different parts of the
world, regardless of what the United States does or fails to do.
Eleanor Clark
Martin Duberman
Irving Howe
Alfred Kazin
Bernard Malamud
Steven Marcus
William Phillips
Norman Podhoretz
Richard Poirier
Richard Schlatter
