LETTERS
QUOTE UNQUOTE
Sirs:
In describing his position on the
Vietnam War in the second install–
ment of the symposium, "What's
Happening to America," Mr. Conor
Cruise O'Brien makes rather ex–
tended reference to my contribu–
tion to the earlier installment. Per–
haps surprisingly, Mr. 'O'Brien and
I seem to be in some agreement
in our opposition to American
policy in Vietnam: we both be–
lieve that the war runs counter
to the American national inter–
est. But, expectably enough, Mr.
O'Brien is concerned to make it
clear that he does not share my
view that the South Vietnamese
are resisting Communist aggres–
sion. This is of course an im–
portant disagreement. I write here,
however, not to argue this differ–
ence in view, but to note the
method Mr. O'Brien employs in
taking issue with me-in particular,
his curiously misleading use of
quotation marks.
In his first paragraph Mr.
O'Brien accurately quotes a sen–
tence from my contribution. This
is followed, a few lines later, by
the repetition of several phrases
from the sentence, which Mr.
O'Brien properly puts in quotation
marks. It is after this that his
procedure raises questions of pro–
priety. Toward the end of the
paragraph he writes:
"If
indeed
it is unthinkable that 'Vietnam
should go Communist,' then Ameri–
can military force and overt con–
trol had to be applied." Since it is
I who am previously quoted, there
would seem to be the clear impli–
cation that I am still being quoted,
especially because of Mr. O'Brien's
use of the reinforcing word "in–
deed." But the phrase "Vietnam
should go Communist" appears
nowhere in my statement. Nor did
I say or even suggest that such
an outcome was "unthinkable."
Again, in the fourth paragraph
of his contribution, Mr. O'Brien
will once more refer
to
me by
name. Here, in this paragraph, he
uses two phrases which I should
suppose were in the public domain
but which he puts in quotation
marks: "preventing the spread
of communism" and "containing
Communism." And he goes on to
attack the ideas embodied in these
phrases.
It
is hard for me to
imagine what Mr. O'Brien intend–
ed a reader to c,onclude from his
putting these words in quotation
marks except that I had used them.
I did not. Since it is highly
im–
probable that the readers of
Parti–
san Review
will put my contribu–
tion to the symposium and Mr.
'O'Brien's side by side to check the
'accuracy of his report of my piece,
I find it necessary to call their
attention to his pr,ocedure.
'One other comment on Mr.
O'Brien's style in argument. Mr.
O'Brien writes:
In Vietnam the actions of the
United States give about the same
impression of virtue as did those
of the Soviet Union in Hungary
in 1956. Apologists for the Soviet
Union too had their own version
of what was done there, and this
version was the mirror-image of
