PARTISAN REVIEW
349
What is not beside the point is that these articles of faith are
highly functional. The fact is that anticommunism provides a con–
venient mythology to justify colonial wars. But to explain the U.S.
attack on Vietnam on grounds of anticommunist delusions would
be as superficial as explaining the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia
or Hungary merely on grounds of fear of West Germany or Wall
Street. No doubt, at some level, the Soviet leadership believes what it
says, and is bewildered at the bitter reaction to its selfless and benevo–
lent behavior. Perhaps, as Peter Wiles suggests
(International Affairs)
April 1971), Russian public opinion "is proud of its country's armed
power in Prague and speaks of Czechoslovak weakness, ingratitude,
irresponsibility, etc." Similarly, Washington claims to be defending
democracy and warding off "internal aggression" or subversion by
agents of international communism when it helps to destroy a mass
popular movement in Greece, supports an invasion of Guatemala,
invades the Dominican Republic and devastates the peasant societies
of Indochina,
inter alia.
Its defenders, and many critics as well, are
at most willing to concede error if plans go awry, and cannot con–
ceive that any "responsible" or "qualified" observer might have a
rather different view. Some still insist that the United States pursues
its foreign policy for the most part "for reformist, even utopian goals,"
and that this policy can only be faulted for being "callow, sentimental,
savagely stupid . . . too little the work of an intellectually serious
leadership ... " (William Pfaff,
Condemned to Freedom).
It
is re–
markable how difficult it is, even for those who see themselves as
critics, to interpret U.S. behavior by the standards of evaluation and
analysis that would, properly, be applied to any other great power.
The fact that policy-makers may be caught up in the fantasies
they spin to disguise imperial interven!ion, and sometimes may even
find themselves trapped by them, should not prevent us from asking
what function these ideological constructions fulfill - why
this
par–
ticular system of mystification is consistently expounded, in place of
some alternative. Similarly, one should not be misled by the fact that
the delusional syitem presents a faint reflection of reality. It must,
after all, carry some conviction. But this fact should not prevent us
from proceeding to disentangle motive from myth.
Turning to the second question: why is the United States anti–
communist? - a conventional answer is that the United States op–
poses communism because of its aggressive, expansionist character.
