INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS
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"obvious examples" he cites are by no means obvious to me. The
same administration that had most to do with involving us in
Vietnam also achieved a second Reconstruction that appears to
have permanently abolished racist institutions in the South. In
what sense, then, did it " promote racism" at home? And what
is
the connection between American policies in Chile and El Salva–
dor and "the fate of American cities" ? I fail to see any, except that
Peter Brooks disapproves of both. He confines his claims of a
domestic-foreign policy connection to " over the past twenty
years," presumably since Lyndon Johnson 's assumption of the
presidency. I too opposed the American military overinvolve–
ment in Vietnam (though not
any
American involvement), but I
think this was a blunder in foreign policy, the worst but by no
means the first since 1945, and one that had little to do with the
domestic goals of the Johnson administration, which, in fact, it
undermined.
Support for the containment of Soviet power-" choosing
the West," as Dwight Macdonald once put it-has never implied
approval of everything that American governments have done
since 1945 in declared opposition to the Soviet Union or other
communist states, least of all where actions outside of Europe are
concerned. These need to be evaluated independently in local
terms. The cold war geopolitical justifications for them have
sometimes been without substance, as may be the Reagan admin–
istration policies in Central America-even though it is far from
self-evident that the guerrillas in El Salvador are democrats,
freedom fighters, or agrarian reformers as so many who iden–
tify themselves with the left seem to think, displacing to a new
locale past illusions that were shattered in China, Cuba, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Iran, and Nicaragua. There is much bitter truth in
Eden Pastora's recent remark that both the Sandinistas and the
Reagan administration seem to be trying to confirm their worst
fears about each other.
Confusion between international and internal politics is
also evident in Dickstein's endorsement of Kennan's statement
that Americans should end their "systematic condemnation of
another great people and its government. " lowe much of my
understanding of foreign policy to George Kennan, for whom I
worked as a research assistant many years ago, but Leon
Wieseltier's dissent from this statement, to which Dickstein takes
