Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
Apparently, there are a swath of Hoover Institution videos on Youtube that I had not known about (I originally found Hoover's excellent videos at its Fora TV page) with guests discussing a broad range of issues from gun control, to just war doctrine, to the utility of war, to preventive war (Hoover really likes war, or at least talking about it) to evolution and intelligent design, to the causes behind anti-Americanism.
While perusing Hoover's library I stumbled upon this gem: a conversation between Peter Robinson and Christopher Hitchens on past and contemporary American foreign policy. What interested me in particular was Hitchens' assertion that the American campaign in Vietnam was not intended primarily to contain the spread of communism/socialism as our own John Yoo has argued, but rather that its purpose was to salvage French imperialism. No doubt, Hitchens' proposition contradicts the claims of a few of our Ricochet contributors (Peter protests Hitchens' claim in the video) and, if true, would single-handedly undermine any argument in favor of the Vietnam War. I wonder what my fellow members think about this, if they have any thoughts?
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Sep '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
That is a terrific interview. I think he's wrong but I think I understand by virture of reading his excellent book about Orwell why the visceral hatred of imperialism clouded his understanding of our strategic intent in Vietnam and the policy of containment in general. It is difficult for people who either weren't alive or weren't aware of the world in 1980, my junior year of College, when President Reagan was shot and the USSR invaded Afghanistan that the Evil Empire really was an Empire. Of course Hitchens was around back then but in those days he was more concerned with the supposed war crimes of Kissinger than those of Stalin.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
I too disagree with Hitchens on a number of issues (particularly on economics) but his eloquence is very impressive. However, if he was such a staunch opponent of imperialism he would have rejected Trotskyism/Luxembourgism as socialist drivel, requiring the government to become a domestic imperialist. Presumably, Hitchens opposed foreign imperialism because it was a form of repression. Socialism is different from foreign imperialism only in that it demands domestic imperialism, i.w., domestic repression. It hardly seems relevant to me where the repression occurs.
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
It's never a mistake to listen to Hitchens. Agreeing with him is another matter, of course -- it's a stretch to think that our involvement in Vietnam was to salvage French imperialism; we abandoned European imperialism a few years before that, when Eisenhower allowed the Suez crisis to run its course -- but Hitchens is never boring, never puerile, and always bracing.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who watches the back catalog of UK. It's a shame that only transcripts are available for certain of the really old episodes. Michael, I recommend the transcript of Hitchens with Timothy Garton Ash on the role of the intellectual in society for you. Also, a couple of the transcripts of Christopher on Firing Line are up too.
I appreciate his eloquence too, but as a top Ricochet contributor once told me, "He is like a cobra, be careful or he will bite you in the back." He is still a Marxist at the core, and David Horowitz tried hard to turn him and failed. I wish him the best of health, and his column should be read every week by literate people.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
Vietnam came up with his UK with Buckley too.
Nov '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
The only thing that Hitchens gets right about Vietnam was that Robert McNamara was probably not the right guy for the job. Otherwise, he really just taps his inner liberal, obsessing over the environmental impact of Agent Orange, rather than the human suffering caused by the communists. Peter almost gets him when he asks about the boat people, but Christopher managed to slip away relatively unscathed. I wish he had pressed the issue.
Full disclosure: Some people I consider my family fought in the South Vietnamese Army and were subsequently imprisoned and tortured for many years when we abandoned them. This issue is very near and dear to my heart. For a very, very accurate account (according to these people) of what really happened in Vietnam, pick up Mark Moyar's book "Triumph Forsaken."
Edited on Dec 1, 2010 at 11:30amSep '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
I had the honor of meeting Admiral Stockdale while I was in college and he said two things I'll never forget; that Robert McNamara put efficiency ahead of honor in the armed forces and therefore we lost the war in Vietnam because not enough Officers died. Not to imply that he wanted to see more officers die, of course, but that they were rotated more frequently and on different schedules from the enlisted men.
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
With all due respect to Christopher, who has been fearless on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Vietnam he reflects a fashionable and most conventional leftism. I echo Jan-Michael Rives endorsement of Mark Moyar's book.
When I was working for PResident Bush, he did a speech for the VFW about how all the people who said democracy wouldn't work in Japan, wouldn't work in Korea, were wrong. He also brought up Vietnam, saying, "Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields.'"
"There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle... Osama bin Laden declared that "the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today."
The left went bonkers, naturally. Vietnam is their cherished metaphor for ugly America, and they are not going to give it up lightly.
Nov '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
Bill McGurn:
When I was working for President Bush, he did a speech for the VFW about how all the people who said democracy wouldn't work in Japan, wouldn't work in Korea, were wrong. He also brought up Vietnam, saying, "Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps,' and 'killing fields.'
I hope President Bush knows that the Vietnamese community was very thankful for that speech. They mostly believed they'd been forgotten.
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
Hitch's suggestion that Ike, JFK, and LBJ somehow wished to preserve French imperial Indochina is--with respect to Hitch, a friend--silly. Ike detested European imperialism. JFK had a slightly romantic view of the British Empire, but all that really concerned him was American power. LBJ? He had very, very little time for Europeans. American presidents were interested in only one matter in Vietnam: containing Communism. Maybe this was a mistake, but I didn't press Christopher on this point simply because it seemed to me so transparently--well, as I say, silly.
Hitch is a remarkable man, and right on many issues, particularly on Iraq. But on the Cold War? I've never been able to get him to express any regrets about his youthful sympathies for Fidel. And he insisted in one interview or another that the Velvet Revolution of 1989 would have taken place even if the United States hadn't just spent eight years placing increasing military, economic, and diplomatic pressure on the Soviets Union, which ain't what Lech Walesea or Vaclav Havel will tell you.
Edited on Dec 1, 2010 at 1:47pmMay '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
Its the first time I've heard of that argument, anywhere. It definitely resembles something I would have heard in political science class from my professor.
I do believe that the Soviet Union would have collapsed even in the absence of Reagan's SDI and his move to place Pershing missiles because of its socialist economic configuration. Socialism is utterly unproductive, unsustainable, and - in its pure form - holocaustic. But I do think Reagan's saber-rattling acted as accelerants of Soviet collapse by couraging unsustainable military spending on their part.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
William Lane Craig, a religious apologist, says that same thing about Hitchens. He can be evasive and is quite capable of concealing his evasiveness with articulate, digressive prose.
Oct '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
It's nearly impossible to imagine LBJ doing any kind of favor for the /French/. LBJ cozying up to DeGaulle? What sophistry.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
With respect to Hitchens, time constraints prevented him from elaborating on his point but it would have been interesting to hear his elaboration. However, the plausibility of his claim, in my mind, mirrors that of Gore Vidal's claim that the Afghanistan campaign was motivated by acquiring fossil fuels in that region. These opinions sound conspiratorial.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIbdbrN9cwo
Buckley and Hitchen's discuss this Vietnam issue at around the seven minute mark.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
I think Buckley could have been more assertive with regard to National Review opposition to much of the civil rights legislation. I my opinion, it was an amalgam of good legislation (the abolition of Jim Crow laws) and bad legislation (laws against racial discrimination on private property).
Sep '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
Hitchens, it seems, has his right leg straddled across the New World while his left is stuck back in the Old. He has a soft spot for the National Health Service, but does he really think that Britons in his circumstance, on average, receive the kind of kick-death-in-the-face care he's getting now? (And good thing too!) If it's the case that wealthier Britons can get more emphatic medical treatment by buying additional insurance, then what's the social point of the NHS? And who does Hitchens think, in the main, is fighting the street wars of postmodernity? The overly studied? The heavily degreed? Or those who focus on the crosshairs? And even though I agree with his assessment of the primitive human emotionalism that motivates religious zealotry, I am continually frustrated by his unwillingness to admit that it is the very same urge that motivates those who seem happy to cede their soul to the state. . . . All that said, I'm never sure what he's going to say about something before he says it, and, for me, that's worth a lot.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
I believe that many many secularists employ a skeptical approach when confronting conventional metaphysics but fail to do so when confronting conventional political economy (part of the reason why secularists tend to be kinds of leftists). Its what Ayn Rand calls intellectual compartmentalization. Some people choose to be scrupulously rational in one area and fail to do so in other areas.
Sep '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
Yeah, I really struggle against doing that, but I know I'm probably as guilty as anyone—perhaps more guilty since I'm more intense about it! Very interesting thread, Michael Labeit. Thanks for the enlivening convo.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens on Vietnam
It is important not to surrender the language. Vietnam was about preventing imperialism--marxist imperialism.