I Was a Civilian Advisor in Vietnam

I 'joined' the antiwar movement, in a very minor way, after my return from Vietnam, where I had spent a year as part of the U.S. civilian establishment. I was ambivalent about the war. I was ambivalent, in fact, about the Cold War. In general, I thought (and think) the U.S. was choosing its allies (or creating them) from among the worst elements of their respective societies -- and thus forcing the best elements into the arms of its opponents. In the specific case of Vietnam, I thought the U.S. had made a terrible mistake in 1946 when it turned its back on Ho Chi Min's friendly approaches, and opted to back the French as they retook their imperial possession from Japan. We sponsored the Paris accord of 1954 under which the French withdrew -- but, as Dwight Eisenhower frankly admitted later, we scuttled the accord's provision for all-Vietnam elections because we knew that Ho would win. In the light of this history I thought we came to Vietnam with less-than-clean hands. Nothing I saw there changed my mind. I never heard accounts of massacres by our side (the My Lai story surfaced after I left), but the little I saw of the U.S. soldiers made me certain that they were doing terrible things to innocent people. (So, no doubt, was the enemy. But they wouldn't have done so had we not been there -- so, in a sense, even enemy atrocities were our fault!)

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