Thinking about Vietnam: Political Theory and Human Life

Thinking about Vietnam: Political Theory and Hum

Howard Zinn delivered this speech on January 27, 1973, the evening a cease-fire was to take effect after eight years of American bombing of Vietnam, and he opens by questioning the credibility of political leaders who invoke the Bible and the Constitution while ordering killing that violates both. He recalls the Christmas 1972 B-52 bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, including the destruction of the Bach Mai hospital, and challenges the Pentagon's shifting claims that the strike was accidental. He sets these events against the war's toll: fifty thousand American deaths, over a million Vietnamese deaths, six million Vietnamese displaced, and mutilated survivors on all sides, urging listeners not to treat Vietnam in isolation since the weapons and the officials who used them remain in place. Zinn frames the speech as an inquiry into the limits of human thought, comparing this to a craftsman studying an instrument's limitations. He argues that people in high position—government officials, military planners, corporate directors at firms like General Dynamics—are limited not by intelligence but by their position, which insulates them from the lived experience of the poor, the bombed, and the displaced. He cites Nixon's 1970–71 invasions of Cambodia and Laos, intended to destroy communist capability, which instead let communist forces expand control over 80 percent of the countryside and launch a 1972 offensive toward Saigon. He also discusses the repeated American misjudgment of revolutionary movements, comparing the failure to anticipate change in China under Chiang Kai-shek with the miscalculation of the Vietnamese. He examines Henry Kissinger's 1968 remarks about not understanding how sixteen thousand American troops could achieve what two hundred thousand French troops could not, offering two readings: either that no foreign power can defeat a nationalist cause, or that far larger American force levels would be needed. Zinn connects this to a 1950 Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum citing Southeast Asia's strategic materials, communications routes, and role in containing communism as reasons for U.S. interest, distinguishing these establishment concerns from the interests of ordinary Vietnamese peasants and American families. Zinn then turns to the limitations of people in lower positions, describing government secrecy (citing James Hagerty's 1972 testimony on classification practices and five million pages of "Top Secret" documents by 1970) and the mass media's control of information. He notes that oppressed groups face isolation and sometimes distorted, rage-driven perception, quoting a black South African revolutionary on the danger of exaggeration. He questions whether intellectuals escape these distortions, referencing Karl Mannheim's theory of ideology and utopia, and argues that scholarly detachment itself produces ignorance of the real war—one can know statistics on the bombing of Laos's Plain of Jars without knowing what that destruction meant to villagers. He criticizes the "objective," value-free posture of political science, quoting Heinz Eulau's claim that questions about human nature are for philosophers, and argues this abdication cedes moral judgment to politicians. He describes how professional incentives—tenure, salary, fear of alumni or administrators—kept scholars from studying Vietnam seriously, noting that Noam Chomsky, Benjamin Spock, and William Coffin became de facto Vietnam experts while Asian-studies scholars focused on the Ch'ing dynasty, and that the Association for Asian Studies scheduled no 1969 panel on the war, prompting formation of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. He credits George Kahin and Hans Morgenthau as exceptions. Zinn then outlines a "five-line defense in depth" by which the establishment manufactures consent: first, restricting facts to official sources, illustrated by the Five O'clock Follies in Saigon and the suppressed Vietnam Courier report of the Song My massacre later exposed by Ronald Ridenhour and Seymour Hersh as My Lai; second, admitting embarrassing facts as isolated anomalies; third, attributing failures to individual mistakes or personal psychology, citing Arthur Schlesinger's account of "honorable" American traditions misapplied in Vietnam and James Barber's typology of presidential personalities; fourth, invoking historical inevitability, exemplified by Samuel Huntington's "Klingberg cycle" explanation of shifting American opinion, which Zinn disputes point by point; fifth, urging dissent to stay within lawful channels like letters and voting, and if that fails, allowing partial policy concessions—withdrawing ground troops while continuing bombing, or ceasing bombing in Vietnam while continuing in Laos and Cambodia—without abandoning the underlying claim to control. He concludes that this system nearly succeeded for eight years but was disrupted by unexpected resistance: priests and nuns including the Berrigans, students at all levels, Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo releasing the Pentagon Papers, disaffected GIs discarding medals, and pilots Michael Heck and Dwight Evans Jr. refusing bombing missions during the Christmas bombing. Zinn closes by suggesting that scholars and citizens seeking to break through this "web of mystification" should begin with the study of history.

By Howard Zinn · Genre: Political Philosophy, Political Commentary, Historical Analysis · 8,161 words

First lines

Location unknown. January 27, 1973.

This is the only speech in this book that is based on Zinn's typescript rather than a transcript of his actual remarks. It's unusual in that he didn't write out most of his speeches and delivered them extemporaneously. I found it among some papers in his archives shown to me by his daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn, and was struck by its incisiveness. Howard's handwritten changes to the typescript are sometimes difficult to interpret, and some of his asides in parentheses were clearly meant as prompts for him to extemporize on certain topics. I have cut a few of these parenthetical asides where I thought they might be distracting to the reader.

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vietnam war · political theory · american history · anti-war · human rights · imperialism · foreign policy · moral philosophy · activism · social critique · military history · peace

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