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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
Several recent studies of the Vietnam War challenge the generally accepted view that American policy in the war was a political and moral failure. It is now argued that “the system worked” because U.S. policy reflected a democratically formulated consensus, and that the military conduct of the war does not warrant the moral condemnation it has received. Each of these arguments is vitiated by factual and logical errors. The first reveals a failure to grasp the importance of constitutionalism and the rule of law in the American democracy. The second—that U.S. military methods were morally defensible—confuses morality with expediency, and rests on a mistaken understanding of the distinction between intentional and unintentional injury to noncombatants. If there is a case against the accepted view, it has yet to be made.
1 In addition to the two studies discussed here, other works in the revisionist genre include Blaufarb, Douglas S., The Counterinsurgency Era (New York: Free Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Schandler, Herbert Y., The Unmaking of a President: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Thompson, W. Scott and Frizzell, Donaldson D., eds., The Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Crane, Russak, 1977).Google Scholar To be sure, not all of the recent literature on the Vietnam War is “revisionist” as we use the term here; fundamental criticism of American policy during the war as politically and morally defective continues to be voiced. See, for example, Ravenal, Earl C., Never Again: Learning from America's Foreign Policy Failures (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, and Shawcross, William, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).Google Scholar
2 Schandler, (fn. 1), 334, 337.Google Scholar
3 Lewy defends both the American decision to intervene in Vietnam and the manner in which the war was fought; we deal here only with the latter.
4 For the proposed international rules, see the Diplomatic Conference on Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflict: Protocols I and II to the Geneva Conventions, International Legal Materials, XVI (November 1977), 1391–1441.Google Scholar
5 For an exploration of the idea of risk-sharing between soldiers and civilians, and an argument that soldiers must take risks to protect civilian rights, see Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 151–56, 188–93.Google Scholar
