Fire in the Lake (78 page)

10
. Oka, “Buddhism,” p. 4.

11
.
New York Times,
23 April 1966.

12
. Ibid., 15 May 1966.

13
. Ibid., 17 May 1966.

14
. Oka, “Buddhism,” p. 10.

15
.
New York Times,
1 June 1966.

16
. Oka, “Buddhism,” p. 10.

17
. Ibid., p. 14.

9:
Prospero, Caliban, and Ariel

  
1
. Otare Mannoni,
Prospero and Caliban.
    Frantz Fanon has attacked this work in
Black Skin, White Masks,
but he does not convincingly refute the foregoing. His argument is that the reactions and behavior patterns of the native to the European colonizer had nothing to do with a pre-existing set. “If, for instance,” he says, “Martians undertook to colonize the earthmen — not to initiate them into Martian culture but to
colonize
them — we should be doubtful of the persistence of any earth personality” (p. 95). The argument that colonialism (as opposed to any other form of disaster) negates personality itself cannot accord with a Freudian point of view. If Freud is correct, then men always react to new situations according to patterns set in their childhood. In
The Wretched of the Earth
Fanon actually corroborates many of the observations made by Mannoni, only he looks at them from a slightly different point of view.

  
2
. Paul Mus has spoken of this period and what to French liberals seemed to be the paradoxical reaction of the Vietnamese in his
Viêit-Nam: Sociologie d'une guerre.

  
3
. Mannoni,
Prospero,
p. 59.

  
4
. The movement, as Tri Quang told Takashi Oka, “did not begin as an anti-American movement. It was not even really opposed to Ky. We had only one plea — elections as a means of establishing a legitimate government.” (Takashi Oka, “Buddhism as a Political Force,” p. 11.)
    The Americans never believed him sincere, but Tri Quang knew well that only the Americans could insure Buddhist success — and the elections were the only way they might be brought into making a redistribution of power.
    Later on, alarmed by the anti-American tone of the demonstrations, Tam Chau had pressured Tri Quang to defuse the struggle movement and restore order to the First Corps. Once the promise of elections had been given, Tri Quang had acceded, even though he realized leaving the junta in power might be a strategic error.

  
5
. Pierre Huard and Maurice Durand,
Connaissance du Viêt-Nam,
p. 87. The original text is as follows: “La rupture de la dépendance a, sous l'influence de troubles extérieurs ou intérieurs, provoqué des sentiments d'infériorité violants avec leurs successions habituelles de defoulement et de refoulements. L'angoisse de la conscience nationale essayant de se créer un sur-moi a base de compensations s'est alors traduite dans une minorité agissante par une volonté de destruction farouche, une volupté de perir dans l'effondrement total, une esthétique du néant qui pousse, collectivement, à la politique du terre brûlée et, individuellement, au suicide.”
    It is the observation rather than the analysis that is interesting here.

  
6
. According to the Vietnamese sociologist, Phan Thi Dac, the hunger strike is one of the ways in which the Vietnamese child registers discontent with the strictures of his parents. In the case of particularly strong-willed children these hunger strikes last two or three days. In general, says Miss Dac, “the parents try to find a way of getting out of the difficulty that will leave everyone's honor intact, because the child who has recourse to this procedure is profoundly wounded, because whether or not it is true, he believes himself the victim of an injustice (correction or reprimand). If he obstinately refuses all attempts at conciliation, all diversionary maneuvers, and remains deaf to all appeals, the parents send him discreetly to an aunt or a cousin for a short visit so that, away from the ‘guilty’ parent, he can forget his misadventure and feed himself again without too much loss of pride.”
    (Interestingly enough, the other method of opposition, and the one most feared by parents, is simple inertia. The child does not complain, he does not avoid punishments, but he continues to repeat his past conduct. In this case the parents take what seems to be their only recourse and send the child away to relatives or friends for a while.)
        (Phan Thi Dac,
Situation de la personne au Viet-Nam,
pp. 126–127.)
    In other words, far from revolting against the Americans, the Buddhists were behaving towards them as child to parent. They were trying to force the Americans to make a correction in their behavior by inflicting suffering upon themselves. The difficulty — which Tri Quang certainly realized — was that the Americans
were not
their parental rulers.

  
7
. Don Luce and John Sommer,
Viet Nam: The Unheard Voices,
p. 279.

  
8
. Fanon,
Wretched of the Earth,
p. 43.

10: Bad Puppets

  
1
. William C. Westmoreland,
Report on the War in Vietnam,
p. 114.

  
2
.
Newsweek,
27 March 1967.

  
3
. Ibid.

  
4
.
Time,
31 March 1967.

  
5
.
Newsweek,
27 March 1967.

  
6
. David Halberstam, “Return to Vietnam,” p. 52.

  
7
. Samuel L. Popkin, “The Myth of the Village,” pp. 169–172.

  
8
. Halberstam, “Return to Vietnam.”

  
9
. This attitude, largely shared by the central Vietnamese factions, posed a most perfect dilemma for the GVN that on the one hand needed to establish its legitimacy and, on the other hand, needed all the help it could get against the NLF. When in 1967 a fraction of the VNQDD began to infiltrate the pacification program in central Vietnam, the Americans, like the French before them, tended to support the party because it was disciplined and passionately anti-Communist. The GVN officials, however, resisted the VNQDD because they knew they would have little more influence over the villages thus pacified than over those in the grip of the NLF.

10
. On 6 January 1971, the
New York Times
reported that Mme. Nguyen Cao Ky had claimed the right to more than five square miles of montagnard land in the Central Highlands as a public domained concession. The land had been under the control of the Front for the past several years, she argued, so it ought to be declared a public domain. Naturally the Vietnamese officials were not disposed to recognize the montagnards' ancestral rights over the claim of the vice-president's wife, but a public scandal was made. Madame Ky had by this time come a long way from her pretty stewardess days, under the competitive influence of Mesdames Co and Thieu.

11
. William R. Corson,
The Betrayal.

12
. William J. Lederer,
Our Own Worst Enemy.

13
. Corson,
Betrayal,
p. 86. The Regional Forces outside Da Nang neglected to lay their ambushes that night, and the NLF mortared the air base.

14
. Don Luce and John Sommer,
Viet Nam: The Unheard Voices,
pp. 97–98.

15
. Frantz Fanon never went to Vietnam, but much of what he says about the colonized bourgeoisie in Africa is peculiarly appropriate to that of Saigon. For instance:
    The national middle-class which takes over power at the end of the colonial regime is an under-developed middle-class. It has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace.… [It] is not engaged in production, nor in invention, nor building, nor labour; it is completely canalised into activities of the intermediary type.… In its wilful narcissism, the national middle-class is easily convinced that it can advantageously replace the middle-class of the mother country. But that same independence which literally drives it into a corner will give rise within its ranks to catastrophic reactions, and will oblige it to send out frenzied appeals for help to the former mother country.…
    The national middle-class discovers its historic mission: that of intermediary.… [It] identifies itself with the Western bourgeoisie from whom it has learnt its lessons. It follows the Western bourgeoisie along its path of negation and decadence without ever having emulated it in its first stages of exploration and invention.… It is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the fearlessness or the will to succeed of youth.
    The national bourgeoisie will be greatly helped on its way towards decadence by the Western bourgeoisies, whom come to it as tourists avid for the exotic.… It will in practice set up its country as the brothel of Europe.”(Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
pp. 122–125.)

16
.
Washington Post,
21 March 1967.

17
. General Thieu would repeat the same maneuver in 1970 with the trial of Colonel Tran Ngoc Chau, now the deputy elected by the largest number of votes to the lower house of the legislature. When accused of having secret contact with his brother, an NLF officer, Chau claimed to have done so only with the full knowledge of the CIA. That was his mistake. After his confession a large number of opposition deputies, newspapermen, etc., supported Thieu's unconstitutional attempt to put him in jail on the grounds that he was selling them out by establishing a link between the Americans and the Viet Cong.

18
. Richard Critchfield,
The Long Charade,
p. 157.

11: Elections

  
1
.
Newsweek,
3 April 1967.

  
2
. Takashi Oka, in the
New York Times,
15 July 1970.

  
3
. Ibid.

  
4
. Bernard B. Fall,
Last Reflections on a War,
p. 163.

  
5
. I. Milton Sacks, “Restructuring Government in South Vietnam,” p. 526.

  
6
. Richard Critchfield,
The Long Charade,
p. 309.

  
7
.
Newsweek,
3 April 1967.

  
8
. Paul Mus, “Cultural Backgrounds of Present Problems,” p. 12.

  
9
. Fall,
Last Reflections,
p. 164.

10
. Robert Shaplen, “Letter from Saigon,”
New Yorker,
7 October 1967, pp. 152–153.
    The meeting had its own interest. Had the same confrontation taken place in 1964, it almost certainly would have been resolved by a military coup. The meeting was, then, a substitute for a coup under conditions that made even a show of force impossible. From the American perspective, it looked something like a cross between an encounter group and a meeting of ward bosses. From the Vietnamese perspective, it was a self-criticism session. Without any ideological training, or indeed any foreign interference, the generals quite unconsciously adopted the technique that the Viet Minh had institutionalized to settle personal and political conflicts without violence. What the Americans failed to appreciate in both instances was that the whole drama looked both natural and necessary to the participants. Self-criticism is, in other words, as acceptable to the Vietnamese as majority rule is to Americans.
    Ky himself declared in public afterwards, “All Vietnamese must make sacrifices in order to achieve unity and maintain the prestige of the armed forces. We can sacrifice our very life… or anything, including the renunciation of titles.” (Critchfield,
Long Charade,
p. 339.)

11
. Shaplen, “Letter from Saigon,” p. 154, and Jean Taillefer, “Les Elections au Sud-Vietnam,” pp. 453–456. According to the French journalist Taillefer, certain of these officers did not even bother to hide the fact that they reported a 90 percent turnout when only 20 percent of the people who registered actually voted. “In certain districts,” he concluded, “it would be difficult to argue that the elections took place at all.”

12
. Shaplen, “Letter from Saigon,” p. 154.

13
. Ibid., and Taillefer, “Les Elections.”

14
. Shaplen, “Letter from Saigon,” p. 157.

15
. Ibid., p. 157.

16
. Ward Just, in the
Washington Post,
28 October 1968.

17
. The election marked the beginning of the decline in the real, as opposed to the symbolic, power of Nguyen Cao Ky. Over the next few months Thieu slowly but systematically went about the business of removing all of Ky's supporters from the provincial commands until there was nothing left to support his establishment in Saigon. Towards the end of the process both the Americans and the NLF helped Thieu substantially in their own characteristic ways. During the Tet offensive an American helicopter pilot accidentally dropped a rocket into a suburban building where Ky's three or four closest political supporters happened to be standing. Not long afterwards, the NLF in full malice aforethought shot and badly wounded General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.

12: The Downward Spiral

  
1
. Robert Komer. Press conference.

  
2
. This rectification of figures and ambiguity of names undoutedly accounted for an experience Dr. Henry Kissinger had as a consultant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. While visiting Vietnam one year, Kissinger went to see a certain Vietnamese province chief and asked, among other things, how the pacification program was going. “Very well indeed,” said the province chief. “We've made great gains this year. Eighty percent of the province is pacified.” The next year Kissinger returned to Vietnam and put the same question to the same province chief. “Excellent,” was the answer. “We've been making great progress since you were last here. Seventy percent of the province is pacified.”

  
3
. Robert Komer, Press conference.

  
4
. Richard Critchfield,
The Long Charade,
p. 173.