David Harris has written a powerful denunciation of U.S. policy in Vietnam.
His title, Our War (Times Books, 1996; $21), sums up his conviction that the Vietnam War must be viewed not simply as an unfortunate mistake by America's leaders but rather as a monstrous betrayal of our democratic legacy by the American people. Harris holds that just as the German people, not only Hitler, should accept responsibility for killing six million Jews in the Holocaust, so should Americans accept responsibility for the deaths of three million Vietnamese. Until this happens, Harris argues, we can never cleanse ourselves of our collective guilt and, worse, its disabling consequences in our own society.
There is force in his argument that a democratic government by definition carries out its people's will. It was therefore, the people's will when the government pursued search and destroy operations against rural villages, used napalm and high-altitude bombing against civilian populations and openly accepted the torture of suspected enemy sympathizers. There is further force in his contention that the enemy was created when we intervened to prevent democratic self-determination, a right we have traditionally held sacred in our own country.
Harris's anger, three decades after serving two years in federal prison for burning his draft card, continues to smolder. "I am outraged still," he writes.
If there is some desire for self-justification in his bitter characterization of the evils of our Vietnam policy, it is understandable. Harris was as much a leader in 1965 as those who commanded combat rifle platoons and died or were wounded in the process. From former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's In Retrospect to former CIA Director William Colby's Lost Victory, a series of post-Vietnam books show that Harris was right then and is right now when he writes:
" . . . having made lying an accepted government function, our government is now overrun with liars; having made our public posture heartless as a matter of policy, we are now unable to bring our heart to public affairs; having made killing a measure of our national efforts, we watch helplessly as killing has become one of our principal cultural currencies; having failed to look our transgressions straight in the face, we have not been straight with one another since; having refused to live up to our values, we are now increasingly without values; having made language into hype, we now have nothing believable to say."
Harris's concise book is also part autobiography. His evolution from resistance leader, to imprisonment, to his present status as a 50-year-old intellectual suburbanite presents a grim picture of what may be the disillusionment of an entire generation.
Harris has visited Vietnam since the last American troops were withdrawn in 1973. He has spoken with countless veterans, Americans and Vietnamese, and all of this has confirmed his conviction that he was right in opposing the war on moral grounds. But his experiences seem also to have created some sense of guilt--that he, Bill Clinton and most of the white, middle class did not share the hardships of the young Americans who fought in the rice paddies and triple- canopy jungle. Our War reflects a sad reality: The young men of his generation who did not serve in Vietnam may bear psychological scars almost as real as the scars of those who fought.
This book should be read in conjunction with Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July and Lewis Puller Jr.'s Fortunate Son. Kovic and Puller were young Marines who each suffered the loss of both legs at the hips. After initially believing in America's purpose in Vietnam, they ultimately came to the same conclusion as Harris-- that America's conduct of the war violated the very principles that have given us cohesion as a nation.
I hope David Harris will keep writing. Reading Our War, one is reminded of former Marine sergeant William Manchester, who exorcised his memories of the savage fighting on Okinawa 30 years later by writing Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War. Thirty-two years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Harris still bitterly grieves his loss of innocence, idealism and sense of humor. And it appears from his words that his loss may be permanent. Like Manchester, Harris, too, has demons to exorcize. I hope that this book will finally allow him to put those demons to rest.
Pete McCloskey Jr., '50, JD '53, was a Republican member of the U. S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1983. David Harris ran against him in 1976.
