Time Essay: HOW SHOULD AMERICANS FEEL?

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This dilemma produced not only tragedy for the Vietnamese but a series of mistakes, half-truths, lies and euphemisms that damaged the fabric of American society. Leaders first deceived themselves and then deceived the public. The American people, misled from the top and from the sides, underwrote an opaque conflict that neither generals nor Presidents quite comprehended. The tragedy was only heightened by the fact that the U.S. entered the war not for any base reasons, but out of an understandable desire—although many saw the conflict as merely a civil war—to thwart Communist aggression. Even Senator J. William Fulbright, long a foe of the American involvement in Viet Nam, concedes that the war was not fought "because of any bad motives or evil purposes, but because some of our leaders didn't understand the situation."

One of the war's victims was the national conscience, which was never able to reconcile America's lofty intentions with the slaughter that appeared every evening on the TV screens. In a melancholy, prophetic book, Tragedy and Philosophy, Princeton Philosopher Walter Kaufmann departed briefly from his discussion of ancient Greek and Elizabethan plays to mention Viet Nam. His explanation of why the U.S. seemed somehow unable to quit the war in 1968 is a therapeutic jolt for those who prefer not to recall the recent past. "If we stop, our guilt is palpable," he wrote, "all this hell for nothing. Hence we must incur more guilt, and more, and always more to cleanse ourselves of guilt. Here is a parallel to Macbeth." But in real as in theatrical tragedy, the killing had to stop.

It will always be an open and disturbing question whether the U.S. could and should have pulled out sooner than it did.

At any rate, those who are quick to judge cannot have it both ways: they cannot condemn the violence of the war and simultaneously criticize the U.S. for putting an end to its part in the violence.

In the two years since the Paris accords, it was almost certainly a mistake, another self-deception, to assume that President Nguyen Van Thieu could fight the other side to a standstill without U.S. troops or airpower. Even though large numbers of South Vietnamese clearly still wanted to fight the Communists, it might have been far wiser to prod Saigon into a compromise with the Communists.

This might have ultimately saved lives in Viet Nam and provided a less calamitous finale.

What of the argument that the U.S. had a moral commitment after the Paris accords to support Thieu with military aid? It did have such a commitment, and it did supply such aid. But it is hard to maintain that paring down that aid was a breach of the commitment, or that the commitment had to run indefinitely. One thing is evident: continuation of American military aid, even at much higher levels, even with the additional amount requested by the President, could not have basically changed the situation. It might have prolonged Saigon's resistance without a clear end in sight. Cuts in U.S. assistance certainly were a factor (see "The Anatomy of a Debacle," page 16). But this cannot account for the total collapse of Thieu's armies—the corruption, waste, demoralization, the acts of pillage and murder against the very people the troops were supposed to be defending.