America in Vietnam - Overview

Overview

Published in 1978, America in Vietnam argues against traditional or "orthodox" interpretations of the war as unnecessary, unjust, or unwinnable. The book has proven highly controversial. Historians of the "orthodox" school have singled it out for harsh criticism, while the "revisionist school" of Vietnam historiography holds it to be a watershed in the literature on the war. An infamous text among critics of the Vietnam War, the text has found ardent support among the revisionist minority of academics, such as Norman Podhoretz, Mark Moyar, and Michael Lind. America in Vietnam is frequently characterized as a "revisionist" history of the Vietnam War. Lewy argues,

It is the reasoned conclusion of this study... that the sense of guilt created by the Vietnam war in the minds of many Americans is not warranted and that the charges of officially, condoned illegal and grossly immoral conduct are without substance. Indeed, detailed examination of battlefield practices reveals that the loss civilian life in Vietnam was less great than in World War II and Korea and that concern with minimizing the ravages of the war was strong. To measure and compare the devastation and loss of human life caused by different war will be objectionable to those who repudiate all resort to military force as an instrument fo foreign policy and may be construed as callousness. Yet as long as wars do take place at all it remains a moral duty to seek to reduce the agony caused by war, and the fulfillment of this obligation should not be disdained. I hope that this book may help demonstrate that moral convictions are not the exclusive possession of persons in conscience opposed to war, and that those who in certain circumstances accept the necessity and ethical justification of armed conflict also do care about human suffering.

The text was praised by US Senator Jim Webb, a Vietnam veteran then of the House Committee on Veteran's Affairs staff, and by several newspapers, including The Economist, which described it as "in many way the best history of the war yet to appear". Critics have included historians of the "orthodox" school, as well as various anti-war activists. Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky were singled out for criticism by Lewy in the book; Chomsky would later respond that "every state has its Guenter Lewys".

Lewy contends that the Vietnam War was legal and not immoral. In recalling the 1971 congressional testimony of some US veterans who were critical of the war, one of whom compared US action in Vietnam to genocide, Lewy suggests that some "witnesses sounded as if they had memorized North Vietnamese propaganda." The book is broadly critical of domestic opponents of American participation in the Vietnam War. In using the phrases "peace activists" or "peace demonstrations", Lewy often puts quotation marks around the word "peace", implying alternative motivations for the activism. The author suggests there may be a connection between cases of sabotage in the Navy and the anti-war movement:

Between 1965 and 1970, the Navy experienced a growing number of cases of sabotage and arson on its ships, but no evidence could be found that antiwar activists had directly participated in a sabotage attempt on a Navy vessel. Cases of fragging and avoidance of combat may well have been instigated at times by antiwar militants, though no hard evidence of organized subversion was ever discovered.