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Gore Vidal on the Vietnam war - oh how it rings true
Gore Vidal
Ten years ago I thought of the Vietnam caper as our empire's Syracusan adventure, an analogy which now seems melodramatic, for during all this time there has not been a Sparta (pace Kissinger? Schlesinger Fordinger) capable of bringing us down. Only we could have done that; and we came close. Fortunately, the very thoroughness of our defeat ought to put an
end forever to our loony military pretensions. Americans have always been lousy soldiers. In the face of the enemy, Kilroy throws away his gun and splits; should an officer object, Kilroy frags him. To me our enduring
cowardice is a sign of good judgment. We win the occasional war and deter would-be Spartas through our superior production of lethal toys. This true state of affairs makes all the more meaningless the rhetoric of those who have no actual connection with American life, like the current administration which has now taken to warning us that the last virginal orifice of the all-American, all-macho imperium is in serious danger of
penetration by nuclear-tipped cylindrical hardware unless we cease our pitiful, helpless "isolationism."
But even the ventriloquists who speak through the dummy in the Oval office know that we are none of us isolationist, nor can we ever be, thanks to
the interdependency of the world's economies. "Isolationist" is simply this year's code word for those who oppose the use of military force against other nations, for those who refuse to bear any burden, make any sacrifice, etc. After 1976, I predict (being an optimist) that the word will have gone forth to friend and foe alike that the era of American bull**** is finished and that we will now try to create that society the
world has been waiting two hundred years to see: an American civilization.
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