Dreaming War by Gore Vidal

Author:Gore Vidal [Vidal, Gore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786750306
Publisher: Nation Books

Although we were not enthusiastic warriors, there was a true hatred of the enemy. We were convinced that the “Japs” were subhuman; and our atrocities against them pretty much matched theirs against us. I was in the Pacific Theater of Operations, where the war was not only imperial but racial: the white race was fighting the yellow race, and the crown would go to us as we were the earth’s supreme race, or so we had been taught. One of the ugliest aspects of that war was the racial stereotyping on both sides. In Europe we were respectful—even fearful—of the Germans. Since blacks and women were pretty much segregated in our military forces, World War II was, for us, literally, the white man’s burden.

So while the Golden Age had its moment in the sun up on deck, down in the engine room the management was inventing the “Defense” Department and the National Security Council with its secret, unconstitutional decrees, and the equally unconstitutional CIA, modeled, Allen Dulles remarked blithely, on the Soviets’ NKVD. We were then, without public debate, committed to a never-ending war, even though the management knew that the enemy was no match for us, economically or militarily. But, through relentless CIA “disinformation,” they managed to convince us that what was weak was strong, and that the Russians were definitely coming. “Build backyard shelters against the coming atomic war!” A generation was well and truly traumatized.

The Korean War put an end to our title as invincible heavyweight military champion of the world. We might have maintained our mystique by avoiding this eccentric war (we did call it a “police action”), but by then we had so exaggerated the power of the Soviet Union in tandem with China that we could do nothing but reel from one pointless military confrontation to another.

Unfortunately, Kennedy was less cynically practical than those who had presided over what Dean Acheson called “the creation” of the empire. Kennedy actually believed—or pretended to believe—their rhetoric. He liked the phrase “this twilight time.” He believed in the domino theory. He believed in “bearing any burden.” He invaded Cuba, and failed. He turned his attention to Asia, to “contain China” by interfering in a Vietnamese civil war where a majority had already voted for the communist Ho Chi Minh, who, quoting Jefferson, asked Eisenhower to make Vietnam an American protectorate. But, as Ike explained in his memoirs, this wasn’t possible: they were Communists.

In June 1961 Kennedy began the fastest buildup militarily since Pearl Harbor; he also rearmed Germany, setting off alarm bells in the Soviet Union. They spoke of denying us land access to our section of Berlin. Kennedy responded with a warlike speech, invoking “the Berlin crisis” as a world crisis. In response, Khrushchev built the wall. It was as if we were, somehow, willing a war to turn sad twilight to incandescent nuclear high noon.

The missile crisis in Cuba was the next move, with us as the provocateurs. Then, with the Vietnam War, we not

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