Tony nodded agreement while polishing his gold-rimmed glasses. “Yeah, it certainly makes that business with the Green Berets seem tame. Until a few months ago that was the nearest thing to an American atrocity story to have come out of the war—other than the fact that we are in it. There eight men were charged with the execution of one person, and he was someone they thought was a double agent. What does your local hero think about all that? Have you heard him say?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Angela asked. “We had a panel discussion in moral theology class about the issues in the Chuyen death, and Seth was asked to visit the class and participate. He seems to think the Special Forces are a bunch of overgrown Eagle Scouts. He told about the schools they had built in the jungle villages, and how their medics gave the natives the best health care they ever had, including some skillful amateur surgery. He pointed out that the Green Berets are experts in counterinsurgency, and they view their job to be training the local people to fight their own battles rather than having Americans fight them for them. He saw the death of Chuyen as an execution of a spy, pure and simple. He did hedge a little when one of the guys pointed out to him that his local freedom fighters were well-paid mercenaries, and he did not really have a comeback when someone said that since the Green Berets had Chuyen in custody, they were no longer in danger from him and could have allowed him to stand trial. But he seemed to have no doubt of the essential rightness of what his buddies are doing. In fact, I gather that he didn’t re-enlist not only because he had felt the call to the ministry, but that he was also disgusted with the rivalry between the various intelligence services and over the lack of support the people back home were giving to heroic men who were going through hell for them.”
“But, Rod,” Tony said, “We still haven’t answered Angela’s original question. How did a clean-living country like ours get involved in a war like this? Are the revisionists right in saying that ever since World War II we have been involved in capitalistic expansion in Europe, and that our imperialism has forced Russia to take defensive measures which we then have called aggression?”
“That’s not the kind of question I want to be involved in with a younger colleague. I’m sure all you young Turks in grad schools have kept far better abreast of such discussions than I have. But I do have some thoughts on the subject.”
“Seriously, we’d like to hear them. I’ll admit I was baiting you a little, but I do want to know what you think. I’ve read a lot of material, but I still have unanswered questions.”
“Well, Tony, the way it looks to me is that until World War II we were an isolationist country that was able to remain rather naive about international affairs. But our situation coming out of that war virtually forced us into involvement. And I do not buy the revisionist thesis. I think Russia was expansionist, and we were not. We did become involved in order to stop aggression, and I think we did so with relatively pure motives. I don’t know of any historical parallel to the Marshall Plan, for instance. But we had too much too quickly. We somehow moved from supporting righteous causes to thinking a cause was righteous because we supported it. And we came to be fascinated with our skill in playing the game of international diplomacy. Angela, I’ve not really checked out all the connections historically, and you would know far better than I do, but I’ve always thought that somehow Reinhold Niebuhr got involved in all of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Niebuhr said that we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of imagining that we are uninvolved. He said in effect—I think I’m really quoting Paul Ramsey, but I consider the point of view ‘Niebuhrian’—that if the Good Samaritan had come along five minutes earlier, while the attack was still going on, he would have had to decide what then would be the most loving response. Should he protect the man who had fallen among thieves, or should he refuse to involve himself in violence even if it meant that the man who was being attacked might die? Would he not decide in fact who would die? By intervening he could see that it was the robber rather than the robbed that died, while by standing aloof he would guarantee that it would be the innocent who suffered. I wonder if such thinking did not get us to a position very near to saying that the end justified the means? That seems to be what young Clarke is saying.
“I also think we developed a fascination with gadgetry as much as we did with power. The admiration of John Kennedy and John Foster Dulles for James Bond is a case in point. They bought into the myth of espionage as Fleming fantasized about it. Don’t forget that John le Carré and other authors were writing about the kinds of duplicity with one’s own people that so-called civilized nations resorted to. The final ingredient was a naive young nation just off the farm getting involved with the mysterious East where corruption was no longer in its infancy. This is what I think.”
Angela, who had been wrinkling her brow during the last part of the Canon’s remarks, said, “You’re on to something, Rod. What seems especially ironic is that some who are the most strenuously opposed to the violence in Vietnam on moral grounds are the very ones who have started bombing buildings here in protest of the war. That movement is going to spread, I’m afraid. But this means that even for the Weathermen the issue is not whether the use of violence is ever justified, but rather what are the causes for which it may legitimately be used. We have all drunk from the same cup of violence.”
At this point Tony stood up. “Lots to think about. I won’t reply because I want to think about what you have said. Also, we need to be getting home to bed. Come on, Angela. Saturday is a work day at Wabash.”
Helping them with their coats, Bothwell donned his own as well. “I need to go to the library to check one so-called fact in the book I’m reviewing so I can give the review to Mrs. Strong in the morning to type. Since she has a full-time job, weekends contain the only time she can spare for a middle-aged scholar who never learned to type.”
“As Pogo would say, Rod,” Angela said, presenting a cheek to be kissed goodnight, “‘mechanical spelling do have its hazards.’ Thank Katrina for us. It was a scrumptious dinner. And the conversation and company weren’t bad either.”
Walking down the close to the library, Roderick Bothwell was gratified to note the crispness of the air. They might get their first snow before morning. The lights along the sidewalks gave an idyllic appearance to the whole campus. In this tranquil setting, how far away all violence seemed. Bothwell was too experienced in the life of religious communities to imagine that living in one was to escape the conflicts of the world. No, a community such as a seminary, monastery, or convent was not a school for charity because all who lived in it were nice. Rather, it was precisely because people in such communities were anything but sweet and gentle that they had to find creative ways of living together. Here in a controlled environment one could encounter the abrasiveness of other personalities head on and hope that something good would come of it. But he knew too well such happy outcomes were by no means inevitable.
Climbing up the steps into the School and entering through its low, wide, rounded fortress door, he was surprised by—and surprised—a young man stealthily emerging from the library. Although he did not get a good look at the face, Bothwell experienced a vague sense of recognition. This was not a student, or he would have certainly known him. And no seminarian would have dressed in a nice conservative suit and topcoat, not even on a Friday night. Bothwell dismissed the identity of the man as none of his business. Turning into the library, he was not surprised to see the lights still burning brightly at midnight on the first Friday night of the term. Some of the older students, long removed from academic settings, found the going rough and had to set a steady pace for themselves at the beginning of the semester if they hoped to arrive successfully at the end.
Beyond the circulation desk on the right of the entrance and the card catalog on the left, the reading room was furnished with long oak tables, the bookracks down their centers serving the students on both sides. The tabletops sloped from these centers; their golden-varnished surfaces reflecting glare from the long, low-hanging light fixtures. A spiral iron staircase in the back right-hand corner led to stacks on