In the 1950s there were three prominent Asian leaders who were also Christians -- Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek (
But before looking at what it has to say about him, it's important to explain just what is Seth Jacobs' ruling theory.
Jacobs believes that religion played a far greater part in American involvement in Vietnam's affairs than has hitherto been realized. Asia was perceived by the policy-makers on Capitol Hill as an area about to be taken over by atheists, Communists receiving their orders from the godless citadel of Moscow.
In addition to this, Asians themselves were seen as passive by nature, easily swayed, and for the most part adherents of a religion, Buddhism, that encouraged just such passivity. For them to have Buddhist leaders was therefore not enough.
Christians, stalwarts in their opposition to godlesness in all its forms, were the only individuals capable of leading these mild-mannered people in resisting the monster from the north.
In order to support this analysis, which goes against the Marxist view that the motives for almost everything are economic, Jacobs looks at the diplomatic exchanges between top American statesmen of the 1950s and their representatives in southeast Asia. He also looks at some key books that succeeded in shaping American public opinion about the region in that distant era. All these sources emphasized the religious nature of the struggle.
This might be of merely academic interest were it not for the quite extraordinary parallels with the situation today. In 2005, we see once again a heavy American presence in a distant land with strong religious reasons given for that involvement. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are all reported to hold apocalyptic views about the cosmic battle in which they are involved.
The Axis of Evil, heir to Reagan's Evil Empire, once again puts religion in the front line, and in addition a handful of bizarre books are again credited with lying behind the American administration's thinking.
The similarities don't end here. In the run-up to the war in Vietnam, a coalition, in effect of "the willing," was put together, involving Australia, New Zealand and a handful of other countries, in order to give an international gloss to what was essentially an American commitment.
An anti-atheistic crusade was announced -- a term still thought permissible in those days -- and the entire project was presented under a "slavery versus freedom" flag. The parallels with today, in other words, are terrifyingly exact.
First among the books to rally American opinion in favor of action in Southeast Asia was Tom Dooley's Deliver Us from Evil, described by Jacobs as "a brilliant piece of Cold-War propaganda in which the communist enemy was irredeemably evil and the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies were virtue incarnate."
Dooley was a medic who had witnessed the "Passage to Freedom" exodus of refugees from Communist-held North Vietnam to the south in 1954 and 1955. Atrocity stories were his speciality, notably ones of Catholic priests with nails hammered into their skulls in mocking imitation of Christ's crown of thorns. The suppurating wounds of the Vietnamese refugees themselves, though also graphically described, tended to get second place.
Deliver Us from Evil is described by Jacobs as "racist, lacking in subtlety, and barren of even a sketchy awareness of the complexities of Vietnamese history and politics." Even so, the powerful men in Washington all read it, and so, it seems, did a large proportion of the American people.
The fact that Dooley was gay, and was dishonorably discharged from the US forces, though without the public humiliation usually accompanying such a dismissal, was hushed up. Dooley had become a far too useful propagandist for the publicizing of such facts to be permitted.
Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American was a very different matter. Highly praised in Europe, it was excoriated in the US press. What's more, when it was filmed by Oscar-winning director Joseph Mankiewicz, the book's entire argument was reversed, and the satirized American, Pyle, displayed as a whiter-than-white hero.
The contrast between European and American attitudes is yet another parallel with more recent events.
Another theme of the era in America was fear that the US had become too soft to stand up to the Reds. The book that most compellingly argued that, Lederer and Burdick's The Ugly American, is also subjected to extended analysis in this book.
Vietnamese politics, always complex as they involved differences between north and south, the claims of at least four different religions, as well as the very different attitudes of the French and the Americans (the area's two outside tormentors), are also presented here with unusual clarity. Jacobs' style is notably vivid and forceful, while nowhere evading the convolutions of the actual situation on the ground.
And Vietnam was a famously complicated place. During World War II, for instance, the US had supported Ho Chi Minh, just as it was later in Iraq to support Saddam Hussein. This time it was because Ho was resisting the Japanese, who had been allowed to base troops in Vietnam by the pro-Nazi French government based in Vichy.
Again, Ngo Dinh Diem had to fight off many opponents, the Communists apart, in order to gain full US backing.
He was eventually murdered in November 1963 in Saigon's Chinese "Cholon" district by order of a clutch of conspiring generals. His rule had been characterized by cruelty, despite the hero's monikers bestowed on him by Washington -- the "miracle man of Asia," "Asia's Churchill," and so forth.
As for Chiang Kai-shek, this book has some interesting things to say about why he was so dear to the hearts of Americans, and why, for example, he appeared 10 times on the cover of Time magazine, more than anyone else has ever achieved.
This is a fine book. The author says that studies of how the US became involved in Vietnam have become a virtual academic cottage industry, but he went ahead with this book nonetheless because he believed he had a new angle on those much-discussed and much-disputed events.
Such 1950s figures as President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles also come in for some new analyses, for the most part pointing out the religious perspective they adopted when viewing foreign affairs.
The inevitable conclusion you reach after reading this fascinating book is that while so much has changed in the world, some things have not changed at all.
Just after 6am, I walked up to the ticket gate at Taipei Main Station and entered the Taiwan Railway platform without scanning any ticket; instead, I flashed the Sanrio Fun Rail pass on my phone to the gate worker and was admitted. I found my train and prepared to board. My destination? This very same station. I was embarking on a 13-hour journey on one of two round-the-island trains operated by ezTravel. They run each day, one counterclockwise around the island and one clockwise. They differ in a number of ways from an ordinary Taiwan Railway train and can make for
Jason Han says that the e-arrival card spat between South Korea and Taiwan shows that Seoul is signaling adherence to its “one-China” policy, while Taiwan’s response reflects a reciprocal approach. “Attempts to alter the diplomatic status quo often lead to tit-for-tat responses,” the analyst on international affairs tells the Taipei Times, adding that Taiwan may become more cautious in its dealings with South Korea going forward. Taipei has called on Seoul to correct its electronic entry system, which currently lists Taiwan as “China (Taiwan),” warning that reciprocal measures may follow if the wording is not changed before March 31. As of yesterday,
The Portuguese never established a presence on Taiwan, but they must have traded with the indigenous people because later traders reported that the locals referred to parts of deer using Portuguese words. What goods might the Portuguese have offered their indigenous trade partners? Among them must have been slaves, for the Portuguese dealt slaves across Asia. Though we often speak of “Portuguese” ships, imagining them as picturesque vessels manned by pointy-bearded Iberians, in Asia Portuguese shipping between local destinations was crewed by Asian seamen, with a handful of white or Eurasian officers. “Even the great carracks of 1,000-2,000 tons which plied
On Thursday, former Taipei mayor and founder of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Seven others related to the case were also handed prison sentences, while two were found not guilty. It has been a bad week for the TPP. On Tuesday, prosecutors charged Chinese immigrant Xu Chunying (徐春鶯) with suspicion of taking part in Beijing-directed election interference. Xu has strong links to the TPP, which once offered her a party list legislator nomination. Tuesday also
RSS