Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

Representing the more dovish view, David Fromkin and James Chace assert without argument that “the American decision to intervene in Indochina was predicated on the view that the United States has a duty to look beyond its purely national interests,” and that, pursuant to its “global responsibilities,” the United States must “serve the interests of mankind.” “As a moral matter we were right to choose the lesser of two evils” and to oppose “communist aggression” by the Vietnamese in Vietnam, but on the “practical side” it was “wrong” because “our side was likely to lose.” The moral imperatives of our service “to the interests of mankind” do not, however, require that we intervene to overthrow governments that are slaughtering their own populations, such as the Indonesian government we supported in 1965, or our Guatemalan and Salvadoran clients of the 1980s. On the contrary, they observe, the success of our Indonesian allies in destroying the domestic political opposition by violence in 1965 was a respectable achievement that should have led us to reconsider our Vietnam policy.