1) I do not have much personal direct knowledge about Lansdale whose
heyday in Vietnam was the '50s. (I know more about the later periods). I
was aware that he was not individually the person Greene had portrayed
(hence my wording).
I think Jim has it right that Lansdale fits a type; Gene has the
right type in mind -- except a good number were liberal Democrats (Frances
Fitzgerald's dad was not). Lansdale, despite his rank, never had a "real"
military post (one found that in those days: General William Draper under
whom Lansdale served was a similar case).
2) But Lansdale was a "College Man" (UCLA, journalism &
advertising). Besides being "College Men", many of the CIA people were Ivy
Leaguers and this contributed to the links to the anthropologists and other
academics. Cornell and Yale specialized in S.E. Asia (along with
Berkeley). When Frances Fitzgerald wanted to study about Vietnam she went
to Yale (but studied mostly under Paul Mus).
IMO, the anthropology was pretty useless babble, often for the
U.S. audience. For example, they later bragged how they influenced the
1955 S. Vietnamese elections (mandated by the Geneva Agreements; Diem vs
Emperor Bao Dai) by color coding the ballots according to superstitious
beliefs. But Diem announced official results of 98% for him, so you can
imagine that his real victory came from complete military control of all
ballots. But it was typical of that type of anthropologist to think that
balloting would be based on "ignorant" superstition -- the Vietnamese had
already been highly politicized by decades of anti-colonial combat!
Of course, we see similar prejudices today when people speak of the
"ancient" nature of the Shia-Sunni conflicts in a sophisticated place like
Iraq.
3) The clash in Vietnam between the CIA/anthropologists and the "real"
military was along lines similar to what happened in the Tenent/Rumsfeld
era - both on the surface and in terms of the socio-economic strategy and
forces they represent.
On the surface the clash is bureaucratic: favoring a strategy
because it also corresponds to their institution's strength. But some of
it also relates to how radically to restructure the existing society. In
Vietnam, the "thinking man" types urged going slow -- building on a
patchwork of existing social strong points such as the traditional
Francophile elite (vis General "Big" Minh), semi-feudal landlords,
pre-capitalist montagnards, some "neutralist" Buddhists, *in addition* to
the usual pro-U.S. elements. LBJ and the mainstream military sought to
bulldoze their way forward remaking national politics in an unambiguous
pro-U.S. manner by drawing on businessmen, urban elite, etc. - and only
those Generals who represented these constituencies (as we saw with
Chalabi, Alawi, etc).
[We discussed this on Pen-l in August under "JFK/Diem"]
Paul
At 02:51 PM 10/12/2007 -0700, you wrote:
From my long-ago reading of The Quiet American I pictured the
eponymous character as a young William F. Buckley, fresh out of Yale,
not a military officer.
Gene Coyle
On Oct 12, 2007, at 2:45 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
On 10/12/07, Eugene Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Wikipedia has this about Edward Lansdale re "The Quiet American"
Lansdale's memoir, published in 1972, was In the Midst of Wars. His
biography, The Unquiet American, was written by Cecil Currey and
published
in 1988; the title refers to the common, but incorrect belief,
that the
eponymous character in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American
was based on
Lansdale. According to Norman Sherry's authorized biography of
Greene The
Life of Graham Greene (Penguin, 2004), Landsdale did not
officially enter
the Vietnam arena until 1954, while Greene wrote his book in 1952
after
departing Viet Nam.
There are a lot of people _like_ Landsdale working for the CIA (and
before that, the OSS).
--
Jim Devine / "The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous."
-- Naomi Klein.
