In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Soul of America

Many reasons have been given for the failure of the US in its war Vietnam and the significance of that event: misunderstood interests, cultural arrogance, silly military strategies, ill-informed tactics, and adverse domestic politics, among others. But Wolff provides a far more compelling reason and more profound meaning: the spiritual corruption of the US Army, a condition which likely reflected that of the country as a whole.

By any standard the country of South Vietnam was a materially corrupt place. All the governments since the time of separation of the country after the defeat of the French were venal and nepotistic in the extreme. The situation of the average South Vietnamese citizen after the French departure, if anything deteriorated substantially. This was apparent even to ambassadorial staff and reported to US authorities very early in the conflict. (See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

This condition of material corruption was probably sufficient on its own to provoke the eventual victory of the North with or without the assistance of the US military. But that assistance added a dimension to the conflict which was a gift to the North, a gift not only in terms of morale, but also in substantive military advantage. This latter negative contribution to the prosecution of the war is the substance of Wolff’s utterly fascinating memoir. (A comparison with the equivalent from the North Vietnamese side is informative: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

All first person accounts by Americans involved in the war in Vietnam share stories, anecdotes, and complaints about the existential distance between men on the ground and their commanders, about the failure of commanders to comprehend the basic facts of life of the South Vietnamese Army, about the racism of American soldiers toward each other as well as toward the Vietnamese, and about the pervasive deceit practiced by commanders among their own troops. (See for example: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

But in almost all these accounts, these conditions are treated as anomalous, not because they were uncommon but because they were considered as errors created by inexperience, miscommunication, or the occasional naked ambition of individuals. (Even those most critical of the war do this implicitly: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) What Wolff suggests is that not only were these conditions the rule rather than the exception, but that they were as intentional as the material bribery, trading with the enemy, and avoidance of responsibility of the South Vietnamese. The difference was that the Americans’ were symptoms of a spiritual void, a moral ennui which was both pervasive and infectious.

Wolff’s technique of moving fluidly from description of the external reality he experienced to his reflections on his own internal reactions to them is an outstanding way of making his point. His own spiritual corruption is simply an instance of the whole. And it takes on the shape of the whole as a matter of survival - in terms of personal identity as well as bodily existence - within the military culture.

Wolff realizes that the cash-based corruption of the South Vietnamese at least allows them to maintain a sense of purpose, even if that purpose is entirely selfish. The American corruption is more fundamental and involves the abandonment of intention, even thought about intention, entirely. His descriptions of this mass spiritual emptying are compelling:

“At Dong Tam I saw something that wasn’t allowed for in the national myth—our capacity for collective despair. People here seemed in the grip of unshakable petulance. It was in the slump of their shoulders and the plodding way they moved. A sourness had settled over the base, spoiling and coarsening the men. The resolute imperial will was all played out here at empire’s fringe, lost in rancor and mud. Here were pharaoh’s chariots engulfed; his horsemen confused; and all his magnificence dismayed.
A shithole”

During the era of Vietnam, everyone in the US government - the Presidents, The Secretaries of Defense, their various advisors, and both houses of Congress - lied to each other, to their constituents and to the soldiers who were sent off to fight. This is well documented in many written and filmed histories and personal memoirs. But rarely are the implications of this pervasive ethos of deception so clearly stated as in Wolff’s straightforward memoir. The result is not merely de-moralizing, it is universally destructive of the very instinct of rationality:

“In a world where the most consequential things happen by chance, or from unfathomable causes, you don’t look to reason for help. You consort with mysteries. You encourage yourself with charms, omens, rites of propitiation. Without your knowledge or permission the bottom-line caveman belief in blood sacrifice, one life buying another, begins to steal into your bones.”

The relationship between seniors and subordinates in military life is obviously central to their joint ability to act effectively, however that is defined. But as Wolff points out, that relationship was fundamentally flawed. Officers and men did not fight for each other; they did not even pretend to protect each other; and they, too, continuously lied to each other right along with their government masters. The consequence was not just a feeling of gnostic dread but also of a loss 0f any sense of the future:

“The ordinary human sensation of occupying a safe place in a coherent scheme allowed me to perform, to help myself as much as I could. But at times I was seized and shaken by the certainty that nothing I did meant anything, and all around me I sensed currents of hatred and malign intent. When I felt it coming on I gave a sudden wrenching shudder as if I’d bitten into something sour, and forced my thoughts elsewhere. To consider the reality of my situation only made it worse.”

An empty spirit is a vacuum which is impossible to maintain. It is necessary that something replace the absent contents - call it a moral code or fundamental drive, or culture, it doesn’t matter all that much - and with these new contents a new soul is effectively created. The process is both gradual and sudden, the malady both chronic and acute. The open, verbalized response to the Tet offensive of 1968 was a recognition of what had been the case all along and experienced as such by the Vietnamese:

“As a military project Tet failed; as a lesson it succeeded. The VC came into My Tho and all the other towns knowing what would happen. They knew that once they were among the people we would abandon our pretense of distinguishing between them. We would kill them all to get at one. In this way they taught the people that we did not love them and would not protect them; that for all our talk of partnership and brotherhood we disliked and mistrusted them, and that we would kill every last one of them to save our own skins. To believe otherwise was self-deception. They taught that lesson to the people, and also to us.”

In my experience of reading about Vietnam, Wolff is unique in a remarkable respect. Despite the snafu’s, apparent irrationalities, possible incompetencies, mendacity, and what most of us would think of as screw-ups, Wolff doesn’t attribute anything to error. What is done is intentional, strictly purposeful, even when those taking action are unconscious of the purpose involved. This stance then provokes the question ‘What was the real purpose of the war in Vietnam?’ Not its stated military or political objectives, which in any case were never clear and shifted continuously. Nor its strategic rationale about Asian dominoes and American honour. But the actual unstated purpose of everything that was done, the net collective intent as it were of everyone involved.

As I read Wolff, the purpose of the Vietnam war was to show America to itself, a purpose which it accomplished exceptionally well. America was a moral desert. Only its exposure to itself had any chance of establishing a consciousness of this condition. The fact that all sorts of explanations and theories have been put forward to obscure and qualify this revelation is to be expected given the desolate barrenness that the country had shown itself to be in a time of great stress. Wolff’s witness to this spiritual desolation is moving as well as important. Only upon his return to ‘the world,’ did he recognize his own transformation within the military:

“In Vietnam I’d barely noticed it, but here, among people who did not take corruption and brutality for granted, I came to understand that I did, and that this set me apart.”

That the consciousness of an objective achieved was too much for America to bear is obvious. The country has yet to come to terms with the real horror of its own intentions in Vietnam. More generally, it has really never been that New England Congregational ‘house on a hill,’ a place of spiritual realization. It has always been an oppressive, self-rationalizing and violent place in which the natives distrust and con each other as a matter of principle. Am I too hopeful to suggest that with Donald Trump America is giving itself a second chance to see itself for what it actually is?

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