The Scar that Binds: American Culture and the Vietnam War, and: Vietnam: The Early Decisions (review)

Book Reviews 363 officials. For nearly ten years, Armstrong has battled in several courts and filed numerous appeals, trying to gain access to PROFS notes detailing correspondence between primarñy the National Security Council and the White House (from the Reagan to the Clinton administrations). The government continues to argue and the courts continue to rule that e-maü is "not a record category requiring preservation " (145). While Armstrong's essay is noteworthy for its consideration of technology, a second essay should be recognized for its form. Chapter six is "Playing the Information Game: How It Took Thirteen Years and Two Lawsuits to Get J. Edgar Hoover's Secret Supreme Court Sex Files," by freelance journalist and attorney Alexander Charns, and attorney Paul M. Green. Whüe the title of this essay clearly forecasts the content, it also hints at the playful tone of the authors. Compared to its detaü-laden, acronym-filled, endnote-riddled counterparts, this essay is entertaining and the most readable. The authors use popular culture references as section headings (e.g., "Real 'X-Files': The Truth is Out There [Maybe]"), and suggest that humor and collaboration can lighten the tortuous affair of investigating the U.S. government. The authors of A Culture of Secrecy are to be commended for their work as pioneers . Their research maps provide us with an invaluable resource. Readers of this journal, however, may be left dissatisfied by the lack of analysis of the rhetorical function, creation, and maintenance of secrecy in a democratic society. I suspect, nonetheless, that rhetoricians might be interested in examining the ways in which many of these authors work from the assumption that there are "true" histories which could be accessed if only the government did not deny the people's right to know. Marcy R. Chvasta Southern Illinois University, Carbondale The Scar that Binds: American Culture and the Vietnam War. By Keith Beattie. New York: New York University Press, 1998; pp. χ + 230. $40.00 Vietnam: The Early Decisions. By Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger: Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997; pp. 1 + 228. $35.99 Despite significant differences in format, methodology, and time frame, both of these books ulustrate the power of rhetoric in American politics. Gardner and Gittinger's work presents papers originally given at an October 1993 conference at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin. Citing Oliver Stone's movie JKF in his introduction, Gardner sets as a major theme of the book the question whether President Kennedy would have agreed with President Johnson's decision to fight in Vietnam. Ten papers follow, including four on "The Political Context," (by Robert Divine, Brian VanDeMark, Lloyd C. Gardner and Wüliam J. 364 Rhetoric & Public Affairs Duiker), two on "The Military Context" (by John Prados and George C. Herring), three on "Kennedy and Johnson," (by William Conrad Gibbons, John M. Newman, and Larry Berman) and one on "The Soviet Dimension (by Iiya V. Gaiduk). Since more critical historians such as Mariyn Young are missing, the book can be characterized as showing us how many of our most respected mainstream U.S. (and one Russian) diplomatic historians view our most disastrous war. Ré-ΡΑ readers will be interested not only in Robert Divine's analysis of the rhetorical power of the Domino Theory, but also in the way in which, despite explicit warnings from Ambassador Robert Thompson, Kennedy overreacted to Nikita Khruschev's 1961 speech on Wars of National Liberation. Add to this Prados's analysis of how Municha and new theories of deterrence affected Washington bureaucrats, Herring's discussion of how a "conspiracy of süence" by an embittered Joint Chiefs of Staff failed to give Kennedy important advice, and discussion by several authors of Kennedy's belief that concessions elsewhere forced him to take a stand in Vietnam, and a powerful case can be made that, despite periodic private musings to the contrary, Kennedy would never have dared retreat from Vietnam. "Like characters in Mary Franklin's Frankenstein" notes VanDeMark, President Kennedy and his advisors "created a rationale for involvement in Vietnam that assumed a life of its own and eventually overwhelmed its creators" (32). Newman, on the other hand, argues that Kennedy...