Postmodern Culture

Burke, Anthony, 1966-
Violence and Reason on the Shoals of Vietnam
Postmodern Culture - Volume 9, Number 3, May 1999

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Burke, "Violence and Reason on the Shoals of Vietnam" Violence and Reason on the Shoals of Vietnam Anthony Burke © 1999 PMC 9.3 "Tell me, pray," said I, "who is this Mr Kurtz?" "The chief of the Inner Station," he answered in a short tone, looking away. "He is a prodigy.... He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what else. We want... for the guidance of the cause entrusted us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wider sympathies, a singleness of purpose... and so he comes here, a special being..." --Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (55) "Vietnam is still with us." --Henry Kissinger (Karnow 9) Ironic perhaps, that we begin with the words of Henry Kissinger -- Harvard academic, international relations theorist, member of the Trilateral Commission, of the boards of American Express, R.H. Macy, CBS, Revlon, Freeport-McMoRan, and former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. Of course Kissinger, placed so powerfully at the locus of several influential discourses of world order in the post-war age, had his own axe to grind. He went on to say: "[Vietnam] has created doubts about American judgement, about American credibility, about American power -- not only at home, but throughout the world. It has poisoned our domestic debate. So we paid an exorbitant price for the decisions that were made in good faith and for good purpose" (Issacson 142). The crisis to which he alludes would be viewed and...