"There It Is": Narratives of the Vietnam War. Tom Burns
would be solved” (145), Linh says, an admission that underlines the paranoia and lack of trust engendered by the South Vietnamese regime. The implication, which Linh does not seem to be aware of, is that the enemy does support and put trust in their leaders and this may be one reason why they will win.
iv. Morris West, The Ambassador (1965)
West’s novel concentrates on Diem’s persecution of the Buddhists, the conspiracy against him, and his eventual assassination, with the unwilling compliance of the American ambassador, “Maxwell Gordon Amberley,” based on Henry Cabot Lodge.43 Amberley is regarded as a shrewd professional, an ambassador for ten years but now somewhat at a loss after the death of his supportive wife. He is undertaking instruction from a Zen Buddhist master in Japan when he is called upon to deal with the current government crisis in Vietnam. An assistant explains (again, by the domino theory) that the US has become involved in the country because “we want to maintain a military foothold in Southeast Asia. If South Vietnam goes, Thailand is outflanked and Singapore is threatened,” and “we backed Phung Van Cung [Diem’s name in the novel] and his family because they were the best and strongest administrators available” but can no longer be controlled (9). Cung and his family are persecuting the Buddhist majority and will no longer listen to reason, i.e. do what the Americans tell him to do. It is essentially Amberley’s job to give him this message more firmly or help get rid of him.
The ambassador finds it exciting that the streets in Saigon are tense until he witnesses the suicide of a Buddhist monk. Because the suicide coincides with his arrival, he realizes he has been an “accomplice.” To put pressure on President Cung to cease the persecution of the Buddhists, Amberley announces the threat of US sanctions, including an immediate stop to funding and the gradual withdrawal of military personnel. His top military commander, General Tolliver, realizes that the war cannot be won as long as their allies are a liability owing to their political intrigues among the high command, demoralized troops, and rampant economic waste.
The embassy’s political advisor, Mel Adams, the voice of reason in the novel, argues that Cung’s administration is “a ramshackle dictatorship founded on mandarin ethics, warlord intrigues, the secret police and old-line Gallic Catholicism” (34). Cung has alienated the students, lost the allegiance of the rural people, and isolated himself by surrounding himself with sycophants—an accurate summary of some of Diem’s failings as president. When Amberley asks Adams what policy should be put forward in these circumstances, he advises pulling out and letting the country “determine its own future,” a policy that at the time of West’s novel seemed correct to very few Americans in high places. The ambassador, for example, objects that “Uncle Ho” would soon take over if that were the case. “He’s taking over now,” said Mel Adams flatly. “He’s taking over because the man who truly wants to rally the country lacks the talent to do it; because we are bankrupt of everything but arms, men and money” (62).
Cung has raised the ante by raiding pagodas in a number of cities, followed by a declaration of a state of siege and martial law, actions that Amberley perceives as a means of forestalling potential threats to the regime. When he goes to see Cung to protest against the brutality of the Buddhist repression, Cung counters by showing him photographs of Vietcong atrocities, such as one showing a pregnant woman disemboweled with a bayonet: “Am I to be tender with those who plan such things and then take a hypocritical refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha…This is Asia, not Geneva or Manhattan! Here the man who holds power is the strong man armed” (53). When Amberley threatens the withdrawal of arms and money, Cung does not believe him. He cites the domino theory, merely altering the metaphor: is the US really willing to let Cambodia, Laos and Thailand “fall like a house of cards? This is your last foothold in Asia” (55). That is to say, you need us as much as we need you.
Amberley is portrayed as a man of conscience pursuing an unwanted task, so the role of amoral plotter necessary to higher policy must be transferred to the CIA chief, Harry Yaffa (historically, Lucien Conein, the CIA liaison between Lodge and the plotting generals), who has helped the generals plan their coup and will help them execute it once the American government has given its approval. Cung requests that Yaffa leave the country, which Amberley cannot permit because it would be a public admission that there was an American-supported plot. Cung is sensitive to the plotting. He admits to Amberley that he cannot make popular tours of the countryside because if he leaves the palace “it may fall overnight into the hands of traitors and conspirators” (104).
Tension in Saigon mounts as a bomb is thrown in front of the ambassador’s car, which may have been Cung’s response to the sanctions. The Americans begin to fear that a separate agreement might be made with North Vietnam, undermining their whole effort in Vietnam, and they speculate among themselves about a “neutralization” process proposed by the French. In an embassy meeting, this possibility polarizes the staff, with Mel Adams proposing self-determination and Henry Yaffa supporting continued containment. At a cocktail party, a French diplomat explains that Cung will never bow to American pressure because he a “Jansenist saint” who will defend the last foothold of Christianity in Asia, a provocative notion of which Protestant Americans are likely not to have thought. The Frenchman warns that after the war is continued without a breakthrough, the US will be forced to “neutralize” under pressure from its own Congress. In effect, the Americans will have to make a worse bargain than the one they could make now.
Adams is the staff-member most concerned with saving Cung’s life. He will be disappointed in that hope when Cung and his brother are assassinated instead of spared (historically, this was originally agreed on by the conspiring generals). The general who leads the coup, however, recognizes that such things cannot always be controlled. It is admitted that Adams, who ends up resigning from the Foreign Service, is too good a man for ambassadorial rank: “he lacks the streak of amorality and opportunism which makes a first-rate negotiator” (203). Amberley’s young protégé Groton, an idealist and a serious student of Buddhism, is also unlucky—he is gunned down in the street. The ambassador seems to want to be more like these men of principle, and yet aware that he is successful in the service (“my sorry trade,” he calls it) precisely because he is not like them.
One thing that requires explanation for a novel so closely modeled on historical events is why the author has changed his historical model from an eager conspirator to a reluctant one. One answer may be that once Cung has been identified as Diem, the outcome is already known to the reader, and giving the ambassador a conscience is a way of retarding the inevitable and drawing out the narrative. West, however, seems to have greater ambitions for his protagonist. Personally sympathetic to Cung, Amberley is shown as a man wracked by moral doubt who vacillates on the coup for more than political reasons. After Amberley gets the go-ahead from Washington (historically, it was the other way around) and he gives the dinner speech that signals to the conspirators the American approval of the coup, he feels like he has betrayed Cung: “Cung was still the villain. I was still the white knight, beyond fear or reproach. It was too late now to say what I knew in my secret heart: that for all my noble words, for all my outraged virtue, I was one of the bastards, too” (117). This attitude reduces an opportunistic political decision, of the kind Amberley is shown to be good at making, to misplaced personal loyalty.
Is it immoral to dump a leader bent on destroying his own country, which happens to be in the process of becoming a client state of the nation that the ambassador represents? Or for Amberley to be what he is, a diplomat—someone who must often lie and always follow orders in the service of his country? Giving Amberley a conscience and allowing him to speak his doubts and fears does not, in this case, make him more interesting—in fact, the novel is far more agile and interesting in the exchanges where the characters act according to their public roles in the give-and-take of diplomatic maneuvering. Rather it seems to be a fictional move to make the protagonist more sympathetic, a man of spiritual depth, an adept of Zen Buddhism who might better “understand” Asians, but Amberley would have been more convincing as a cunning and cynical public figure, like the kind of character Gore Vidal portrays so well in his political novels. It sounds pretentious to have Amberley say, after he has agreed to go ahead with the coup and knows he may be blamed,