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Re-examining Our Perceptions on Vietnam
| Perceptions on Vietnam |
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| process* works, and repeated assignment of the same meaning soon becomes habitual. Hoffmann cites the American military view of the relevance to Vietnam of "the Korean analogy" ** and the examples of successful counter-insurgencies in Greece, the Philippines, or Malaysia. For our purposes here, we may usefully cite some of his examples of the use by Americans of terms which for us have connotations prompting hidden assumptions that distort our perceptions of the political scene in Vietnam: |
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| | The tragedy of our course in Vietnam lies in our refusal to come to grips with those realities in South Vietnam that happened to be decisive from the viewpoint of politics.... We failed to distinguish a sect from a party, a clique from an organization, a group of intellectuals or politicians with tiny clienteles from a political movement, a police force, officer corps, and set of rich South Vietnamese chaos to a South Vietnamese mistakes . speak, doubly of the essence. merchants from a political class. We tended to attribute combination of Communist disruptiveness and reversible . . [without realizing] that those "mistakes" were, so to speak, doubly of the essence. |
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| In our examination of the finished intelligence about the political scene we will want to give special attention to the kinds of "elements that seemed familiar and reassuring" which Hoffmann cites. "Non-Communist parties," "political movement," "political development," "democratic practices"-these are examples of an unlimited variety of "mirror image" terms*** which are highly |
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| *Research on perception phenomena has intensified in the past two decades, and the resulting theory for helping us understand these phenomena has been greatly expanded and refined. Consult Bernard Berelson and Gary Steiner, Human Behavior-Shorter Edition (paperback, Harcourt, 1967), p. 147; and Hadley Cantril, "The Nature of Social Perception," in Hans Toch and Henry C. Smith, eds., Social Perception (paperback, Van Nostrand, 1968). Berelson and Steiner sum up the function and significance of the perception faculty: |
| | The facts of raw sensory data are themselves insufficient to produce or to explain the coherent picture of the world experienced by the normal adult . . . sensory information does not correspond simply to the perception that it brings forth . . . sensory impulses do not act on an empty organism. They interact with what is already "in" the individual, and what we immediately experience is the result of that interaction. We do not always see or hear "what is there," in the environment, but also what we bring to the observing situation. |
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| Our perception faculty may be likened to a master switch directing and redirecting the formulation and coloring of our views of the world. It may unconsciously bend or ignore reality in order to maintain consistency in our views of the world or to preserve our commitments. |
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| **David Halberstam. The Best and the Brightest (Random House, New York, 1972) pp. 171-172, emphasizes that "even the best of the American military" as represented by General Maxwell Taylor drew analogies with Korea "without considering the crucial difference ... the very nature of the war. " |
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| ***These are terms which can be expected to evoke "mirror images" in persons who have not trained themselves to check continually for the differences between the connotations of a given term in a particular foreign culture area and in the U.S. They are called "mirror image" terms because a person using, reading, or hearing them is apt to be really "seeing" in his mind as he would in a mirror; hence, he is likely getting reflections of the ways the terms are understood in America, and not in the other culture area to which he unconsciously assumes he or another person using these terms is making valid reference. The most elusive mirror image terms are those which hold connotations of our Western beliefs and values and notably those which Americans rank especially high. Examples of such terms would include: "national development goals," "efforts to reach a consensus," "search for a reasonable solution," "excessively cruel methods," "fair tactics." Hence, a vital step toward increasing one's awareness of the deceptiveness of such terms is to make a close and thoughtful inspection of "what is typically American or Western." Consult Edward C. Stewart, American Cultural Patterns. A Crow-cultural Perspective (Regional Council for International Education, U. of Pittsburgh, 1971). |
Posted: May 08, 2007 08:38 AM
Last Updated: May 08, 2007 08:38 AM
Last Reviewed: May 08, 2007 08:38 AM
