Dispatches

Herr recognizes this ideology of control and the irony of its unapplacability in Vietnam. On the ground floor of the jungle world of Vietnam, where guerrilla strategies and cloaking terrain created chaos not seen from America's distant bird's eye view, the idea of control seemed ludicrous. Herr writes, "That fall, all that the Mission talked about was control: arms control, information control,.psychopolitical control,.control of terrain through the Strategy of the Periphery. But when the talk had passed, the only thing left standing up that looked true was your sense of how out of control things really were" [p. 48]. Herr further sums up America's distant, inhumane view of controlling communism in Vietnam when he writes, "Some people just wanted to blow it all to hell, animal vegetable and mineral. They wanted a Vietnam they could fit into their car ashtrays" [p. 59]. Not only did Herr recognize errors specifically in America's war on controlling Vietnam's communist ideology, but he also noted errors in America's governing ideology as a whole. He says the American mistake of subjugating, dominating, and controlling the minds of people began with the Trail of Tears in which American westward expansion forced Native American Indians to leave their homelands on a thousands-of-miles journey that resulted in the deaths of many of the native people. Herr sees Vietnam as a subsequent and logical point in America's westward expansion through America's West and onward into Vietnam's western Pacific location [p. 49-50]. The American ideology of manifest destiny that Herr is exposing sees controlling opposing ideologies as necessary in imperial conquest. Even though supporters of opposing ideologies may die by the thousands and millions, America's manifest destiny ideology ironically sees the death as necessary for the betterment of those opposing people. Herr calls America's imperialistic push our "secret history" and he works in his book of ground-level war accounts to expose this unrighteous trend to the American people [p.