BOOKS
the choices forged in Jakarta and Washington during these fateful years.” A
concluding chapter tracing that legacy
is particularly valuable for policy practitioners today, as they review the Bush
administration’s embrace of foreign
militaries as partners in “the war on terror” — even when their subordination
to civilian control, accountability before
the law and respect for human rights
are all dubious at best.
Edmund Mc Williams, a Foreign Service officer from 1975 to 2001, was political counselor in Jakarta from 1996 to
1999, and received AFSA’s Christian
Herter Award for constructive dissent
by a Senior FSO in 1998. Since retiring
from the Service, he has volunteered
with various U.S. and foreign human
rights NGOs.
Parallel Wars
The Tragedy of Vietnam, Again
Christopher Noble, BookSurge,
2008, $17.99, paperback, 422 pages.
REVIEWED BY DAVE HOWARD
What influences social responsibility, political accountability and individual social commitment? Such
profound yet practical questions,
which I suspect most Foreign Service
members ponder throughout their careers, prompted Christopher Noble
to write The Tragedy of Vietnam,
Again. This memoir brings together
recollections of the myriad individual,
social and political events of the mid-to-late 1960s that influenced the mind
of a sensitive young man.
Chris Noble has never forgotten
that he comes from a New England
family with a long history of social
commitment. That tradition began in
the early days of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, inspired acts of heroism
during the Revolutionary War, and
continued through distinguished military service during World War II and
the Korean War. Imbued with that
legacy of patriotic sacrifice, he spent
his formative years attending college
in Iowa, where he also absorbed the
values of the Midwest.
Like thousands of other American
youngsters at that time, the author
was drafted into the military in 1964
and received orders that eventually
sent him to Vietnam. There, as a
medical platoon leader, Noble aspired
to live up to the connotations of his
