Saint Fletcher the Obscure

[Jan Klimkowski]

Prouty's JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F Kennedy, p219:

In his novel, Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace, Leonard Lewin writes: "War fills certain functions essential to the stability of our society," and adds, "War is virtually synonymous with nationhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state."

Lewin has told me his book is a novel and that he had a serious message to deliver to the public. I was assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 1961, at the time Thomas Gates left the office and Robert McNamara arrived. Along with McNamara came a group of dedicated and intelligent men who, for the most part, were not highly experienced in the military and such things as Grand Strategy and the utilization of modern military forces and modern weaponry. Despite this, as I got to know them better - men like Ed Katzenbach, who had been dean at Princeton - we would take part in luncheon discussions that sounded much like Lewin's writing. This is what was said in the halls of the Pentagon. What Lewin wrote is true to life, and we all would do well to heed his words.

Novel or not, these were serious words that weighed heavily on the causes of the escalation of warfare in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s. They represent the classic views of a cabal of leaders in our society who fail to see any reason other than war for the existence of man. The very fact that certain select individuals of the Kennedy and Johnson adminstrations were said, by Lewin, to be thinking such thoughts in the face of the reality of the hydrogen bomb shows that this temporal worlds of ours has been changing faster than its leaders and the public can accomodate.