Conclusion

I have one final question and that is, as students watch this tape or read it on the web, what would your advice be to them in preparing for their own future? What should they study? How should they prepare?

I'm perhaps old fashioned in thinking that history and literature are the keystone subjects. I would say, study history and literature. I would study literature to imagine other ways of visualizing almost anything -- human relationships, society -- because in reading the novel you check your own visceral reactions against those of other people who are brought to life in your mind. Farer and students from Hanoi's Institute of International Affairs, 1997. A great novelist creates another world for you but with the same moral problems and populated with vividly real people. It's a check on your own instinctive understanding of the situation. It's a very important check.

In the case of history, you get a sense of the complexity and uncertainty of life. But some people use complexity as a shield from feeling or from acting. They say, well, life is so complicated, the Balkans are so complicated, there's nothing you can do there, they just kill each other all the time. First of all, you find out that it's not true, that much of what is presented to you as history, whether by ideologues and publicists, or even by the press in good faith, turns out to be such an encapsulation of history that it's not the real history. Historical study should awaken you to complexity, but not to a point where you can't act.

A moral human being needs to appreciate that knowledge is partial and that you could be wrong in acting yourself or in recommending action to others. Farer and members of his graduate course in international economic law, University of Nanterre, France, 1994. The crucial moral test is acting, knowing that you could be wrong. Some people act on the assumption they're always right, and they are monsters. Other people are paralyzed by the awareness of the complexity of things, and the great test is whether you can act on the basis of your best sense of what the case is. But you must keep thinking after you have acted. In the case of Vietnam, we committed ourselves, and then even when people like McNamara believed that they were wrong, they couldn't or wouldn't struggle for withdrawal. It's partially psychological. On the basis of your original conviction, you have sacrificed people. But to be fully human, I think you have to accept the consequences of having made the wrong decision and try to mitigate the results of your error.

Tom, thank you very much for joining us for this journey back in time to talk about your life and your work.

Thank you Harry.

And thank you very much for joining us for this conversation with history.

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