Imposing Values on the Colonized

"They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested."
"They don't want communism."
"They want enough rice," I said. "They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want."
"If Indochina goes--"
"I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell of Europeans.”

-A Quiet American (94-95)


This passage is important in demonstrating the paradox of many conflicts involving the Western countries and the East, especially the Vietnam war. Time and time again, the United States insists to its citizens and the rest of the world that the reason for engaging in battle is for helping the people in the area fight for a certain political system -- namely democracy. This has been used as a justification for invading other countries for decades, not just by America, but European nations as well during the peak of imperialism. It is a well known fact that European colonialists upheld the idea of the "white man's burden," or the white man's moral duty to help their uncivilized brothers in Africa and Asia become culturally and politically enlightened. In the 20th century, America took over this role by attempting to clear the world of communism, trying to convince other nations it was for their own good while clearly having an ulterior agenda, in their power struggle with the Soviet Union.

Fowler's comment about how the Vietnamese don't actually want to engage in this war is true, that it is really the United States who are the ones with special interests in continuing the fighting. It is obvious that the Vietnamese aren't the ones calling the shots in regards to when combat starts and ends, as Fowler points out by saying "white skins [are] around telling them what they want." Pyle, in contrast, represents the typical brainwashed mentality of a fresh soldier, believing in the good that the Unites States is trying to do; his statement about communism being the reason for the fighting makes it clear that he buys into the American propaganda. Fowler's jaded perspective allows him to see through that.