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10/30/05 |
                 
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A Visit to Laos
The New York Review of Books, July 23, 1970
I arrived in Vientiane in late March, 1970, with two friends, Douglas Dowd and Richard Fernandez, expecting to take the International Control Commission plane to Hanoi the following day. The Indian bureaucrat in charge of the weekly ICC flight immediately informed us, however, that this was not to be. The DRV delegation had returned from Pnompenh to Hanoi on the previous flight after the sacking of the Embassy by Cambodian troops (disguised as civilians), and the flight we intended to take was completely occupied by passengers scheduled for the preceding week. Efforts by the DRV and American embassies were unavailing, and, after exploring various farfetched schemes, we decided, at first without much enthusiasm, to stay in Vientiane and try our luck a week later. Vientiane is a small town, and within hours we had met quite a few members of the Western community—journalists, former IVS workers in Laos and South Vietnam, and other residents. Through these contacts, we were able to meet urban Laotians of various sympathies and opinions, and with interesting personal histories on both sides of the civil war. We were also able to spend several days in the countryside near Vientiane, visiting a traditional Lao village and, several times, a refugee camp, in the company of a Lao-speaking American who is a leading specialist on contemporary Laos. Officials of the Lao, American, North Vietnamese, and other governments were also helpful with information, and I was fortunate to obtain access to a large collection of documentary material accumulated by residents of Vientiane over the past few years. Many of the correspondents, both French and American, had much to say, not only about Laos but also about their experiences in other parts of Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, most of the people with whom I spoke (most forcefully, the Laotians) do not wish to be identified, and asked me to be especially discreet in citing sources of information.
It doesn't take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos. The taxi from the airport to our hotel on the Mekong passed by the airfield of Air America, a theoretically private company that has an exclusive contract with the CIA.[1] Many of its pilots, said to be largely former Air Force personnel, were living in our hotel. If you happen to be up at 6 A.M., you can see them setting off for their day's work, presumably, flying supplies to the guerrilla forces of the CIA's army in Laos, the Clandestine Army led by the Meo General Vang Pao. These forces were at one time scattered throughout Northern Laos, but many of their bases are reported to have been overrun. These bases were used not only for guerrilla actions in the Pathet Lao-controlled territory, but also as advanced navigational posts for the bombardment of North Vietnam and for rescue of downed American pilots. There are said to be hundreds of small dirt strips in Northern Laos for Air America and other CIA operations.
After watching Air America parade by on my first morning in Vientiane, I decided to try to find out something about the town. Behind the hotel I came across the ramshackle building that houses the Lao Ministry of Information, where one office was identified as the Bureau of Tourism. No one there spoke English or even French. In another office of the Ministry, however, I did find someone who could understand my bad French. I explained that I wanted a map of Vientiane, but was told that I was in the wrong place—the American Embassy might have such things. I left by way of the reading room of the Ministry, where several people sat in the already intense heat, waving away the flies and looking through the several Lao and French newspapers scattered on the tables. Across the street stands the modern seven-story building of the French Cultural Center, whose air-conditioned reading room is well stocked with current newspapers and magazines from Paris. French plays and lectures are advertised on posters. On another corner is Vientiane's best bookstore, which sells French books and journals.
The contrast between the Lao Ministry of Information and the French Cultural Center gives a certain insight into the nature of Laotian society. For a European resident or a member of the tiny Lao elite, Vientiane has many attractions: plenty of commodities, a variety of good restaurants, some cultural activities (in our hotel a placard announced a reading of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), the resources of the French Cultural Center. An American can live in the suburbs, complete with well-tended lawns, or in a pleasant villa rented from a rich Laotian, and can commute to the huge USAID compound with its PX and other facilities.
For the Lao, however, there is nothing. Virtually everything is owned by outsiders, by the Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese. Apart from several cigarette factories (Chinese-owned), lumber, and tin mines, one of which is owned by the right-wing Prince Boun Oum, there seems to be little that is productive in the country. After decades of French colonialism and years of extensive American aid, "in 1960 the country had no railways, two doctors, three engineers and 700 telephones."[2] In 1963 the value of the country's imports was forty times that of its exports:
In 1968, 93 percent of the exports were tin, wood, and coffee, while 71 percent of the imports (by value) were food, gasoline and vehicles. [4]
The Lao educational system presents a similar picture. It is estimated that only about half of the children ever reach school. Of about 185,000 children in school in 1966-7, 95 percent were in the first six grades, 70 percent in the first three grades. In 1969, only 6,669 students were enrolled in secondary schools. The American aid program has helped, but it too tends to perpetuate the distorted pattern of education for the elite. Secondary education has about the same funds as primary education:
The sensible Education Reform Act of 1962 remains largely a paper program. Branfman concludes that "the school system is training a class of consumers, not producers of wealth," a Western-oriented elite that might, at best, administer Lao society in the interest of the domestic elite and its American backers. Political life as well is limited to a tiny elite. The State Department Background Notes, March, 1969, contends that "only a few thousand individuals, many of them French-educated, participate in government and politics; the bulk of the population is illiterate and politically passive." Surely this is true of the Government-controlled areas. I shall return to the areas under Pathet Lao control later on.
The Lao elite do not seem popular among foreign observers in Vientiane, who comment repeatedly on their venality and corruption. Typical is a report by two French journalists who were at the site of a short but brutal battle near Paksane, southeast of the Plain of Jars. They describe the arrival by helicopter of "the strongman of Vientiane, General Kouprasith,…the most powerful of the Lao generals," well after the battle was over:
A well-informed observer describes the Royal Lao Government in the following way:
I discussed these matters with a middle-aged Lao intellectual, non-Communist and rather left-wing in outlook, a man who has had much experience with the Royal Lao Government and who also lived for some time in a Pathet Lao area. He seemed to feel that the only hope for Laos was a Pathet Lao victory, though he himself, as a Lao bourgeois, did not look forward to this with much enthusiasm. He felt, however, that nationalistic and uncorrupted bourgeois elements would find a place in a society organized by the Pathet Lao.
For the RLG he felt only contempt, and he expressed his belief that even younger men, though less dedicated to total corruption, would be able to do very little. He recalled that while the Government of National Union was functioning, Prince Souphanouvong, the leading figure of the Pathet Lao, was widely regarded as its most capable and efficient member, and one of the few honest men in Laotian public life. He saw no sign that a productive economy could be developed or that control by foreigners could be overcome, in view of the nature of existing programs. He mentioned efforts to develop a "neutralist" organization based on younger, more nationalistic, and less corrupt segments of the elite, but he had little hope of their success. With some bitterness he gestured to the street outside the room where we were talking, observing that every one of the stores that lined the street was owned by a non-Lao. The Lao elite is busy building bowling alleys, running the prostitution and opium rackets,[8] renting villas to Americans, living at the exorbitant level permitted by the flow of American commodities and the pervasive corruption. He felt that the American aid program was essentially destructive in having perpetuated a consumer-oriented society which benefited, while corrupting, the elite, and in not having even begun to lay the basis for development or modernization that would involve the Lao masses or create a productive society. Other knowledgeable observers agreed in a general way with this analysis. One of them pointed to a large monument in the center of Vientiane referred to as the "vertical runway" because it was built by dictator Phoumi Nosavan with materials that were meant to be used for improving the Vientiane airport.[9] A young Lao teacher, openly sympathetic to the Pathet Lao, gave a similar (though more vehement) account. Asked whether the Pathet Lao were attempting to build a clandestine organization within Vientiane to exploit such grievances and plan for an ultimate take-over, he said that to his knowledge they were not, but that there was also no necessity to do so. Many people, he reported, listen regularly to the Pathet Lao radio, and have considerable, though hidden, sympathy for the Pathet Lao. He referred to the elections of 1958, the only real elections ever held in Laos, in which the NLHS, the political party of the Pathet Lao, had done very well in Vientiane, and he asserted that these sympathies would once again be revealed if honest elections could be held. He claimed that similar sentiments are widely held among young urban intellectuals, though they are rarely expressed in Vientiane, where the atmosphere is that of a police state—albeit a rather lax and inefficient one.
Vientiane is a place of rumor and suspicion. Direct access to news is limited. Most of what appears in the press is simply based on American Government handouts. Little of the country is firmly under Royal Lao Government control. We were warned not to travel too far from Vientiane, and taxi drivers made much of the dangers of going more than a few miles from the city (partly, no doubt, because they could demand higher fares). In a refugee camp about 35 miles from Vientiane along one of the few roads that can be freely traveled, inhabitants refused to take us out to the forest where, they said, men were working; they claimed that the Pathet Lao were there and the danger was too great. One man finally agreed to take us, but after leading us on a rather aimless path, said that the trip was impossible. Again, there may have been other reasons.
Parts of the nominally Government-controlled areas are actually run by the CIA, and no one seems sure where the CIA ends and the civilian aid program, USAID, begins.[10] The CIA bases of Sam Thong and Long Cheng, north of Vientiane, are in an area that is designated as uninhabited on the detailed map that I bought at the Service Géographique National du Laos, dated 1968 (supplied, I was told, by the US). There are reported to be over 50,000 people in or near the two bases, and perhaps several hundred thousand in the vicinity, almost all of them refugees. According to the spokesman for the Pathet Lao Information Office in Hanoi,[11] since 1964 these areas have been turned into "a second capital of Laos." They serve as the headquarters for Vang Pao's Clandestine Army. Correspondents and congressmen have been to Sam Thong. Long Cheng is off limits. However, T. D. Allman made his way there on his own several months ago, and last February in a TV interview with Bernard Kalb he reported what he had found before he was picked up and shipped out after a two-hour stay.[12] He describes Long Cheng as an immense intelligence gathering and administrative logistics base, with a 3000-foot runway, many planes, and rescue helicopters (one in the air constantly) to pick up American pilots shot down by Communist anti-aircraft. He estimates that ten to twelve Americans a month are lost in crashes of jets bombing in that area from their Thai bases. The Forward Air Control planes, which mark targets for the American jets, are also based in Long Cheng and flown by American pilots. He reports that there are CIA houses everywhere, which can be readily identified by their lack of windows and their abundance of antennas and air conditioners. Sam Thong has been reported captured several times, most recently in mid-May, 1970.[13] It was abandoned by the Vang Pao army in mid-March and occupied about two weeks later.
Most observers feel that the Communist forces can take these bases if they are willing to pay the price, and that if they do the Vang Pao army, largely composed of Meo mountaineers, may disintegrate, and may make an accommodation with the Pathet Lao, or may be moved to Thailand. This would be a major blow to the American effort since the Clandestine Army is a more serious fighting force than the Royal Lao Army. While we were in Vientiane there were almost daily rumors of an attack on the bases, and North Vietnamese tanks were reported in the vicinity—surprising, it seemed to me, in view of the intense bombardment of Northern Laos, though it was pointed out that jet bombing is ineffective against military targets in the jungle and mountainous terrain. II
The recent history of Laos contributes to the atmosphere of suspicion. The first Government of National Union of 1958 was overthrown by American subversion. As Ambassador Graham Parsons candidly remarked in Congressional Hearings of 1959, "I struggled for sixteen months to prevent a coalition." An American military mission was operating at the time, headed by a US Army general in civilian guise. In the 1958 elections, of twenty-one seats contested for the National Assembly, nine were won by the Neo Lao Hak Sat (NLHS) and four by the candidates of the Committee for Peace and Neutrality of Quinim Pholsena, a "left-leaning neutralist" allied with the NLHS. Five right-wing and three non-party delegates were elected. The NLHS had put up only thirteen candidates. Its leader, Souphanouvong, got the largest vote and was elected chairman of the National Assembly. The United States withheld funds, thus impelling the Lao elite to introduce a new government headed by "pro-Western neutralist" Phoui Sananikone. Shortly after, Phoui declared his intention to disband the NLHS as being subversive, thus scrapping the earlier successful agreements that had established the coalition. US aid soon resumed and Phoui pledged "to coexist with the Free World only." In December, 1959, he was overthrown by the CIA favorite, Phoumi Nosavan, a Lao equivalent to the military dictator of Thailand (his cousin, as it happens), who was also receiving substantial US support. Although the coup government did not last, Phoumi retained his powerful position as Minister of National Defense, thus controlling most of the budget; and the extreme right won the ridiculous 1960 elections which were so crudely rigged by the CIA and its favorites that even conservative pro-US observers were appalled. A coup by paratroop captain Kong Le restored Prince Souvanna Phouma, and civil war broke out, with the Souvanna Phouma government, supported by Russia and China, opposing the American-backed General Phoumi Nosavan and the government of the reactionary prince Boun Oum. Recognizing that its policies were failing disastrously,[15] the American Government agreed to participate in a new Geneva Conference, which took place in 1961-2. The settlement reached at Geneva, however, did not last long. After a series of assassinations in early 1963, the two most prominent Pathet Lao leaders, Prince Souphanouvong and Phoumi Vongvichit, departed from Vientiane. As a RAND Corporation study by P. F. Langer and J. J. Zasloff describes this incident, they left "contending, not entirely without justification, that their security was threatened in the capital."[16] The other two NLHS cabinet members left soon after. The civil war resumed with somewhat different alignments. This time the Americans were supporting Souvanna Phouma and Kong Le, who joined forces with the Lao right (Kong Le presently departed for France, where he now lives in exile), against the Pathet Lao and the "left-leaning neutralists" under Colonel Deuane.
According to the Geneva agreements of 1962, foreign troops were to depart, along with all advisers, instructors, and foreign civilians "connected with the supply…of war materials." The United States claims that North Vietnam never adhered to this agreement, leaving 6,000 soldiers in Laos. The Chinese claimed at the time that hundreds of American soldiers simply changed into civilian clothes, as in the late 1950s. The Pathet Lao maintain that "after the signing of the 1962 Geneva Agreements on Laos, the missions of military 'advisers'—PEO, MAAG, PAG, USOM—put on a common civilian cloak: USAID." They claim that there were 3,500 such military "advisers" in civilian camouflage by 1968 and that "the whole system is directly under the US 'special forces' command, code-named H.Q.333 and based in Oudone (northeast Thailand)."[17] In their RAND study published in September 1969, Langer and Zasloff estimate that there are about 700 North Vietnamese military advisers with the Pathet Lao.
Chinese nationalist troops supported by the United States remained after Geneva, 1962, although some may have been evacuated. They were reported at one time to number in the thousands, and are said to be a fairly effective fighting force—the only Chinese fighting in Laos, incidentally. Vongvichit estimates that there were 600 by 1968, and reports that their activities were confirmed by an ICC investigation in December, 1962. American-supported Thai and South Vietnamese troops are also reported to have remained.[18] Vongvichit asserts that "thousands of Thai soldiers and agents, especially those of Lao stock and coming from northeastern Thailand, have wormed their way into the royal army, police and administration, or have mingled with the population in strategic areas and economic centres." Similar reports of Thai soldiers in Laotian uniform are common, and generally believed, in Vientiane. No one has any idea how many CIA operatives remained, or what in detail they were up to, or to what extent they operate under civilian cover.[19]
Obviously USAID tries to implement American Government policy in Laos and to build domestic support for the American-sponsored Royal Lao Government. A more interesting example of the difficulty of determining just how the United States is intervening in the internal affairs of Laos is the case of the International Voluntary Services (IVS). This is a private volunteer group that has attracted many idealistic young people who are eager to help with modernization and development in traditional societies, without mixing in local politics. IVS has operated in Laos for about fifteen years. In 1962, the group was offered a large USAID contract for work in Laos, and its membership grew to about one hundred. The reasons for this sudden American interest seem clear. Before 1962, most American aid had gone to the urban areas. In fact, less than half of 1 percent of the extensive American aid funds[20] were spent on agriculture, the livelihood of over 90 percent of the population.
This was, of course, a factor in the support for the Pathet Lao revealed by the 1958 elections and subsequently. As Dommen points out in his book Conflict in Laos, the Pathet Lao needed no propaganda to turn the rural population against the townspeople; indeed the enormous corruption and graft associated with the aid program sickened many city dwellers as well. In 1962 the US therefore decided to channel more funds to the countryside and to do this through an American-controlled apparatus so as to reduce corruption. The plan required the presence of Americans in the villages, and IVS filled the breach. As one volunteer puts it, "IVS became a private agency recruiting young, relatively idealistic Americans to engage in politically motivated counter-insurgency programs in Laos." Many of the volunteers worked in the Forward Areas Program, which is described as follows in an IVS bulletin:
In later years IVS workers were the only Americans in many rural areas. Some were disturbed at the American Government connection. They felt that they were serving in effect as propaganda agents for the US and the RLG by virtue of their control of USAID commodities, and that they were inadvertently giving military information to the American Government. Even in some urban centers there has been dissatisfaction among volunteers with USAID policy, which is administered in some cases by "retired" military officers.
Since late 1969, IVS workers have been withdrawn to provincial capitals for security reasons (several had been killed), and the scale of the operation was also reduced. Many of the volunteers then joined USAID. In many areas where IVSers formerly worked there is now no American or RLG presence.
It is difficult to avoid concluding that IVS is acting on behalf of the American Government and the RLG in the midst of a civil war. According to an IVS handbook:
Whether IVS efforts actually help the RLG is open to question; some feel that IVS activities simply reinforce the RLG's image of incompetence and corruption by showing that the rural assistance program must be implemented by Americans. Nevertheless, the IVS can hardly serve as anything other than an instrument of American foreign policy in Laos.[21] Pathet Lao spokesmen have no illusions about the role of IVS. Phoumi Vongvichit writes:
It would appear that these suspicions are justified.
What is true of IVS applies, far more clearly, to the American aid program and, of course, to the direct involvement of the US through the CIA and the military. From the information available, one must conclude that there has been vast American intervention in the internal affairs of Laos in an effort to defeat the Pathet Lao insurgents and establish the rule of the RLG. This intervention includes heavy bombardment, support for guerrilla activity in Pathet Lao-controlled areas (by the CIA and its civilian air arm, Air America), the operations of the CIA Clandestine Army, military operations of the US-supported and advised RLG army, direct support to RLG administration and other programs, and aid and development programs administered by the Americans sometimes by way of purportedly neutral organizations. To a significant extent, these activities are in violation of the Geneva agreements of 1962.
The American involvement is enormous. The Gross National Product of Laos is estimated at about $150 million a year. In the fiscal year ending in June, 1969, USAID spent about $52 million. In addition, $92 million was spent on direct military assistance. The former US Ambassador, William Sullivan, said this was "much less" than the cost of the American participation in the air war over the northern part of Laos, which is classified.[23] The costs of the air war in Southern Laos and the funds expended in CIA operations are also unknown. In addition, there is the matter of support for the Thai troops in Laos. On this the Symington Subcommittee Hearings offer the following clarification:
There is no available information on the cost of the American intervention since 1962, but the following censored excerpt from the Symington Sub-committee Hearings, p. 553, gives some indication of its scale:
Note that the reference is to the narrowest category of military assistance, which cost only about $90 million in 1969.
The US has penetrated every phase of the existence (as well as the destruction) of Laos. To cite just one relatively innocuous case, consider the role of the US Information Service, the USIS, in "information dissemination" in Laos.[25] About half of the programming on the Laotian radio is music. Of the other half, USIS, according to Administration testimony, "prepared or participated in the preparation" of about two-thirds. USIS also participates in the publication of a bimonthly magazine with a circulation of 43,000 (the largest Lao newspaper has a circulation of 3,300). In addition there are films and other printed material, pamphlets and posters, wall newspapers, leaflets for air drops. In most of this "there is not US Government attribution"—i.e., the impression is conveyed that these appear as documents or programs sponsored by the RLG. But the Government witness denied that any of this is done "covertly." When asked to explain, he answered as follows:
Thus one could not accuse the US Government of any covert attempt to extend RLG influence over the population (or, as the more skeptical would say, to pretend that the RLG exists). The official justification for US involvement is that it is necessary to defend Laos against North Vietnamese aggression. I will return to the details of the charges and such facts as have been presented to support them. A certain degree of skepticism, however, arises at once, deriving in part from the record prior to 1962. There is no doubt that during this period outside intervention in Laos was overwhelmingly American. All sources agree that the Americans attempted to subvert the accommodation of 1958 (and succeeded, as noted earlier), and that the North Vietnamese played practically no part in Laotian affairs, nor did the Chinese or Russians, prior to the events of 1960 described earlier.
During the 1960s, of course, the Vietnam war complicated matters. The return of South Vietnamese cadres to South Vietnam from the North is said to have begun in 1959, and involved sections of Southern Laos (the so-called "Ho Chi Minh trail"). The American use of Thailand as a base for the bombardment of Northern Laos and later North Vietnam dates from early 1964, according to American Government sources (American troops were sent to Thailand at the time of the Nam Tha incident of 1962[26] and have remained there under the US Military Assistance Command-Thailand, established at the time of the landing).
A second source of skepticism was expressed, in a different connection, by Senator Symington in the sub-committee hearings:
To accept the official American Government position, one must believe that the Vietnamese are supermen, able to overthrow other governments with a flick of the wrist, carrying out aggression throughout Indochina, successfully countering enormous American military and economic power—instead of a small, poor nation that has been subjected to devastating bombardment in which virtually all of its meager industrial resources, not to speak of most of its cities, towns, and communications, have been destroyed. It is perhaps surprising that these ludicrous charges are so widely believed by Americans. Even self-styled "doves" continually refer to the American war in Indochina as a war against Hanoi. I think it is fair to say that the propaganda achievement of the American Government, in this regard, is probably greater than that of any other use of the Big Lie since the technique was perfected a generation ago. III
Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy. The veil was lifted slightly by the Symington Subcommittee Hearings, but these still contain many lies that are not challenged in the published record. To select just the ugliest, William Sullivan, who presented the bulk of the Administration's case, stated that"it was the policy not to attack populated areas,"[27] referring to the period 1968-9 (p. 500). He also testified that as ambassador (until 1969) he approved each air strike. Thus he must surely have known that the policy was precisely to attack and destroy populated areas in the territory controlled by the Pathet Lao. The evidence that the bombing has been directed against farms, villages, and towns, most of which have been totally destroyed in these territories, is incontrovertible. Government deceit has been so great that virtually no Government statement can be, or should be, believed. Consider, for example, President Nixon's speech on Laos on March 6.[28] The key paragraph is this:
These claims are presumably intended to justify the American escalation of the air war, for example, the first B-52 raids in Northern Laos in early 1970.
When I arrived in Vientiane a few weeks after Nixon's speech, I discovered that it was a favorite topic of conversation and ridicule. Every reporter in Vientiane was aware that only a few days before the President's speech, the US military attaché in Vientiane had given the figure of 50,000 North Vietnamese, approximately the same figure that had been reported by the US for the preceding year. This interesting fact was reported by D.S. Greenway, head of the Time-Life Bureau in Bangkok, who wrote that "the President's estimate of North Vietnamese troop strength was at least 17,000 higher than the highest reliable estimates of the Americans themselves."[29]
Furthermore, all were aware of how misleading these figures are. The North Vietnamese invasion that Nixon attempted to conjure up was in the Plain of Jars area, recaptured by Communist forces in February in a five-day battle that reconstituted the territorial division that existed between 1964 and August 1969, when the Clandestine Army of the CIA swept through the area. Nixon's figure of 67,000 North Vietnamese does not distinguish between those in Southern Laos—really an extension of the Vietnamese war—and those with the Pathet Lao in Northern Laos where the "invasion" had taken place. It also does not distinguish combat troops from support and communications units, which, according to military observers in Vientiane, comprise about three-fourths of the North Vietnamese forces, hardly a surprise when one realizes that they bring all of their supplies, including food, through a heavily bombed area. In fact, it is likely that this ratio is now too low. The effect and presumably the purpose of the American bombardment in Northern Laos have been to destroy the civil society administered by the Pathet Lao and to drive as much of the population as possible into Government-controlled areas. As Tammy Arbuckle reports:
When the population is forced into Government areas or driven into caves and tunnels, it can no longer provide support for the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops, who are therefore forced to rely increasingly on supplies from North Vietnam. Hence the proportion of combat troops must have decreased. Furthermore, the support and communications "troops" are said to include a large percentage of women and old men. There have been widespread reports, confirmed by American military sources, that the largest attacks in the recent "invasion"—namely the attack on Moung Soui and the Xieng Khouang airfield—involved about 400 Communist troops, apparently shock troops. As to prisoners, eight North Vietnamese were reported captured in the "invasion" which recaptured the Plain of Jars. In fact, since 1964 about eighty North Vietnamese have been captured, a figure which may be compared to the 200 Americans listed as missing in action or prisoners of war, in addition to "something under 200" listed as killed in military actions in Laos.[31]
All of these statistics must be taken with a grain of salt. According to every observer, the Pathet Lao and particularly the North Vietnamese keep to isolated, heavily forested, and often mountainous areas. Few refugees report contacts with Vietnamese. Despite the vast intelligence gathering effort of the US, it is doubtful that any significant information on the number of NVA troops is available.
Consider Nixon's claim that in the recent offensive the Pathet Lao played only an insignificant role. In support of this claim, American military sources in Vientiane cite only one bit of evidence, namely, captured prisoners. As noted, eight North Vietnamese were reported captured (according to the Lao officers in charge of prisoners). The American military claims that no Pathet Lao prisoners were taken. However, Americans in Sam Thong have spoken to soldiers of the RLG army, who do report that Pathet Lao prisoners were taken. There is also a report, attributed to a source within the US Embassy, that between twenty and thirty Pathet Lao prisoners were taken but were inducted at once into the CIA Clandestine Army. From such statistics (eight, twenty to thirty) one can conclude very little. Informed observers who have attempted to sift through the available information speculate that at most there may be 5,000 North Vietnamese combat troops involved in the fighting in Laos—a figure which may be compared with the 5,000 Thai combat troops reported, the unknown thousands of Americans involved directly in bombing and ground operations, and the other forces reported to be involved in the American operations. The Pathet Lao claims that there are 1,200 American Green Berets fighting in Laos. This is denied by the Americans. The Pathet Lao also claims that the CIA Clandestine Army includes tribesmen brought in from Burma and Thailand as well as the Chinese Nationalist troops who remain in Northern Laos.[32] Such reports are taken seriously by informed observers in Laos, some of whom note that the multi-ethnic character of the Vang Pao Clandestine Army must require American coordination and control down to the field level.
American Government sources, though naturally antagonistic, also give some idea of life in Pathet Lao areas, as interpreted by hostile observers. The Embassy in Vientiane supplies two documents by Edwin T. McKeithen, whom they describe as one of their outstanding specialists on the Pathet Lao.[33] He writes that:
These techniques he describes as the introduction of "the rather foreign concepts of persuasion and guilt…as mechanisms of social control." McKeithen does not explain what he would regard as more humane or enlightened methods, nor does he explain wherein he objects to the goals of the Pathet Lao effort to transform Lao society:
Being fair-minded, McKeithen does not limit himself to these comments, which he apparently regards as negative, to judge by the paragraph that follows:
Later on, he describes Pathet Lao measures to improve agriculture (use of fertilizers and irrigation, directed by North Vietnamese technicians); establishment of co-ops and local control of commerce, displacing the former Chinese and Vietnamese merchants; progressive taxation to support teachers and medics and a basic tax (15 percent after exemptions) "to help the state"; educational reforms, including primary schooling in virtually all villages and the introduction of textbooks which "emphasize hygiene and better agricultural practices, as well as self-denial, communal endeavor and solidarity against US imperialism"; adult literacy programs; improved medical services; a ban on polygamy and the practice of bride abduction in Meo areas; and so on.
In his study of the role of North Vietnamese cadres, McKeithen also emphasizes their reliance on "patient counsel rather than direct command," their "softest of soft-sell approaches in dealing with their Lao counterparts," their "deep faith in the efficacy of endless persuasion" and on "the spirit of brotherhood that should bond their relationship." He claims that "virtually all important policy decisions are made by the NVN cadres, but in such a way that the decisions appear to be the work of Lao officials." However, he admits that he has very little evidence since the refugees on whose testimony the report is based had little contact with Vietnamese advisers.
The Vietnamese keep to themselves, even raising their own food. He reports that Vietnamese served as political advisers at higher levels, and that economic and other advisers work also at lower levels in giving technical assistance and as teachers. North Vietnamese products are also available at co-op stores, another way "in which their influence is felt." In listing government officials in Xieng Khouang province he cites three North Vietnamese out of seventeen at the higher (Khoueng Group) level (one a "group representative," one an adviser, and one in charge of irrigation) and none out of fourteen at the lower (Muong) level.[35] McKeithen claims that one of the goals of the North Vietnamese is "to annex Laos and to till its underpopulated land." Searching diligently through his material, I can find three pieces of "confirmatory evidence" for this judgment. One is a "brief entry" in a diary of a North Vietnamese major found on the Plain of Jars, which states: "[We must] help Laos without restriction, but we have to keep Laos with us to realize permanent duty of [our] volunteer troops, [to] provide land, [to] marry natives, and to be settled in Laos." Second, "the North Vietnamese have requested permission from the NLHS to move in 20,000 families—dependents of the NVA troops in Laos." The request was turned down by the NLHS, and the plan, apparently, was not implemented. Finally, the North Vietnamese advisers were instrumental in instituting a second rice harvest and extensive irrigation projects, and McKeithen "cannot help but feel" that this is in anticipation of North Vietnamese migration, since there is so much unused land. Since McKeithen's papers are obviously propaganda documents of the American Government, I assume that he made as strong a case as he could for his conclusion, which, clearly, must be regarded as lacking serious support.
The extensive RAND Corporation study by Langer and Zasloff also attempts to demonstrate North Vietnamese domination of the Pathet Lao. [36] According to the authors, the Vietnamese advisers
They also provide medical and technical aid, and have trained native Lao, making "a beginning…in developing indigenous technical skills." Their "doctrine places great emphasis on winning over the population…one would expect considerable tension between the Lao and their Vietnamese mentors…but we were struck by how successful the Vietnamese were in keeping such resentment at a minimum." When I discussed the social and economic programs of the Pathet Lao with American Embassy officials they gave me the impression that they would be favorably impressed with what the Pathet Lao had done and might achieve were it not for the "North Vietnamese aggression," which, they argue, is the cause of the problems of Laos. One official agreed that the Pathet Lao educational reforms were particularly good, but said that the RLG was now imitating these programs, specifically the adult literacy program. I tried to check this information with reporters and with Lao residents of Vientiane who were familiar with government activities. Their response ranged between skepticism and ridicule. I met no one outside the Embassy who believed that the RLG was capable of implementing such a program. Since I did not have the time to inquire further, I must leave it at that.
The American Embassy was also helpful in providing me with data supporting their claim that North Vietnamese aggression is the fundamental problem of Laos. They directed me to reports of the RAND Corporation and the ICC, in addition to the documents cited above. Particularly conclusive, they argued, was an ICC investigation of a complaint from the RLG on October 2, 1964, reporting the capture of three North Vietnamese prisoners,[37] which was confirmed. The ICC report concluded that these prisoners had entered Laos as members of complete North Vietnamese army units from February to September, 1964, in groups ranging from fifty to 650 soldiers. The report also stated:
The report opens with the letter of October 2 from the RLG containing the complaints which it later investigated, as well as a letter of September 28 from Phoumi Vongvichit, Secretary of the NLHS at Vientiane, alleging that American aircraft based in South Vietnam had attacked Laotian territory and parachuted South Vietnamese military personnel into Laos, three of whom were captured (two are identified by name). The latter charge is discussed in "a separate message," presumably Message No. 36. On returning to the United States I tried to obtain Message No. 36, but without success. I have been informed that it has not been declassified (by the British Government, which is co-chairman of the Control Commission). Though this fact naturally arouses suspicions, nevertheless it is likely that the Message is perfunctory. A second ICC document reports the investigation of a complaint that the Officers School of the Royal Army at Dong Hene in Southern Laos was attacked on March 8-9, 1965, by a combined Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese force. The investigation confirmed the allegation. Most of the captured prisoners testified that they were on their way to South Vietnam.[38]
The final supporting document is a report of interviews with a North Vietnamese adviser to a Pathet Lao battalion, Mai Dai Hap, who defected in December, 1966.[39] The informant was a captain in the NVA and a member of the Lao Dong (Workers) Party of North Vietnam. He claims to have been one of thirty North Vietnamese assigned to Laos in February, 1964, to serve as advisers. He trained the personnel of a Lao battalion and directed its operations. He served in the vicinity of Nam Tha near the Chinese and Burmese borders. In February, 1966, his unit was sent to Muong Long in the area of the Co, a highland tribal minority, near Burma, in Northwest Laos, to defend a Pathet Lao base that was under attack by RLG forces.
This was, according to Langer and Zasloff, a region in which "the Vietnamese and Pathet Lao had built resistance bases against the French, so that the Co people welcomed them heartily, especially after seeing the Vietnamese with the unit." Discouraged by the hardships of combat, the feeling that he had failed in his leadership, and concern that the enemy, now supplied with artillery and bombers, was growing in strength and receiving support from the lowlanders, as well as by a number of personal problems including his remarriage, he defected in December, 1966. Captain Hap reports that in addition to military tasks he had a political program containing the following topics:
One comment of Hap's that is frequently quoted by American sources is this:
This exhausts the documentary evidence of North Vietnamese control over the Pathet Lao that I was able to obtain. In reading these materials, one is struck by the low-keyed and generally constructive approach of the North Vietnamese, the limited evidence for actual North Vietnamese control over the Pathet Lao, and the gulf between the evidence and the claims which it is meant to support. It is, after all, hardly surprising that there were North Vietnamese troops in Southern Laos a month after the regular bombing of North Vietnam was initiated (the Dong Hene incident). Nor is it surprising that North Vietnamese advisers should have arrived in Northern Laos in early 1964 (note that the first complaint to the ICC was in October, 1964), in view of the events outlined above. Recall that regular bombardment of Northern Laos from Thai sanctuaries began in May, 1964. Recall as well that the CIA established bases along the North Vietnamese frontier for sabotage and guerrilla action, as well as to guide the all-weather bombardment of North Vietnam.[40] It is interesting to compare the North Vietnamese involvement with the American program, aspects of which were discussed earlier. Also remarkable is the barely suppressed outrage over the North Vietnamese activities. How dare they assist on their border friendly forces which the United States is determined to destroy!
Suppose that the Pathet Lao were to take over Laos completely. What would be the North Vietnamese role? When asked this question, a Lao defector said that he expects them to leave when they finish their mission of helping the Pathet Lao:
The urban intellectual whose remarks I have reported earlier was less sure. He thought that Laotian independence would always be threatened by North Vietnam, Thailand, and China, though he felt that there was a fair chance that all might agree that Laos should be left as a neutral buffer. Prince Souvanna Phouma, in an interview with us, had no doubts about the North Vietnamese intention to conquer Laos. He explained:
(If we were to apply this reasoning to the American flag….) He offered no other argument, apparently regarding this as conclusive. A North Vietnamese spokesman described the interest of his country in Laos as purely strategic:
Naturally, North Vietnam regards "the Lao territory bordering on North Vietnam, particularly in the provinces of Phong Saly, Luang Prabang, Sam Neua, and Xieng Khouang, as essential to its security and will strive to ensure that these areas are not controlled by hostile forces."[43] China also has an obvious security interest in these areas. So long as these areas are under attack by American forces or by forces which North Vietnam and China can regard, with justification, as American puppet forces, one can expect a continuing North Vietnamese involvement. It is difficult to see why North Vietnam should attempt to conquer Laos, thus being forced to control a hostile population and coming face to face with the Thai. Nor can I find any serious evidence for such an intent.
According to American Embassy sources, over a million people in this nation of some three million remain in Pathet Lao-controlled areas. Harrison Salisbury, in his report from North Vietnam[44] quoted a foreign Communist visitor to these areas:
According to this visitor, the Pathet Lao had set up a hospital, a printing press, a small textile mill, a bakery, and a shop for making arms and ammunition in the caves. The bombardment was said to include guided missiles that can dive into a cave, as well as high explosives and anti-personnel weapons. The people come out only at dusk and dawn to try to farm, but the planes attack any visible target, even trails and cultivated fields. These reports attracted little attention, presumably because the source was not believed. In June, 1968, Jacques Decornoy of Le Monde traveled to Sam Neua province and confirmed these reports.[45] His harrowing account of life under perhaps the most intensive bombardment in history received little attention in the United States. According to Souvanna Phouma and the American Embassy, some 700,000 refugees are said to have fled to Government-controlled areas. The most recent arrivals are from the Plain of Jars area. As noted earlier, this area was under Pathet Lao control from 1964 until 1969. During the offensive in the fall of 1969, the CIA Clandestine Army conquered the plain after heavy bombardment—the first large shift in territorial boundaries since the outbreak of the civil war. When Communist forces were about to retake the Plain of Jars in February, 1970, the population was evacuated and the area turned into a zone of devastation. It is estimated that about 15,000 refugees were taken, mostly by air, to Vientiane, where they are now scattered in refugee camps. Just prior to the Communist recapture of the Plain of Jars in February, 1970, Henry Kamm reported that the Lao peasants were not informed that they were to be evacuated, though those who wished to stay (in what would become a free fire zone, in fact) would be permitted to do so.[46] Reports in Vientiane indicate that a large part of the population went over to the Pathet Lao despite the abysmal conditions. IV
I spent several days visiting a refugee camp near Vientiane. The camp consists of five long sheds with an aisle between two raised floors. Each family has about fifteen square feet of space, without partitions and marked off only by posts. There are perhaps 100 people housed in each shed—many children, old men and women, a few young mothers, some young men who were wounded in the fighting, and a few other young adults. Many observers believe, and have reported, that most of the young people joined the Pathet Lao before the evacuation. These refugees had been in the village for about two months. The refugees give the impression of being severely demoralized. Only rarely do any of them work. There has apparently been little attempt to clear land for cultivation, though it is likely that they will stay in this area. They themselves do not know what will happen to them. The government provides them with a rice ration, but little further care and no information. Promises to reimburse them for lost property or to change their Pathet Lao money for RLG currency have not been fulfilled. The refugees asked me—some begged me—to help them to have their money exchanged. Some said that they would starve otherwise, and this is possible, since apparently they have no food except for the rice ration and what they can find in the forest. But these people are not mendicants. They were, in fact, probably the most well-to-do of the Lao peasantry. Some had careful records of their possessions. One sixty-year-old man who had owned forty cows and nine buffaloes estimated that the value of his belongings was about $3,600. Another showed us detailed records written up for the RLG but never honored which calculated his possessions as worth $5,000 before the bombing. Such reports were not unique, though some of the refugees had been very poor. Some had brought with them good clothes, occasionally a sewing machine or other possessions. All spoke with great longing of their wish to return to their homes in the Plain of Jars, with its fertile and abundant land, its cool climate, distant hills, rivers, and streams. The refugees were acquainted with our interpreter from previous visits, and were superficially friendly, though wary. They naturally assumed that we were connected with the American Government, and they obviously were not going to tell us anything that might lead to some new catastrophe. Conducting extensive interviews makes one feel uncomfortable. The refugees have good reason to dissimulate, and at the same time they do not wish to be uncooperative. With repeated questioning, it is easy to discover inconsistencies and even absurdities in their answers, but it is not pleasant to take on the role of a police agent. Apart from this, it is heart-rending to see their demoralization and despair, to watch an old woman crouching down in unaccustomed supplication, or to see the children sitting quietly hour after hour in the oppressive heat and dust of the camp.
The first story told by virtually every refugee is straightforward. They came to the Government side because they hated the Pathet Lao, who were oppressive. Why did the Pathet Lao oppress the people? "I don't know; I guess they are just crazy," one man told us.
Another man who had been a rather poor farmer in his former village spoke quite openly and favorably about the Pathet Lao. As he went on, a small group collected and listened quietly. An alert young man began to interrupt, correcting our informant and giving the negative, stereotyped answers to which we had already become accustomed. Within moments, our informant's answers also shifted. When the same sequence was repeated in other interviews, we realized that so long as this man was present, there was no point in continuing the discussion. Who he was, of course, I have no idea—perhaps a Pathet Lao cadre. Certainly the reasonable approach, from their point of view, was to appear to be pro-Government and antagonistic to the Pathet Lao. We spoke to one young woman who had fled to the Government side some years earlier, with several other young people. When asked why, she said that it was because of porterage which they were forced to do for the Pathet Lao. We asked whether she fled after her village was destroyed by bombing. "No, before," she answered. An older man interrupted, saying: "No, after, you know, there were many people killed in the bombing." She then said: "Yes, we escaped after the bombing." "Were you afraid of the bombing or the porterage?" "Both," she answered.
Every refugee with whom I spoke said that everything that he knew of—his own village, and all dwellings within several days journey—had been destroyed by bombardment before they were evacuated. Prior to 1968 the bombing of the Plain of Jars was sporadic. In April of 1968 it became more intense, and the villagers soon had to leave their villages and dig trenches and tunnels in the surrounding forest. At first they were able to farm sometimes, mainly at night, but this became impossible as the bombing increased in intensity. One man told us that the people of his village had been forced to move eight or nine times, deeper and deeper into the forest into new systems of trenches as the bombing extended its scope. He reported that by April, 1969, his village was destroyed by bombs and napalm. The Pathet Lao showed them how to dig trenches and tunnels, and identified the types of planes.
Another reported that in February, 1969, the bombing destroyed everything in the village. The first bombing, of a village nearby, was in June, 1967. Later, the bombing was constant, and the people lived in tunnels in the hills, coming out only on days when the bombing stopped. Our interpreter, who had interviewed about 300 refugees, informed us that these stories were typical. Every refugee to whom he had spoken reported that everything he knew of personally or had heard about was destroyed by bombardment before the evacuation. In September, 1969, the Vang Pao army conquered the Plain. The Meo soldiers were undisciplined and killed many of the cows and buffaloes. Many of the young men joined the Pathet Lao: others were taken into the Vang Pao army. We asked why the Meo soldiers killed the cattle. One man said the soldiers told the villagers that they didn't want cattle left to nourish the Pathet Lao. The refugees were concentrated in new villages—strategic hamlets, apparently—when the Vang Pao army came. Then, when it was clear that the Plain could not be held, they were evacuated. The primary complaint against the Pathet Lao had to do with the compulsory porterage. Prior to the bombing, there was very little porterage, but when the bombing began, the Pathet Lao soldiers moved to remote areas and could no longer use trucks, as before. "The planes made the soldiers disperse and they forced us to do porterage," one refugee said. One claimed that the porterage had begun as early as 1964. Others gave later dates. All, when pressed, said that the porterage began when the soldiers were forced by the bombing to move to inaccessible places.
Few of the refugees had ever seen any Vietnamese, though one informant, when interrupted by the young man whom I mentioned earlier, agreed with this man that the Pathet Lao were really Vietnamese who spoke Lao. A moment before, in answer to the question, "What kind of people are they?" he had said: "Oh, they are our own Lao people." He was unwilling to talk any longer at that point.
There were also other complaints about the Pathet Lao. One relatively rich farmer said he could not live comfortably with the Pathet Lao even if the bombing were to end, so that no more porterage would be necessary:
The poor farmer I mentioned earlier gave a more sympathetic account. He described a mild land reform in 1965:
This informant had never been to school and was pleased with the Pathet Lao educational reforms. He said that the teachers were taken to Phonesavan to be taught and then returned to the village. Other boys joined the Pathet Lao to be soldiers, and some went to the towns for medical training or to join the civil administration. No Pathet Lao lived permanently in the village, he reported. He was not sure what the Pathet Lao taught the teachers, but when they returned they taught only in Lao, no longer in French. Everyone was taught to read, particularly the women.
We interviewed two of the village teachers. They said that when the Pathet Lao came in 1964, after driving the Kong Le forces off of the Plain, they took the teachers for ten days to Phonesavan. They instructed them in teaching methods, and told them they must teach in Lao, not French. "They explained that Lao is our own language and Laos is our country and we don't need foreign languages." They also gave them political education.
Language teaching and mathematics were made more demanding than before and four grades were to be instituted for everyone. The teacher was required to run an adult literacy program on Saturdays and Sundays. Villagers who knew how to read also became literacy instructors. They described the literacy campaign as very good, and virtually universal. Before there had been just mechanical teaching of reading, with no content. Under the Pathet Lao, the texts dealt with agriculture and livestock and love of country. The political content was something like this: "Before, under the French, we had to pay taxes and money was sent to France. Now we're building our own country and are not working for foreign people." The intention was to extend education to grades five to seven, but this program could not be carried out, because of the war. An older man, formerly quite well off, added that the Pathet Lao made them study before work, and took some men from the village to study.
In theory, he said, it was a good idea, but he wasn't happy about it, particularly because of the taxation. The Pathet Lao took 15 percent of everything above subsistence. This was for the soldiers, teachers, and medical personnel whom they trained and returned to the village.
Another refugee who had lived in Phonesavan gave us additional information. The activists, in the early period, were intellectuals from Vientiane and Sam Neua who had studied in France. The Pathet Lao tended more to live among the people and recruited peasants from the area, while the intellectuals were, for the most part, with Kong Le and the neutralists. At first the Pathet Lao kept their identity secret. Later they began speaking more openly to people whom they felt they could trust. They always spoke nicely (this he reiterated over and over), and gave long explanations before suggesting any action. They lived like the poor peasants, for example refusing to ride in trucks as the Kong Le soldiers did. They were very prudent.
The Pathet Lao cadres encouraged the people not to be afraid of important men or to use honorific forms of address.
At first some husbands got angry, but they were told that there was to be no more oppression: "Look, she's human, you don't have special rights." Before, everything was for hire. After the Pathet Lao came, money wasn't necessary. They tried to induce cooperation among the villagers and to bring families to cooperate in agricultural work. They used no force, but tried to shame people into helping if they refused, to encourage them to see that all would benefit from cooperation. They formed "Awakening groups" of cadres from the village that were responsible for encouraging cooperation and collectivization. By 1967, virtually everyone was involved in collective farming, though they also kept private plots. The cadres never insulted anyone. They tried to make you like them. They would never take out guns and money to impress people. In 1967 they suddenly replaced all outsiders with local cadres drawn from the Awakening groups, many of whom had been taken away for training for a month or so. Each village had a complicated system of organization: political, administrative, defense (police), young boys, young girls, women, cleanliness, education, cooperation, etc. Everyone belonged. They elected their own leaders. There were also technical organizations concerned with irrigation, livestock, agriculture, adult literacy, forestry. Representatives of these groups would deal with experts from the outside in matters such as irrigation.
The first bombing began in May, 1964. Phonesavan itself was bombed in 1965. Between November, 1968, and January, 1969, the town was completely evacuated and destroyed. The Vang Pao army came through in September, 1969.
During 1964 and 1965 only very few North Vietnamese soldiers were in the vicinity. By 1969 there were many North Vietnamese. The soldiers maintained a very strict discipline and kept away from the villagers. People felt sorry for them because of their enforced isolation. The Pathet Lao taught them that the North Vietnamese were their friends who had come to give them technical assistance and help them to survive. They had enormous respect for the North Vietnamese. To illustrate, he told a story of a North Vietnamese irrigation adviser who was condemned to death by the Pathet Lao after he had killed a water buffalo. The people objected and protested to the General, who affirmed the sentence. The man then killed himself. In general, they regarded the North Vietnamese with awe. The Pathet Lao also taught them not to hate the American pilots, some of whom were captured and led through the town, but "only their leaders."[47]
I asked one man about fifty years old, who looked strong and healthy, why neither he nor anyone else seemed to be working, why they were just sitting in the sheds when surely they should be preparing to farm. He said:
In fact, these people know well how to farm in this area, and the work would not be beyond their strength, at least if they had enough to eat. But as the above account indicates, they are demoralized and without hope. The only time that I saw work being done in the village or its surroundings was during one visit, when I watched some men and women constructing private huts with wood that they had cut in the forest. Some women were sewing, and others were cooking or collecting food. The rest sat quietly, their interest somewhat aroused by our presence, but apparently with no plan or hope for the future. V
A correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review has summarized the situation which produced the refugees as follows:
It is doubtful that any military purpose, in the narrow sense, is served by the destructive bombing. The civilian economy may have been destroyed and thousands of refugees generated, but the Pathet Lao appear to be stronger than ever. If anything, the bombing appears to have improved Pathet Lao morale and increased support among the peasants, who no longer have to be encouraged to hate the Americans. The situation is exactly like that in Vietnam, where, in the first year of the intensive American bombardment in the South (1965), local recruitment for the Viet Cong tripled to about 150,000, according to American sources. And, as in Vietnam, the indigenous guerrilla forces are now more dependent on outside assistance as a result of the destruction of the civilian society in which they had their roots. The correspondent quoted above comments:
As in Vietnam, there is a military purpose to these tactics in a broader sense. Here again we see the tactic of "forced-draft urbanization" at work. To fight against a people's war, it is necessary, here as in South Vietnam, to eliminate the people, either by killing them, destroying their society and forcing them into caves, or "urbanizing" them by driving them into refugee camps or urban centers. Who can tell whether this tactic may not succeed?
We discussed the bombardment with Prince Souvanna Phouma. He denied that any destruction is taking place:
We mentioned specifically that refugees have told us that their villages were destroyed long before they left them. He replied:
He then showed us a large relief map of Indochina on the wall, and repeated: "You see those mountainous areas controlled by the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese. Nobody lives there." According to American figures, over a million people live there, well over a third of the population.
Part of the population of Laos lives in urban centers, Vientiane being the largest. Others live in the Pathet Lao-controlled areas under the conditions I have described. Still others remain in refugee camps. In addition, there are the Meo tribesmen who have been organized by the CIA, and that part of traditional Lao peasant society that is still untouched by the war.
Reports from the Vang Pao army of Meo indicate that they may be nearing the end of their ability to continue fighting. Several years ago, Robert Shaplen quoted Edgar "Pop" Buell, the American who is primarily responsible for the Meo operations:
Since then, the Vang Pao forces have suffered serious losses, and all credible reports indicate that their situation is far worse. By inciting large numbers of Meo to fight against the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese, the United States may have brought about their destruction as an organized group. "Pop" Buell recently reported that "all his friends from his early days in Laos have died in combat."[52] He added:
The American policy of sacrificing the Meo to America's anti-Communist crusade must be regarded, in my opinion, as one of the most profoundly cynical aspects of the American war in Indochina.
To try to get a sense of traditional Laos, we visited a village just a few miles from Vientiane which—incredibly—seems virtually untouched by the war, indeed by the modern age. We visited the home of an old peasant couple where our guide had lived for several years as an IVS volunteer. When we arrived, the old man was sitting on the large open porch outside the sleeping quarters, carving Buddhist verses on long strips of bamboo. He was so engrossed that he was unaware of our presence until our guide tapped him on the shoulder in greeting. The man and his wife seated themselves before us and wound knotted strings around our wrists, wishing us health and good fortune. The old woman explained that she had just received these particular strings from a Buddhist monk at a shrine where she had spent several days.
Water buffaloes, gentle beasts, trudged slowly along the dirt paths, past knots of people talking and laughing in the quiet of the early evening. The villagers greeted our guide warmly, joking and chatting with him as we walked through the village. Several were at least half-stoned, contributing to the atmosphere of tranquility and abandon. We had brought some meat for dinner, which the peasant woman cooked. After a leisurely meal with the old couple, we returned, late that evening, to Vientiane.
Superficially, such a village seems a haven of peace in the turmoil and misery of Laos, but there is more to the story. Our guide, who had studied the village with great care, estimated that infant mortality may be as high as 50 percent. Dysentery is endemic, and much of the population is always ill. In fact, as we strolled through the village we saw ceremonies on several porches for those who were ill. There is no sanitary water supply, and very little medical care.
The life of the village is less than delightful in many other ways. The old man we visited told us that he walks a long distance to fetch water. This seemed surprising, since there was a large pond nearby. When we walked to the pond, we discovered that it was fenced off, as was a large area surrounding it. Our guide explained that some years back a man had come to the village and simply taken the pond and the surrounding land for himself. When the villagers went to the village chief, they were told that that is the way it was to be. The older inhabitants now speak sadly of the days when they could sit beneath the tall trees near the pond and they complain of the difficulty and inconvenience and the loss of good land, but there is nothing that they can do. When he arrived in the village and learned of the situation, the IVS worker tried to convince them to go to the city, barely five miles away, and begin a law suit. The man was quickly told that this was impossible. The village chief had agreed, indicating that higher officials were involved in blocking the pond. Complaints would not be heeded and might even bring soldiers to the village. It is such abuses as these, typical of a traditional society and, if anything, given added harshness by colonialism, that the Pathet Lao seek to end. Loring Waggoner, a community development area adviser who has worked in Laos for a number of years in the USAID program, touched upon such matters in his testimony before the Symington Subcommittee Hearings (pp. 574f.). He described the peasants as "village oriented," and not concerned with Laos as a nation. With regard to the RLG:
He went on to describe the corruption of the elite in their dealings with the villagers, and observed that the villagers describe the Pathet Lao as "honest with them" though "much more authoritarian than the Lao Government seems to be." The villagers tend to view the Pathet Lao as traditionalists who emphasize "the old way of life, making it all Lao." When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of free choice, I was surprised. After only a week I began to have a sense of the appeal of the country and its people—along with despair about its future. Notes[1] For a good account of its operations, see Peter Dale Scott, "Air America: Flying the US into Laos," Ramparts, February, 1970. [2] Keith Buchanan, The Southeast Asian World, London, Bell and Sons, 1967, p. 140f. The present USAID administrator reports that as of today, "Laos has virtually no indigenous medical capability and there are only about a dozen foreign trained Lao doctors in-country." (Hearings of the Symington Subcommittee on United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad of the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, Oct. 20-28, 1969, p. 566, released with many deletions in April, 1970. Government Printing Office.) [3] Buchanan, op. cit. [4] "Rapport sur la situation économique et financière, 1968-9." [5] Fred Branfman, "Education in Laos Today," speech given at IVS annual conference, February 10, 1968. The reference is to the part of Laotian society administered by the RLG. The figure of 6,669 students in secondary schools comes from the AID report in the Symington Subcommittee Hearings, p. 570. [6] Jacques Doyon and Guy Hannoteaux, "l'Ambiguïté de l'engagement américain au Laos," Figaro, March 11, 1970, Vientiane. [7] "Laos: the labyrinthine war," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 16, 1970, correspondent. [8] The CIA is also reported to be involved in the opium traffic. For background and discussion, see the articles by David Feingold and Al McCoy in Nina Adams and Alfred McCoy, eds., Laos: War and Revolution, to be published by Harper & Row in November. See also Christian Science Monitor, May 29, 1970, for a report of direct CIA involvement in opium shipment. [9] Embassy officials claim that this particular instance of corruption is exaggerated, and that USAID simply diverted other funds to the airport construction. [10] That USAID serves as a CIA cover, as has long been reported, has now been officially admitted by Foreign Aid Chief John A. Hannah, AP Boston Globe, June 8, 1970. [11] The Pathet Lao officially favors a return to the general lines of the agreements of 1962 that established a Government of National Union, and therefore has no embassy in Hanoi. There is a RLG Embassy in Hanoi, staffed, I was informed, by Pathet Lao sympathizers. The Pathet Lao Information Office is the highest official Pathet Lao representation in Hanoi. There is also a Pathet Lao representative in Vientiane, accessible, though blockaded by RLG troops, and, he asserts, harassed in many ways by the Government. We were not able to penetrate the bureaucratic maze in the time available, but we did manage to speak to him at the airport, on the way to Hanoi. The interview from which the remark in the text is taken appears in full in N. Adams and A. McCoy, op. cit. [12] See "Laos: the labyrinthine war," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 16, 1970, for some comments on Allman's observations. [13] The New York Times, May 25. AFP reports that Vang Pao "is trying to retake five small forward posts of his base at Sam Thong…. The base was captured by leftist forces in a surprise assault last week." [14] UPI, International Herald Tribune, April 4-5, 1970. There is some suspicion that the report that Communist troops had occupied Sam Thong was released in an effort to conceal the vandalism of the Clandestine Army. [15] In the words of the Department of State Background Notes, March 1969, "By the spring of 1961 the NLHS appeared to be in a position to take over the entire country." [16] P. F. Langer and J. J. Zasloff, Revolution in Laos: The North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao, RM-5935, RAND Corporation, September 1969, p. 113; to be published this fall by Harvard University Press as North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao: Partners in the Struggle for Laos (175 pp., $5.95). [17] Phoumi Vongvichit, Laos and the Victorious Struggle of the Lao People Against U.S. Neo-colonialism, Neo Lao Haksat Editions, 1969, pp. 77-80. PEO is the Program Evaluation Office of the State Department, claimed by Vongvichit to be "a US military command in Laos." MAAG is the Military Assistance Advisory Group: PAG the Police Advisory Group; and USOM the United States Operations Mission. [18] See Jonathan Mirsky and Stephen E. Stonefield, "The United States in Laos," in E. Friedman and Mark Selden (eds.), America's Asia, Pantheon, 1970. [19] For background on events prior to the renewal of the civil war in 1963, see Arthur Dommen, Conflict in Laos, New York, 1964; Hugh Toye, Laos: Buffer State or Battleground, Oxford, 1968; Mirsky and Stonefield, op. cit.; Langer and Zasloff, op. cit.; Vongvichit, op. cit. See also Peter Dale Scott, "Laos, Nixon and the CIA," New York Review, April 9, 1970. [20] "From 1946 to 1963 Laos received more American aid per capita than any country in Southeast Asia. By 1958 the Royal Lao Army was the only foreign army in the world wholly supported by the taxpayers of the United States." Mirsky and Stonefield, op. cit. [21] This information comes from former IVS workers. I was not able to check other sources or the documents themselves, but I believe it to be fully accurate. [22] Vongvichit, op. cit., p. 103. [23] Interrogation of William Sullivan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and former Ambassador to Laos by Mr. Paul of the Committee Staff, Hearings of the Symington Subcommittee, pp. 532-33. [24] Ibid., p. 516-7. [25] Ibid., p. 585f. [26] See P.D. Scott, "Laos, Nixon, and the CIA," and Mirsky and Stonefield, op. cit. [27] He continues with this pretense in the Kennedy Subcommittee hearings on refugees, May, 1970: "We established very clear rules putting all villages out of range of American air activity. Before I approved a strike, I insisted on photographic evidence to see the area and the target." He accepted the estimate of 700 sorties a day. See Murray Kempton, "From the City of Lies." New York Review, June 4. 1970. [28] For detailed documentation of other falsehoods in this speech, see Scott, "Laos, Nixon, and the CIA." [29] Life Magazine, April 3, 1970. Reprinted in an excellent selection of articles on the current situation in Laos inserted by Senator Kennedy in the Congressional Record, April 20, 1970, S5988-92. See also Carl Strock, "Laotian Tragedy," New Republic, May 9, 1970. [30] Washington Star, April 19, 1970. Reprinted in the Congressional Record collection cited above. [31] See Symington Subcommittee Hearings, p. 380. The report adds that "of those killed in Laos up to October 22, 1969, something around one-quarter were killed with respect to operations in northern Laos." A UPI report from Geneva in the International Herald Tribune, April 4-5, 1970, gives the figure of 86 US Air Force Personnel held prisoner by the Pathet Lao in Laos. The figure, given by two clergymen, is claimed to be based on US sources "confirmed by private sources in Geneva." The Pathet Lao claims to have shot down over 1,200 American planes in Laos. [32] A statement on this matter appears in the interview cited in note 11. [33] Life under the P.L. in the Xieng Khouang Ville Area, undated; The Role of North Vietnamese Cadres in the Pathet Lao Administration of Xieng Khouang Province, April 1970. McKeithen is not further identified in these documents. Presumably, he is associated with USAID, the CIA, or both.
[34] Here McKeithen is a bit disingenuous. The virtual destruction of civil society by aerial bombardment is obviously a major reason why precious resources must be conserved. One refugee described his own marriage ceremony: few people could attend because of the bombardment and they had to dive into trenches during the ceremony because of a nearby raid. [35] Life under the P.L. He also notes that "the Khoueng offices were located in a small cave" outside the city, but fails to mention the reason. [36] Langer and Zasloff, op. cit. [37] Message No. 35, 16 September 1965. International Commission for Supervision and Control in Laos, to the Cochairman of the Geneva Conference. [38] Report of an Investigation by the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Laos of an attack on Dong Hene by North Vietnamese Troops; this document, undated and unidentified, is a reproduction of parts of the original ICC document submitted on June 14, 1966. [39] Paul Langer and Joseph J. Zasloff, The North Vietnamese Military Adviser in Laos, RAND Corporation, RM-5688, July, 1968. [40] The details are difficult to document, of course, since the RAND Corporation does not obligingly supply selected information to indicate the scope and timing of these activities. Some details appear in the Symington Subcommittee Hearings. It is hardly necessary to emphasize that except for the ICC reports, documents of the sort reviewed here are of dubious value. The source material is not available, and there is no way of checking distortions, excisions, or omissions. [41] The three regions of Vietnam, in Western terminology. In Vietnamese: Bac-Bô, Trung-Bô, Nam-Bô. [42] I did not take notes during the interview with Prince Souvanna Phouma. These remarks and those quoted below were reconstructed immediately after the interview and checked with other participants.
[43] Langer and Zasloff, Revolution in Laos, p. 212. [44] Behind the Lines—Hanoi, Harper & Row, 1967, pp. 35-6. Salisbury assumed that he was referring to Southern Laos, but the description is remarkably similar to what has since been reported from the North. In view of what we now know, the description is probably of Sam Neua province. [45] Decornoy's reports are given in full, in translation, in Adams and McCoy, op. cit. Also in the Bulletin of the Concerned Asian Scholars, April-July 1970. [46] The New York Times, February 5, 1970. [47] This is a constant refrain among the Communists of Indochina. [48] April 16, 1970. See note 7. [49] This paragraph is taken from the original text, parts of which appear in the Far Eastern Economic Review, April 16, 1970. [50] See note 42. [51] New Yorker, May, 1968, quoted in Symington Subcommittee Hearings, p. 552. [52] Henry Kamm, The New York Times, February 5, 1970. 
The Lessons of the Vietnam War -an interview with Noam Chomsky [Reproduced from Indochina Newsletter, Issue 18 (November - December, 1982), pages 1-5.] "American imperialism has suffered a stunning defeat in Indochina. But the same forces are engaged In another war against a much less resilient enemy. the American people. Here, the prospects for success are much greater. The battleground is ideological. not military. At stake are the lessons to be drawn from the American war In Indochina; the outcome will determine the course and character of new imperial ventures." Noam Chomsky, 1975 The following interview was conducted with Professor Chomsky in October 1982) - an interview with Noam Chomsky Q: When the Indochina war ended in 1975 you wrote that our nation's "official" opinion makers would engage in distortion of the lessons to be drawn from the war so that the same basic foreign policy goals could be pursued after the war. You felt then that in order to keep the real meaning of the war from penetrating the general public they faced two major tasks: First, they would have to disguise the fact that the war "was basically an American attack on South Vietnam -- a war of annihilation that spilled over to the rest of Indochina". And secondly, they would have to obscure the fact that the military effort in Vietnam "was restrained by a mass movement of protest and resistance here at home which engaged in effective direct action outside the bounds of propriety long before established spokesmen proclaimed themselves to be its leaders". Where do we stand now on these two issues--seven years later? Chomsky: As far as the opinion makers are concerned, they have been doing exactly what it was obvious they would do. Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how -- while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" -- the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam. The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There Is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That's gone. Of course, It Is a part of real history. But it's not a part of official history. And most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early 60's -- the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now. Q: This question of who the United States was fighting in Vietnam is pretty basic in terms of coming to any under- standing of the war. But why would the U.S. attack South Vietnam, if the problem was not an attack from North Vietnam? Chomsky: First of all, let's make absolutely certain that was the fact: that the U.S. directed the war against South Vietnam. There was a political settlement In 1954. But :n the late 50's the United States organized an internal repression South Vietnam, not using its troops. but using the local apparatus it was constructing. This was a very significant and very effective campaign of violence and terrorism against the Vietminh -- which was the communist-led nationalist force that fought the French. And the Vietminh at that time was adhering to the Geneva Accords, hoping that the political settlement would work out in South Vietnam. [The Geneva Accords of 1954 temporarily divided Northern and Southern Vietnam with the ultimate aim of reunification through elections. -- editor's note] And so, not only were they not conducting any terrorism, but in fact, they were not even responding to the violence against them. It reached the point where by 1959 the Vietminh leadership -- the communist party leadership -- was being decimated. Cadres were being murdered extensively. Finally in May of 1959 there was an authorization to use violence in self-defense, after years of murder, with thousands of people killed in this campaign organized by the United States. As soon as they began to use violence in self-defense, the whole Saigon government apparatus fell apart at once because it was an apparatus based on nothing but a monopoly of violence. And once it lost that monopoly of violence it was finished. And that's what led the United States to move in. There were no North Vietnamese around. Then the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was formed. And its founding program called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And it's very striking that the National Liberation Front was the only group that ever called for the independence of South Vietnam. The so-called South Vietnamese government (GVN) did not, but rather, claimed to be the government of all Vietnam. The National Liberation Front was the only South Vietnamese group that ever talked about South Vietnamese independence. They called for the neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a kind of neutral block, working toward some type of integration of the South with North Vietnam ultimately. Now that proposal in 1962 caused panic in American ruling circles. From 1962 to 1965 the US was dedicated to try to prevent the independence of South Vietnam, the reason was of course that Kennedy and Johnson knew that if any political solution was permitted In the south, the National Liberation Front would effectively come to power, so strong was its political support in comparison with the political support of the so-called South Vietnamese government. And In fact Kennedy and later Johnson tried to block every attempt at neutralization, every attempt at political settlement. This Is all documented. There's just no doubt about It. I mean, it's wiped out of history, but the documentation is just unquestionable -- in the internal government sources and everywhere else. And so there's just no question that the United States was trying desperately to prevent the independence of South Vietnam and to prevent a political settlement inside South Vietnam. And in tact It went to war precisely to prevent that. It finally bombed the North in 1965 with the purpose of trying to get the North to use its influence to call off the insurgency In the South. There were no North Vietnamese troops In South Vietnam then as far as anybody knew. And they anticipated of course when they began bombing the North from South Vietnamese bases that it would bring North Vietnamese troops into the South. And then it became possible to pretend it was aggression from the North. It was ludicrous. but that's what they claimed. Well, why did they do it! Why was the United States so afraid of an independent South Vietnam; Well, I think the reason again is pretty clear from the internal government documents. Precisely what they were afraid of was that the "takeover" of South Vietnam by nationalist forces would not be brutal. They feared it would be conciliatory and that there would be successful social and economic development -- and that the whole region might work! This was clearly a nationalist movement -- and in fact a radical nationalist movement which would separate Vietnam from the American orbit. It would not allow Vietnam to become another Philippines. It would trade with the United States but it would not be an American semi-colony. And suppose it worked! Suppose the country could separate itself from the American dominated global system and carry out a successful social and economic development. Then that is very dangerous because then it could be a model to other movements and groups in neighboring countries. And gradually there could be an erosion from within by indigenous forces of American domination of the region. So this was no small thing. It was assumed that the key to the problem was preventing any successful national movement from carrying out serious social and economic development inside Indochina. So the United States had to destroy it through a process which would become the war against South Vietnam. And, it should be pointed out that on a lower level we were doing the same things in Laos and Cambodia. Q: So the irony is that the very reason given in the United States for fighting the war -- the independence of South Vietnam -- is exactly what had to be destroyed. Chomsky: Exactly Q: Do you think this distortion of the war is successful? Chomsky: It's hard to say. People who lived through the period know better. But younger people who are being indoctrinated into the contemporary system of falsification -- they really have to do some research to find out what is the truth. In the general population, people forget or don't care that much And gradually what you hear drilled into your head everyday comes to be believed. People don't understand what you're talking about any more if you discuss the American war on South Vietnam. Q: And the role of the anti-war movement? Chomsky: The main effort has been to show that the opposition to the war was of two types. One was the serious responsible type that involved Eugene McCarthy and some senators -- who turned the tide because we realized it wasn't worthwhile or was too expensive or something. And then there were these sort of violent and irrational groups, teenagers and so on, whose behavior had little to do with the war really and whose activity was a form of lunacy. Now, anyone who lived through the period would have to laugh. Bur my impression is that the effort to portray the peace movement this way is nor working very well. For example, at the beginning of his administration, Reagan tried set the basis for American military intervention in El Salvador -- which is about what Kennedy did when he came into office in regard to Vietnam. Well, when Kennedy tried it in Vietnam, it lust worked like a dream. Virtually nobody opposed American bombing of South Vietnam in 1962. It was not an issue. Bur when Reagan began to talk of involving American forces In El Salvador there was a huge popular uproar. And he had to choose a much more indirect way of supporting the collection of gangsters in power there. He had to back off. And what that must indicate is a tremendous shift in public opinion over the past 20 years as a result of the participation in the real opposition to the war in Indochina -- which has lasted and was resurrected when a similar circumstance began to arise. Q: So you see the inability of the government to maneuver as it would like in El Salvador as directly related to the anti-war movement? Chomsky: Oh yes. They even have a name for it: "Vietnam Syndrome". See, they make it sound like some kind of disease, a malady that has to he overcome. And the "malady" in this case is that the population is still unwilling to tolerate aggression and violence. And that's a change that took place as a result of the popular struggle against the war in Vietnam. Q: So you feel it was the group officially defined as the "riff-raff, lunatic fringe" who really was the peace movement? Chomsky: Oh, there's no question. You can see what happened. There were very extensive grass roots efforts beginning in the mid 60's, developing quite gradually against tremendous opposition. So that in Boston it was impossible to have an outdoor public meeting against the war until about the fall of 1966. Until then they would be broken up. And the media more or less applauded the violence and disruption that prevented people from speaking. But gradually that changed. In tact, it reached such a point that by 1967 it was impossible for the President to declare a national mobilization for war. He was restricted and forced to pretend he was conducting a small war. There were constraints. Because of public opinion which by them was considerably aroused by demonstrations and teachins and other types of resistance. Johnson had to fight the war with deficit spending. He had to fight a "guns and butter" war to show it was no big war. And this policy just collapsed. And it collapsed totally with the Tet Offensive in 1968 [the National Liberation Front's surprise temporary takeover of virtually all of South Vietnam's cities overnight --Ed.] which led major sectors of American power -- corporate power and other centers of power -- to realize we could nor carry it off at this level. Either we go to war like :n :he Second World War, or we pull out. And that was a direct effect of the activities of the peace movement. After this decision was made, then politicians like Eugene McCarthy -- whom you had never heard of before that time, came to announce themselves as the leaders of the peace movement. But by then the basic decision to put a limit to direct American troop involvement had been made. You had to fight fur a long time to get the U.S. out, but the basic decision had been made at the Tet Offensive. That's when the programs related to Vietnamization were put in place, and we began to fight a more capital intensive war with less direct participation of American ground troops. Incidentally. another reason for this was that the America army began to deteriorate internally because, after all, the United States was fighting a very unusual type of war. It's very rare for a country to try to fight a colonial war with a conscript army. Usually wars like the Vietnam war are fought with mercenaries -- like the French Foreign Legion. The US tried to fight what amounts to a colonial war with a conscript army. And a colonial war Is a very dirty kind of war. You're not fighting armed forces. You're fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries. The 50,000 Korean mercenaries we had in Vietnam were professional killers and just massacred people outright. And the American army did plenty of that too, but it couldn't take it after awhile. It's not the kind of job you can give to conscripts who are not trained to be murderers. Q: And they had also heard of the anti-war movement's ideas against the war back home. Chomsky: Exactly. It was a citizen's army, not separated from what's happening in American society in general. And the effect was that, very much to its credit, the American army began to crumble and deteriorate. And it became harder and harder to keep an army In the field. Q: Are you aware of any other time in history when soldiers came home from the war and organized against their government as many Vietnam veterans did through the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization? Chomsky: It's rare. For example, it's happening now to a certain extent in Israel with reservists who are also fighting a war against a civilian population in Lebanon. And it's the same kind of phenomenon. If they just kept professional military men involved they could probably carry it off. But reservists are connected with the civilian population. That's why countries like France and England used mercenary forces to carry out these kinds of wars. Let me make one final point about the peace movement which is often forgotten. When you look back at the internal documents that we have now you can see that when the big decision was made around the Tet Offensive in 1968 -- about whether or not to send a couple hundred thousand more troops -- one of the factors was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were concerned that they would not have enough troops for internal control of the domestic American population. They feared tremendous protest and disruption at home if they sent more troops to Vietnam. This means that they understood the level of internal resistance to be virtually at the level of civil war. And think they were probably right about that. That's a good indication from inside as to how seriously they took the peace movement. There are indications that the huge demonstrations of October and November of 1969 severely limited Nixon 's ability to carry out some of the plans for escalating the war that he had. The domestic population was not under control. And any country has to have a passive population if it is going to carry out effectively an aggressive foreign policy. And it was clear by October and November of 1969 just by the scale of opposition that the population was not passive. So those are all important events to remember. Again, they're sort of written out of history. But the record is there and the documentation is there, and it's clear that that's what happened. Q: What is the current U.S. foreign policy toward Indochina! Chomsky: Well, towards Indochina I think the main policy is what's called "bleeding Vietnam" Even conservative business groups outside the United States are appalled at what the United States has been doing. We fought the war to prevent Indochina from carrying out successful social and economic development. Well, I think the chances of that happening are very slight because of the devastation, because of the brutality of war. But the U.S. wants to make sure it will continue. And therefore we first of all of course refused any reparations. We refused aid. We try to block aid from other countries. We block aid from international institutions. I mean, sometimes it reaches a point of almost fanatic effort to make them suffer. For example, there was one point when the United States prevented the government of India from sending a hundred buffalo to Vietnam. (The buffalo stock in Vietnam had been decimated by American bombing.) We prevented them by threatening to cut off Food for Peace aid. So in every conceivable way the United States has tried to increase the harsh conditions of life in Indochina. And right now one of the main ways we're doing it is by supporting the Khmer Rouge on the Thai-Cambodian border. Noam Chomsky is a professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts institute of Technology.
by Noam Chomsky
[Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and is the creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of
formal languages. Outside of his linguistic work, Chomsky describes himself as a
"libertarian socialist" and is widely known for his left-wing political
writings. Chomsky has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy,
intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S.
foreign policy.] Take Laos in the 1960s, probably the poorest country in the world. Most of the people who lived there didn't even know there was such a thing as Laos; they just knew they had a little village and there was another little village nearby. But as soon as a very low-level social revolution began to develop there, Washington subjected Laos to a murderous "secret bombing," virtually wiping out large settled areas in operations that, it was conceded, had nothing to do with the war the US was waging in South Vietnam. Grenada has a hundred thousand people who produce a little nutmeg, and you could hardly find it on a map. But when Grenada began to undergo a mild social revolution, Washington quickly moved to destroy the threat. From the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 till the collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, it was possible to justify every US attack as a defense against the Soviet threat. So when the United States invaded Grenada in 1983, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explained that, in the event of a Soviet attack on Western Europe, a hostile Grenada could interdict oil supplies from the Caribbean to Western Europe and we wouldn't be able to defend our beleaguered allies. Now this sounds comical, but that kind of story helps mobilize public support for aggression, terror and subversion. The attack against Nicaragua was justified by the claim that if we don't stop "them" there, they'll be pouring across the border at Harlingen, Texas-just two days' drive away. (For educated people, there were more sophisticated variants, just about as plausible.) As far as American business is concerned, Nicaragua could disappear and nobody would notice. The same is true of El Salvador. But both have been subjected to murderous assaults by the US, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and many billions of dollars. There's a reason for that. The weaker and poorer a country is, the more dangerous it is as an example. If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, "why not us?" This was even true in Indochina, which is pretty big and has some significant resources. Although Eisenhower and his advisers ranted a lot about the rice and tin and rubber, the real fear was that if the people of Indochina achieved independence and justice, the people of Thailand would emulate it, and if that worked, they'd try it in Malaya, and pretty soon Indonesia would pursue an independent path, and by then a significant area of the Grand Area would have been lost. If you want a global system that's subordinated to the needs of US investors, you can't let pieces of it wander off. It's striking how clearly this is stated in the documentary record -- even in the public record at times. Take Chile under Allende. Chile is a fairly big place, with a lot of natural resources, but again, the United States wasn't going to collapse if Chile became independent. Why were we so concerned about it? According to Kissinger, Chile was a "virus" that would "infect" the region with effects all the way to Italy. Despite 40 years of CIA subversion, Italy still has a labor movement. Seeing a social democratic government succeed in Chile would send the wrong message to Italian voters. Suppose they get funny ideas about taking control of their own country and revive the workers' movements the CIA undermined in the 1940s? US planners from Secretary of State Dean Acheson in the late 1940s to the present have warned that "one rotten apple can spoil the barrel." The danger is that the "rot" -- social and economic development -- may spread. This "rotten apple theory" is called the domino theory for public consumption. The version used to frighten the public has Ho Chi Minh getting in a canoe and landing in California, and so on. Maybe some US leaders believe this nonsense -- it's possible -- but rational planners certainly don't. They understand that the real threat is the "good example." Sometimes the point is explained with great clarity. When the US was planning to overthrow Guatemalan democracy in 1954, a State Department official pointed out that "Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon: its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail." In other words, what the US wants is "stability," meaning security for the "upper classes and large foreign enterprises." If that can be achieved with formal democratic devices, OK. If not, the "threat to stability" posed by a good example has to be destroyed before the virus infects others. That's why even the tiniest speck poses such a threat, and may have to be crushed. 9 Noam Chomsky, "The Threat of a Good Example," What Uncle Sam Really Wants (Tucson: Odonian Press, 1993)
After the CataclysmPostwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial IdeologyThe Political Economy of Human Rights - Volume II,a book by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. HermanSouth End Press, 1979
" The primary U.S. goal in the Third World is to ensure that it remains open to U.S. economic penetration and political control. Failing this the United States exerts every effort to ensure that societies that try to strike an independent course ... will suffer the harshest conditions that U.S. power can impose ... "Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman*****The SettingThe U.S. Impact on IndochinaThe U.S. war in Indochina began as one of innumerable examples of counterrevolutionary intervention throughout the world. As a result of the wholly unanticipated level of resistance of the Vietnamese revolutionaries, and later their allies when the United States spread the war to the rest of Indochina, it was gradually transformed into one of the most destructive and murderous attacks on a civilian population in history, as the world's most powerful military machine was unleashed against peasant societies with extremely limited means of self-defense and lacking the capacity to strike back at the source of aggression.The main outlines of the U.S. war are well documented. After World War II, the United States determined to back French imperialism in its effort to destroy what planners clearly recognized to be an indigenous nationalist movement in Vietnam, which declared independence in 1945 and vainly sought recognition and aid from the United States. The French-U.S. repacification effort failed. In 1954, France accepted a political settlement at Geneva, which, if adhered to by the United States, would have led to independence for the three countries of Indochina. Unwilling to accept the terms of this settlement, the United States undertook at once to subvert them. A client regime was established in South Vietnam which immediately rejected the basic framework of the agreements, launched a fierce repression in the South, and refused to permit the elections to unify the two administrative zones of the country as laid down in the Geneva Accords ... In the 1950s, the United States still hoped to be able to reconquer all of Vietnam; later, it limited its aims to maintaining control over South Vietnam and incorporating it into the Free World by any necessary means. Direct involvement of U.S. armed forces in military action against the South Vietnamese began in 1961-62.Meanwhile in Laos the United States also successfully undermined the Geneva political settlement and prevented any sharing of power by the Pathet Lao, the left wing resistance forces that had fought the French and won the 1958 election despite a major U.S. effort to prevent this outcome. The United States then turned to subversion and fraud, setting off a civil war in which, as in South Vietnam, the right wing military backed by the United States was unable to hold its own. Meanwhile, Cambodia was able to maintain independence despite continual harassment by U.S. clients in Thailand and South Vietnam and an unsuccessful effort at subversion in the late 1950s.By the early 1960s, virtually all parties concerned, apart from the United States and its various local clients, were making serious efforts to avoid an impending war by neutralizing South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; that is, removing them from external (overwhelmingly U.S.) influence and control. Such an outcome was anathema to the U.S. Ieadership. President Johnson informed Ambassador Lodge in 1964 that his mission was "knocking down the idea of neutralization wherever it rears its ugly head." The United States was deeply concerned to prevent any negotiated political settlement because, as is easily documented, its planners and leaders assumed that the groups that they backed could not possibly survive peaceful competition.Once again the United States succeeded in preventing a peaceful settlement. In South Vietnam, it stood in opposition to all significant political forces, however anti-Communist, imposing the rule of a military clique that was willing to serve U.S. interests. By January 1965, the United States was compelled to undermine its own puppet, General Khanh; he was attempting to form what Ambassador Taylor called a "dangerous" coalition with the Buddhists, who were not acting "in the interests of the Nation," as General Westmoreland explained. What is more, Khanh was apparently trying to make peace with the NLF, quite possibly a factor that lay behind the elimination of his predecessors. At that point, the United States, which stood alone in understanding "the interests of the Nation" in South Vietnam, had no alternative but to extend its already substantial military campaign against the rural society of the South, where the overwhelming majority of the population lived. The United States therefore launched a full-scale invasion in a final effort to destroy the organized popular forces in the South. The invasion was accompanied by the bombing of North Vietnam, undertaken to lay some basis for the claim that the United States was "defending the South against external aggression," and in the hope that the DRV would use its influence to bring the southern rebellion to a halt and permit the United States to attain its goals. This maneuver failed. The DRV responded by sending limited forces to the South, as most U.S. planners had anticipated. Meanwhile, the United States began the systematic bombing of South Vietnam, at three times the level of the more publicized-and more protested-bombing of the North.The war also intensified in Laos, with U.S. bombing from 1964 and military operations by a "clandestine army" of Meo tribesmen, organized and directed by the CIA to supplement the inept "official" army trained and armed by the U.S. military. U.S. outposts in northern Laos were guiding the bombing of North Vietnam from Thai bases. By this time Thai and North Vietnamese forces were also engaged, though on a considerably smaller scale. By 1968, the United States was conducting a bombing campaign of extraordinary severity in northern Laos, far removed from the war in South Vietnam. By 1969 the sporadic U.S.-Saigon attacks on Cambodia had escalated to intensive bombardment, and after the coup of March, 1970, which overthrewtheSihanoukgovernment, Cambodia too was plunged into the inferno. U.S.-Saigon military actions began two days after the coup and a full-scale invasion (called a "limited incursion") took place at the end of April- "limited," as it turned out, largely because of the unprecedented demonstration of protest in the United States. This invasion and the subsequent bombing, particularly in 1973, led to vast suffering and destruction throughout the country.All of these efforts failed. In January, 1973 the United States s~gned a peace treaty in Paris which virtually recapitulated the NLF program of the early 1960s. This was interpreted as a stunning diplomatic victory in the United States. The United States government announced at once that it would disregard every essential provision of this treaty, and proceeded to do so, attempting again to conquer South Vietnam, now through the medium of the vastly expanded military forces it organized, trained, advised, and supplied. In a most remarkable display of servility, the Free Press misrepresented the new agreement in accordance with the Kissinger-Nixon version, which was diametrically opposed to the text on every crucial point, thus failing to bring out the significance of the U.S.-Thieu subversion of the major elements of the agreement. This misrepresentation of the actual terms of the agreement set the stage for indignation at the North Vietnamese response and the sudden collapse of the puppet regime.All of these U.S. efforts dating back to the 1940s eventually failed. By April 1975, U.S. clients had been defeated in all parts of Indochina, leaving incredible carnage, bitterness, and near insoluble problems of reconstruction. The United States thereafter refused reparations or aid, and exerted its considerable influence to block assistance from elsewhere. Even trade is blocked by the United States, in a striking display of malice.*****The United States in Vietnam: A Partial VictoryThe war in Vietnam ended with a defeat for U.S. imperial violence, but only a partial defeat-a significant fact. The U.S. Expeditionary Force of over half a million men in South Vietnam became "a drugged, mutinous and demoralised rabble"5 and was withdrawn. U.S. Ieaders had painfully learned a lesson familiar to their predecessors: a conscript army is ill-suited to fight a colonial war with its inevitable barbarism and incessant atrocities against helpless civilians. Such a war is better left to hired killers such as the French Foreign Legion or native mercenaries, or in the modern period to an advanced technology that leaves some psychic distance between the murderers and their victims-although even B-52 pilots reportedly began to object when Nixon and Kissinger dispatched them to devastate Hanoi in December, 1972 in a final effort to compel the North Vietnamese to accept a U.S.-dictated peace.*****PrecedentsThe Intelligentsia and the StateIn considering the refraction of events in Indochina through l the prism of western ideology, it is useful to bear in mind some relevant precedents. The first class of precedents has to do with the ways in which influential segments of the intelligentsia have responded in the past to abuses of state power; the second, with the record of treatment of former enemies after revolutionary, civil or other military conflicts.***The normal case of straight chauvinist bias is, of course, of central importance in shaping, the responses and defining the role of mainstream intellectuals ... A primary social role of the group that Isaiah Berlin called "the secular priesthood" is to speak positively of the institutions and objectives of the state and dominant power interests within it in order to help mobilize public commitment and loyalty. The adaptability of intellectuals to quality variation in the social order for which devotion is sought has proven to be very great-the pre-Civil War southern intelligentsia even found the slave system worth cherishing despite its economic inefficiency ("slave labor can never be so cheap as what is called free labor") on the grounds of its sheer humanity and social beneficence ("what is lost to us [from inefficiency] is gained by humanity").A further traditional role of intellectuals is to disseminate propaganda concerning the evil practices, real or fabricated, of current enemies of the state.***The general subservience of the articulate intelligentsia to the framework of state propaganda is not only unrecognized, it is ) strenuously denied by the propaganda system. The press and the intelligentsia in general are held to be fiercely independent, critical, antagonistic to the state, even suffused by a trendy anti-Americanism. It is quite true that controversy rages over government policies and the errors or even crimes of government officials and agencies. But the impression of internal dissidence is misleading. A more careful analysis shows that this controversy takes place, for the most part, within the narrow limits of a set of patriotic premises. Thus it is quite tolerable-indeed, a contribution to the propaganda system-for the Free Press to denounce the government for its "errors" in attempting"to defend South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression," since by so doing it helps to establish more firmly the basic myth: that the United States was not engaged in a savage attack on South Vietnam but was rather "defending" it. If even the hostile critics adopt these assumptions, then clearly they must be true.The beauty of the democratic systems of thought control, as contrasted with their clumsy totalitarian counterparts, is that they operate by subtly establishing on a voluntary basis-aided by the force of nationalism and media control by substantial interests- presuppositions that set the limits of debate, rather than by imposing beliefs with a bludgeon. Then let the debate rage; the more lively and vigorous it is, the better the propaganda system is served, since the presuppositions (U.S. benevolence, lack of rational imperial goals, defensive posture, etc.) are more firmly established. Those who do not accept the fundamental principles of state propaganda are simply excluded from the debate (or if noticed, dismissed as "emotional," "irresponsible," etc.).In a typical example, when the New York Times (5 April 1975) gave its retrospective assessment of the Vietnam tragedy, it referred to "the decade of fierce polemics" (to be resolved in due course by "Clio, the goddess of history") between the hawks who thought that the United States could win and the doves who were convinced that the U.S. objective was unattainable. Those who opposed the war in principle-specifically, the mainstream of the peace movement-were simply not part of the debate, as far as the Times was concerned. Their position need not be refuted; it does not exist.An excellent illustration of how the ideological institutions operate to buttress the state propaganda system by identifying the media as "hypercritical," so much so as to endanger "free institutions," is provided by a two-volume Freedom House study of the alleged bias and incompetence of the media in portraying the Tet offensive as a defeat for the United States and thus contributing to the failure of U.S. arms by their excessive pessimism. The name "Freedom House" should at once arouse a certain skepticism among people attuned to the machinations of modern propaganda systems, just as any good student of Orwell should have realized that a change in the name of the U.S. War Department to "Defense Department" in 1947 signalled that henceforth the state would be shifting from defense to aggressive war. In fact, "Freedom House" is no less of an Orwellian construction, as its record indicates.The study in question is in the Freedom House tradition. Contrary to its intentions and stated conclusions, any independent-minded reader should infer from its 1500 pages of text and documents that the media were remarkably loyal to the basic doctrines of the state and tended to view the events of the period strictly from the government's point of view. But these facts, though obvious from the documents cited, completely escaped the author and his Freedom House sponsors; naturally, since they take ordinary press subservience as a norm. What is most striking about the study, apart from its general ineptitude, are the premises adopted without comment throughout: the press is unjustifiably "pessimistic" if it tends to believe that U.S. force may not prevail in "defending South Vietnam," and is "optimistic" if it expresses faith in the ultimate success of U.S. state violence. Pessimism is wrong even if based on fact and in conformity with the views of the Pentagon and CIA (as was often the case, specifically, in the instance in question). Since optimism is demanded irrespective of facts, the implication of this study is that "responsible" media must deliberately lie in order to serve the state in an undeviatingly propagandistic role.... the intelligentsia have been prone to various forms of state worship, the most striking and significant being subservience to the propaganda systems of their own government and social institutions. This subservience often takes the form of childish credulity that is effectively exploited by the organizations that are devoted to atrocity fabrication and other modes of ideological control. Sometimes the credulity is feigned, as the propagandist knowingly transmits a useful lie ...*****Final Comments***... For the groups that dominate economic, social, political and intellectual life in the United States, it is a matter of urgency to ensure that no serious challenge is raised to their predominant role, either in ideology or in practice. While mild social reforms have been introduced in the United States, others now conventional in Western Europe (e.g., national health insurance, minimal "worker participation" in industry, etc.) have been effectively resisted here, and there has been remarkable success in designing policy so that state intervention in the economy and social life serves the needs of the wealthy and powerful... the absence of an organized left opposition in the United States has facilitated the work of the system of thought control and indoctrination. U.S. ideologists have been unusually successful in conducting "the engineering of consent," a technique of control that substitutes for the use of force in societies with democratic forms.' To serve this end, every effort must be made to discredit what is called "socialism" or "commumism".***There is no single cause for the misery and oppression that we find in every part of the world. But there are some major causes, and some of these are close at hand and subject to our influence and, ultimately, our control. These factors and the social matrix in which they are embedded will engage the concern and efforts of people who are honestly committed to alleviate human suffering and to contribute to freedom and justice.The success of the Free Press in reconstructing imperial ideology.since the U.S. withdrawal from Indochina has been spectacular. The shift of the United States from causal agent to concerned bystander-and even to leader in the world struggle for human rights-in the face of its empire of client fascism and long, vicious assault on the peasant societies of Indochina, is a remarkable achievement. The system of brainwashing under freedom, with mass media voluntary self-censorship in accord with the larger interests of the state, has worked brilliantly. The new propaganda line has been established by endless repetition of the Big Distortions and negligible grant of access to nonestablishment points of view; all rendered more effective by the illusion of equal access and the free flow of ideas. U.S. dissenters can produce their Samizdats freely, and stay out of jail, but they do not reach the general public or the Free Press except on an episodic basis. This reflects the power and interests that benefit from the uncontrolled arms race, the status quo of domestic economic arrangements, and the external system of multinational expansion and collaboration with the Shahs, Suhartos, Marcos's in the contemporary "development" and sacking of the Third World. Change will come only when material facts arouse sufficient numbers to force a reassessment of policy. At the present time, the machine expands, the mass media adapt to the political economy, and human rights are set aside except in rhetorical flourishes useful for ideological reconstruction.
The following article by Noam Chomsky appeared in:
Z Magazine, September 1992
and is reprinted here with the magazine's permission.
Z is an independent, progressive monthly magazine of critical
thinking on political, cultural, social, and economic life in
the United States. It sees the racial, sexual, class, and
political dimensions of personal life as fundamental to
understanding and improving contemporary circumstances; and it
aims to assist activist efforts to attain a better future.
Z Magazine is published monthly except on issue for July/August
by the Institute for Social and Cultural Communications.
Subscriptions: One Year $25; Two Years $40; Three Years $55;
Canada and Mexico $40/year; students/low income $18/yr; foreign
(surface) $50. Write to: Z Magazine, 150 W Canton St., Boston MA
02118, (617)236-5878, Fax: (617) 247-3179.
Each issue of the magazine is about 100 pages with no
advertisements.
=================================================================
Vain Hopes, False Dreams (Parts 1 to 7)
========================
In the July/August issue of _Z_, several articles dealt with
the deterioration of conditions of life in American society and
the loss of hope, trust, or even expectations for the political
system. Reviewing some of these all-too-obvious elements of the
current scene, I wrote that "The public is not unaware of what is
happening, though with the success of the policies of isolation
and breakdown of organizational structure, the response is
erratic and dangerous: faith in ridiculous billionaire saviors
who are little more than `blank slates' on which one can write
one's favorite dreams, myths of past innocence and noble leaders,
conspiracy cults..., unfocused skepticism and disillusionment --
a mixture that has not had happy consequences in the past."
At times of general malaise and social breakdown, it is not
uncommon for millenarian movements to arise to replace lost hopes
by idle dreams: dreams of a savior who will lead us from bondage,
or of the return of the great ships with their bounty, as in the
cargo cults of South Sea islanders. Some may yearn for a lost
golden age, or succumb to the blandishments of the new Messiahs
who come to the fore at such moments. Those more cognizant of
the institutional causes of discontent may be attracted to an
image of hope destroyed by dark and powerful forces that stole
from us the leader who sought a better future. The temptation to
seek solace, or salvation, is particularly strong when the means
to become engaged in a constructive way in determining one's fate
have largely dissolved and disappeared.
The billionaire savior has retreated from the scene. But it is
surely striking that his challenge to the one-party, two-faction
system of business rule, with its broad popular appeal, should
have coincided so closely with the revival of fascination with
tales of intrigue about Camelot lost. The audiences differ, but
the JFK-Perot enthusiasms are similar enough to raise the
question whether the imagery of the leader maliciously stolen
from us has more of a claim to reality than the promise of the
figure who suddenly appeared, quickly to fade away. The question
is an important one, particularly to the left (broadly
construed), which has devoted much of its valuable energy and
resources to the Kennedy revival at a time when it has been
successfully removed from the political arena, along with the
large majority of the public that is its natural constituency.
The core issue in the current Kennedy revival is the claim that
JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam, a fact suppressed by the
media; and was assassinated for that reason, it is prominently
charged. Some allege further that Kennedy was intent on
destroying the CIA, dismantling the military-industrial complex,
ending the Cold War, and opening an era of development and
freedom for Latin America, among other forms of class treachery
that led to his downfall. This 1991-2 drama proceeded at several
levels, from cinema to scholarship, engaging some of the
best-known Kennedy intellectuals as well as substantial segments
of the popular movements that in large part grew from opposition
to the Vietnam war. Much as they differ on parts of the picture
and other issues, there is a shared belief across this spectrum
that history changed course dramatically when Kennedy was
assassinated in November 1963, an event that casts a grim shadow
over all that followed.
It is also striking that the withdrawal thesis, which is at the
heart of the Camelot revival of 1991-2, gained its prominence
just on the 30th anniversary of Kennedy's steps to escalate the
Indochina conflict from international terrorism to outright
aggression. The anniversary of Kennedy's war against the rural
society of South Vietnam passed virtually without notice, as the
country mused over the evil nature of the Japanese, who had so
signally failed to plead for forgiveness on the 50th anniversary
of their attack on a military base in a US colony that had been
stolen from its inhabitants, by force and guile, just 50 years
earlier.
There are several sources of evidence that bear on the withdrawal
thesis: (1) The historical facts; (2) the record of public
statements; (3) the internal planning record; (4) the memoirs and
other reports of Kennedy insiders. In each category, the
material is substantial. The record of internal deliberations,
in particular, has been available far beyond the norm since the
release of two editions of the _Pentagon Papers_ (_PP_). The
recent publication of thousands of pages of documents in the
official State Department history provides a wealth of additional
material on the years of the presidential transition, 1963-4,
which are of crucial significance for evaluating the thesis that
many have found so compelling. What follows is an excerpt from a
much longer review of the four categories of evidence in a
broader context (_Year 501_, South End, forthcoming).
While history never permits anything like definitive conclusions,
in this case, the richness of the record, and its consistency,
permit some unusually confident judgments. In my opinion, the
record is inconsistent with the withdrawal thesis throughout, and
supports a different conclusion. In brief, basic policy towards
Indochina developed within a framework of North-South/East-West
relations that Kennedy did not challenge, and remained constant
in essentials: disentanglement from an unpopular and costly
venture as soon as possible, but _after_ victory was assured
(by the end, with increasing doubt that US client regimes could
be sustained). Tactics were modified with changing circumstances
and perceptions. Changes of Administration, including the
Kennedy assassination, had no large-scale effect on policy, and
not even any great effect on tactics, when account is taken of
the objective situation and how it was perceived.
1. Kennedy's War
----------------
When JFK took over in 1961, the US client regimes faced collapse
in both Laos and Vietnam, for the same reason in both countries:
The US-imposed regimes could not compete politically with the
well-organized popular opposition, a fact recognized on all
sides. Kennedy accepted a diplomatic settlement in Laos (at
least on paper), but chose to escalate in Vietnam, where he
ordered the deployment of Air Force and Helicopter Units, along
with napalm, defoliation, and crop destruction. US military
personnel were sharply increased and deployed at battalion level,
where they were "beginning to participate more directly in
advising Vietnamese unit commanders in the planning and execution
of military operations plans" (_PP_). Kennedy's war far
surpassed the French war at its peak in helicopters and aerial
fire power. As for personnel, France had 20,000 nationals
fighting in all of Indochina in 1949 (the US force level reached
16,700 under JFK), increasing to 57,000 at the peak.
As military operations intensified, concerns arose over the
effects of "indiscriminate firepower" and reports "that
indiscriminate bombing in the countryside is forcing innocent or
wavering peasants toward the Viet Cong" (_PP_). Kennedy's more
dovish advisers, notably Roger Hilsman, preferred
counterintersurgency operations. The favored method was to drive
several million peasants into concentration camps where,
surrounded by barbed wire and troops, they would have a "free
choice" between the US client regime (GVN) and the Viet Cong.
The effort failed, Hilsman later concluded, because it was never
possible to eliminate the political opposition entirely. Other
problems arose when the wrong village was bombed, or when bombing
and defoliation alienated the peasants whose hearts and minds
were to be won from the enemy whom they supported.
Kennedy's war was no secret. In March 1962, US officials
announced that US pilots were engaged in combat missions (bombing
and strafing). In October, a front-page story in the _New York
Times_ reported that "in 30 percent of all the combat missions
flown in Vietnamese Air Force planes, Americans are at the
controls," though "national insignia have been erased from many
aircraft...to avoid the thorny international problems involved."
The press reported further that US Army fliers and gunners were
taking the military initiative against southern guerrillas, using
helicopters with more firepower than any World War II fighter
plane as an offensive weapon. Armed helicopters were regularly
supporting operations of the Saigon army (ARVN). The brutal
character of Kennedy's war was also no secret, from the outset.
The specialist literature, notably province studies, generally
agrees that the US-imposed regime had no legitimacy in the
countryside, where 80% of the population lived (and little enough
in the urban areas), that only force could compensate for this
lack, and that by 1965 the VC had won the war in much of the
country, with little external support.
At first, JFK's 1961-2 aggression appeared to be a grand success:
by July 1962, "the prospects looked bright" and "to many the end
of the insurgency seemed in sight." The US leadership in Vietnam
and Washington "was confident and cautiously optimistic," and "In
some quarters, even a measure of euphoria obtained" (_PP_).
In his semi-official history of Kennedy's presidency, Arthur
Schlesinger observes that by the end of 1961, "The President
unquestionably felt that an American retreat in Asia might upset
the whole world balance" (_A Thousand Days_, 1965). "The
result in 1962 was to place the main emphasis on the military
effort" in South Vietnam. The "encouraging effects" of the
escalation enabled Kennedy to report in his January 1963 State of
the Union message that "The spearpoint of aggression has been
blunted in South Vietnam." In Schlesinger's own words: "1962 had
not been a bad year:...aggression checked in Vietnam."
Recall that Kennedy and his historian-associate are describing
the year 1962, when Kennedy escalated from extreme terrorism to
outright aggression.
Turning briefly to the second category of evidence, public
statements, we find that Schlesinger's report of the President's
feelings is well-confirmed. JFK regularly stressed the enormous
stakes involved, which made any thought of withdrawal
unacceptable. To the end, his public position was that we must
"win the war" and not "just go home and leave the world to those
who are our enemies." We must ensure that "the assault from the
inside, and which is manipulated from the North, is ended"
(Sept., Nov. 1963). Anything less would lead to the loss of
Southeast Asia, with repercussions extending far beyond. As the
"watchman on the walls of world freedom," he intended to tell his
Dallas audience on Nov. 22, the US had to undertake tasks that
were "painful, risky and costly, as is true in Southeast Asia
today. But we dare not weary of the task." The internal record,
to which we turn next, shows that he adopted the same stance in
his (limited) involvement in planning.
2. JFK and Withdrawal: the Early Plans
--------------------------------------
The optimistic mid-1962 assessment led Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, the primary war manager for Kennedy and Johnson,
to initiate planning for the withdrawal of US forces from
Vietnam, leaving to the client regime the dirty work of cleaning
up the remnants. Kennedy and McNamara recognized that domestic
support for the war was thin, and that problems might arise if it
were to persist too long. Similarly, in November 1967, General
Westmoreland announced that with victory imminent, US troops
could begin to withdraw in 1969 (as happened, though under
circumstances that he did not anticipate); that recommendation
does not show that he was a secret dove. Advocacy of withdrawal
after assurance of victory was not a controversial stand.
In contrast, withdrawal _without victory_ would have been
highly controversial. That position received scant support until
well after the Tet offensive of January 1968, when corporate and
political elites determined that the operation should be
liquidated, in large part because of the social costs of protest.
The question to be considered, then, is whether JFK, despite his
1961-2 escalation and his militant public stand, planned to
withdraw _without_ victory, a plan aborted by the
assassination, which cleared the way for Lyndon Johnson and his
fellow-warmongers to bring on a major war. If so, one may
inquire further into whether this was a factor in the
assassination.
The withdrawal decisions were reported at once in the press with
fair accuracy, and the basic facts about the internal
deliberations lying behind them became known 20 years ago when
the _Pentagon Papers_ appeared. In July 1962, the analyst
writes, "At the behest of the President, the Secretary of Defense
undertook to reexamine the situation [in Vietnam] and address
himself to its future -- with a view to assuring that it be
brought to a successful conclusion within a reasonable time."
McNamara declared himself impressed with the "tremendous
progress" that had been made, and called for "phasing out major
U.S. advisory and logistic support activities." General Paul
Harkins (commander of the US military mission) estimated that the
VC should be "eliminated as a significant force" about a year
after the Vietnamese forces then being trained and equipped
"became fully operational." McNamara, however, insisted upon "a
conservative view": planning should be based on the assumption
that "it would take three years instead of one, that is, by the
latter part of 1965." He also "observed that it might be
difficult to retain public support for U.S. operations in Vietnam
indefinitely," a constant concern. Therefore, it was necessary
"to phase out U.S. military involvement." The Joint Chiefs
ordered preparation of a plan to implement these decisions. The
operative assumption was that "The insurgency will be under
control" by the end of 1965.
On January 25, 1963, General Harkins' plan was presented to the
Joint Chiefs, stating that "the phase-out of the US special
military assistance is envisioned as generally occurring during
the period July 1965-June 1966," earlier where feasible. A few
days later, the Chiefs were reassured that this was the right
course by a report by a JCS investigative team headed by Army
Chief of Staff Earle Wheeler that included leading military
hawks. Its report was generally upbeat and optimistic. The
anticipated success of current plans to intensify military
operations would allow a "concurrent phase-out of United States
support personnel, leaving a Military Assistance Advisory Group
of about 1,600 personnel" by 1965. All of this was considered
feasible and appropriate by the top military command.
Wheeler then reported directly to the President, informing him
"that things were going well in Vietnam militarily, but that `Ho
Chi Minh was fighting the war for peanuts and if we ever expected
to win that affair out there, we had to make him bleed a little
bit'." The President "was quite interested in this," General
Wheeler recalled in oral history (July 1964). His dovish
advisers were also impressed. In April 1963, Hilsman proposed to
"continue the covert, or at least deniable, operations along the
general lines we have been following for some months" against
North Vietnam with the objective of "keeping the threat of
eventual destruction alive in Hanoi's mind." But "significant
action against North Vietnam" is unwise on tactical grounds: it
should be delayed until "we have demonstrated success in our
counter-insurgency program." Such "premature action" might also
"so alarm our friends and allies and a significant segment of
domestic opinion that the pressures for neutralization will
become formidable"; as always, the dread threat of diplomacy must
be deflected. With judicious planning, Hilsman said, "I believe
we can win in Viet-Nam."
Hilsman was not quite as optimistic as the military command. A
few days before the President heard Wheeler's upbeat report, he
received a memorandum from Hilsman and Forrestal (Jan. 25) that
was more qualified. They condemned the press for undue pessimism
and underplaying US success, and agreed that "The war in South
Vietnam is clearly going better than it was a year ago," praising
ARVN's "increased aggressiveness" resulting from the US military
escalation, and reporting that GVN control now extended to over
half the rural population (the VC controlling 8%), a considerable
gain through late 1962. But "the negative side of the ledger is
still awesome." The VC had increased their regular forces,
recruiting locally and supplied locally, and are "extremely
effective." "Thus the conclusion seems inescapable that the Viet
Cong could continue the war effort at the present level, or
perhaps increase it, even if the infiltration routes were
completely closed." "Our overall judgment, in sum, is that we are
probably winning, but certainly more slowly than we had hoped."
They made a variety of technical recommendations to implement the
counterinsurgency program more efficiently, with more direct US
involvement; and to improve the efficiency of the US mission to
accelerate the "Progress toward winning the war."
We thus learn that in early 1963, in an atmosphere of
considerable to great optimism, the military initiatives for
withdrawal went hand-in-hand with plans for escalation of the war
within South Vietnam and possibly intensified actions against
North Vietnam. We learn further that such "intelligence and
sabotage forays" into North Vietnam were already underway --
since mid-1962 according to McGeorge Bundy. On December 11,
1963, as the new Administration took over, Michael Forrestal
(another leading Kennedy dove) confirmed that "For some time the
Central Intelligence Agency has been engaged in joint clandestine
operations with ARVN against North Vietnam." Journalist William
Pfaff reports that in the summer of 1962, at a Special Forces
encampment north of Saigon he observed a CIA "patrol loading up
in an unmarked C-46 with a Chinese pilot in civilian clothes,"
taking off for a mission in North Vietnam ("possibly into China
itself"), with some "Asians, some Americans or Europeans."
The connection between withdrawal and escalation is readily
understandable: successful military actions would enable the GVN
to take over the task from the Americans, who could then withdraw
with victory secured, satisfying the common intent of the extreme
hawks, war manager McNamara, and JFK.
In the following months, the withdrawal plans were carried
forward under the same optimistic assumptions, with the agreement
of the military, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and General
Maxwell Taylor, JFK's most trusted military adviser. The
"fundamental objective" remained unchanged, Michael Forrestal
advised the President on August 27: the US must "give
wholehearted support to the prosecution of the war against the
Viet Cong terrorists," and "continue assistance to any government
in South Vietnam which shows itself capable of sustaining this
effort."
The reference to "any government" relates to increasing
Administration concerns over the Diem regime. One factor was
that its repression was evoking internal resistance, which was
interfering with the war effort. Another was that Diem and his
brother Nhu were pressing their demands for US withdrawal with
increasing urgency, sometimes in public, including a front-page
interview in the _Washington Post_ in May in which Nhu called
for withdrawal of half the American military. Administration
planners feared that GVN pressures for withdrawal of US forces
would become difficult to resist, a danger enhanced by
exploratory GVN efforts to reach a diplomatic settlement with the
North. The skimpy political base for Kennedy's war would then
erode, and the US would be compelled to withdraw without victory.
That option being unacceptable, the Saigon regime had to get on
board, or be dismissed.
Vain Hopes, False Dreams (Part 3 of 7, 20KB)
========================
3. JFK and Withdrawal: the Denouement
-------------------------------------
By the end of August, JFK and his most dovish advisers (Averell
Harriman, Roger Hilsman, George Ball) agreed that the client
government should be overthrown. On August 28, the President
"asked the Defense Department to come up with ways of building up
the anti-Diem forces in Saigon," and called on his advisers to
devise actions in Washington or "in the field which would
maximize the chances of the rebel generals." Harriman said that
without a coup, "we cannot win the war" and "must withdraw."
Hilsman "agreed that we cannot win the war unless Diem is
removed," as did Ball, while Robert Kennedy also called for
efforts to strengthen the rebel generals. Secretary Rusk warned
JFK that "Nhu might call on the North Vietnamese to help him
throw out the Americans."
Hilsman urged that if Diem and Nhu make any "Political move
toward the DRV (such as opening of neutralization negotiations),"
or even hint at such moves, we should "Encourage the generals to
move promptly with a coup," and be prepared to "hit the DRV with
all that is necessary" if they try to counter our actions,
introducing US combat forces to ensure victory for the coup group
if necessary. "The important thing is to win the war," Hilsman
advised; and that meant getting rid of the Saigon regime, which
was dragging its feet and looking for ways out. The President
concurred that "our primary objective remains winning war," Rusk
cabled to the Saigon Embassy.
The basic principle, unquestioned, is that we must "focus on
winning the war" (Hilsman). On September 14, Harriman wrote to
Lodge that: "from the President on down everybody is determined
to support you and the country team in winning the war against
the Viet Cong... there are no quitters here."
In particular, JFK is no quitter. There is not a phrase in the
internal record to suggest that this judgment by a high-level
Kennedy adviser, at the dovish extreme, should be qualified in
any way.
On September 17, President Kennedy instructed Ambassador Lodge to
pressure Diem to "get everyone back to work and get them to focus
on winning the war," repeating his regular emphasis on victory.
It was particularly important to show military progress because
"of need to make effective case with Congress for continued
prosecution of the effort," the President added, expressing his
constant concern that domestic support for his commitment to
military victory was weak. "To meet these needs," he informed
Lodge, he was sending his top aides McNamara and Taylor to
Vietnam. He emphasized to them that the goal remains "winning
the war," adding that "The way to confound the press is to win
the war." Like Congress, the press was an enemy because of its
lack of enthusiasm for a war to victory and its occasional calls
for diplomacy.
McNamara and Taylor were encouraged by what they found. On
October 2, they informed the President that "The military
campaign has made great progress and continues to progress." They
presented a series of recommendations, three of which were later
authorized (watered down a bit) in NSAM 263: (1) "An increase in
the military tempo" throughout the country so that the military
campaign in the Northern and Central areas will be over by the
end of 1964, and in the South (the Delta) by the end of 1965; (2)
Vietnamese should be trained to take over "essential functions
now performed by U.S. military personnel" by the end of 1965, so
that "It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S.
personnel by that time"; (3) "the Defense Department should
announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to
withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963" as "an
initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel
with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort."
Their report stressed again that the "overriding objective" is
victory, a matter "vital to United States security," but that
withdrawal could not be too long delayed: "any significant
slowing in the rate of progress would surely have a serious
effect on U.S. popular support for the U.S. effort." They
anticipated victory by the end of 1965. The withdrawal plans
were crucially qualified in the usual way: "No further reductions
should be made until the requirements of the 1964 campaign become
firm," that is, until battlefield success is assured.
Note that lack of popular support for the war was not perceived
by JFK and his advisers as providing an opportunity for
withdrawal, but rather as a threat to victory.
The NSC met the same day to consider these proposals. The
President's role was, as usual, marginal. He repeated that "the
major problem was with U.S. public opinion" and, as he had before,
balked at the time scale. He opposed a commitment to withdraw
some forces in 1963 because "if we were not able to take this
action by the end of this year, we would be accused of being over
optimistic." McNamara, in contrast, "saw great value in this
sentence in order to meet the view of Senator Fulbright and
others that we are bogged down forever in Vietnam." The phrase
was left as "a part of the McNamara-Taylor report rather than as
predictions of the President," who thus remained uncommitted to
withdrawal, at his insistence.
A public statement was released to the press, and prominently
published, presenting the essence of the McNamara-Taylor
recommendations. The statement repeated the standard position
that the US will work with the GVN "to deny this country to
Communism and to suppress the externally stimulated and supported
insurgency of the Viet Cong as promptly as possible," continuing
with "Major U.S. assistance in support of this military
effort," which is needed only until the insurgency has been
suppressed or until the national security forces of the
Government of South Viet-Nam are capable of suppressing it."
These decisions were encapsulated in NSAM 263 (Oct. 11), a brief
statement in which "The President approved the military
recommendations" 1-3 cited above, weakened by one change: that
"no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to
withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963." The
final provision of NSAM 263 is JFK's personal instruction to
Ambassador Lodge to step up the military effort along with
training and arming of new forces, so as to enhance the prospects
for victory, on which withdrawal was conditioned.
Note that read literally, NSAM 263 says very little. It approves
the McNamara-Taylor recommendations to intensify the war and
military training so that "It should be possible to withdraw the
bulk of U.S. personnel" by the end of 1965, and includes JFK's
personal instructions to Lodge to intensify military action. It
does not call for implementing a 1,000 man withdrawal, but rather
endorses the third point of the McNamara-Taylor proposal
concerning plans for such withdrawal "as an initial step in a
long-term program" to be conducted "without impairment of the war
effort," deleting their call for formal announcement of these
plans.
Presumably, the intent was to implement the withdrawal plans if
military conditions allow, but that intent is unstated. The fact
might be borne in mind in the light of elaborate later efforts to
read great significance into nuances of phrasing so as to
demonstrate a dramatic change in policy with the Kennedy-Johnson
transition. Adopting these interpretive techniques, we would
conclude that NSAM 263 is almost vacuous. I stress that that is
not my interpretation; I assume the obvious unstated intention,
only suggesting that other documents be treated in the same
reasonable manner -- in which case, widely-held beliefs will
quickly evaporate.
The picture presented in public at the time requires no
significant modification in the light of the huge mass of
documents now available, though these make much more clear the
President's unwillingness to commit himself to the withdrawal
advocated by his war managers for fear that the victory might not
be achieved in time, his concerns that domestic opinion might not
stay the course, his insistence that withdrawal be conditioned on
military victory, and his orders to step up the military effort
and to replace the Diem regime by one that will "focus on
winning" and not entertain thoughts of US withdrawal and peaceful
settlement.
Through October 1963, problems with the GVN continued to mount.
Nhu called openly for the Americans to get out completely, only
providing aid. Another problem was the lack of "effectiveness of
GVN in its relation to its own people." Asked about this,
Ambassador Lodge responded in an "Eyes only for the President"
communication that "Viet-Nam is not a thoroughly strong police
state...because, unlike Hitler's Germany, it is not efficient"
and is thus unable to suppress the "large and well-organized
underground opponent strongly and ever-freshly motivated by
vigorous hatred." The Vietnamese "appear to be more than ever
anxious to be left alone," and though they "are said to be
capable of great violence on occasion," "there is no sight of it
at the present time," another impediment to US efforts.
Small wonder that JFK was unwilling to commit himself to the
McNamara-Taylor withdrawal proposal. Note that the same defects
of the US clients underlie the critique of the strategic hamlet
program by Kennedy doves.
Washington's coup plans continued, with Ambassador Lodge in
operational command. The only hesitation was fear of failure.
When the coup finally took place on November 1, replacing Diem
and Nhu (who were killed) by a military regime, the President
praised Lodge effusively for his "fine job" and "leadership," an
"achievement...of the greatest importance." With the generals now
in power, "our primary emphasis should be on effectiveness rather
than upon external appearances," the President added. We must
help the coup regime to confront "the real problems of winning
the contest against the Communists and holding the confidence of
its own people." The "ineffectiveness, loss of popular
confidence, and the prospect of defeat that were decisive in
shaping our relations to the Diem regime" are now a thing of the
past, the President hoped, thanks to Lodge's inspired leadership
and coup-management, with its gratifying outcome (Nov. 6).
Two weeks before Kennedy's assassination, there is not a phrase
in the voluminous internal record that even hints at withdrawal
without victory. JFK urges that everyone "focus on winning the
war"; withdrawal is conditioned on victory, and motivated by
domestic discontent with Kennedy's war. The stakes are
considered enormous. Nothing substantial changes as the mantle
passes to LBJ.
The post-coup situation had positive and negative aspects from
the point of view of the President and his advisers. On the
positive side, they hoped that the ruling generals would now at
last focus on victory as the President had demanded, gain popular
support, and end the irritating calls for US withdrawal and moves
towards a peaceful settlement. On the other hand, there was
disarray at all levels, while at home, advocacy of diplomacy was
not stilled. Furthermore, evidence that undermined the
optimistic assessments was becoming harder to ignore. The new
government confirmed that the GVN "had been losing the war
against the VC in the Delta for some time because it had been
losing the population." A top-level meeting was planned for
Honolulu on November 20 to consider the next steps. The US
mission in Vietnam recommended that the withdrawal plans be
maintained, the new government being "warmly disposed toward the
U.S." and offering "opportunities to exploit that we never had
before." Kennedy's plans to escalate the assault against the
southern resistance could now be implemented, with a stable
regime finally in place. McNamara, ever cautious, was concerned
by a sharp increase in VC incidents and urged that "We must be
prepared to devote enough resources to this job of winning the
war."
At the Honolulu meeting, a draft was written by McGeorge Bundy
for what became NSAM 273, adopted after the assassination but
prepared for JFK with the expectation that he would approve it in
essentials, as was the norm. Top advisers agreed; Hilsman made
only "minor changes." The State Department history states
correctly that the draft "was almost identical to the final
paper," differing only in paragraph 7.
Both documents reiterate the basic wording of the early October
documents. On withdrawal, the version approved by Johnson is
identical with the draft prepared for Kennedy. It reads: "The
objectives of the United States with respect to the withdrawal of
U.S. military personnel remain as stated in the White House
statement of October 2, 1963," referring to the statement of US
policy formalized without essential change as NSAM 263. As for
paragraph 7, the draft and final version are, respectively, as
follows:
"_Draft_: With respect to action against North Vietnam,
there should be a detailed plan for the development of
additional Government of Vietnam resources, especially
for sea-going activity, and such planning should indicate
the time and investment necessary to achieve a wholly new
level of effectiveness in this field of action."
"_NSAM 273_: Planning should include different levels of
possible increased activity, and in each instance there
should be estimates of such factors as: A. Resulting
damage to North Vietnam; B. The plausibility of denial;
C. Possible North Vietnamese retaliation; D. Other
international reaction.
Plans should be submitted promptly for approval by higher
authority."
There is no relevant difference between the two documents, except
that the LBJ version is weaker and more evasive, dropping the
call for "a wholly new level of effectiveness in this field of
action"; further actions are reduced to "possible." The reason
why paragraph 7 refers to "additional" or "possible increased"
activity we have already seen: such operations had been underway
since the Kennedy offensive of 1962, apparently with direct
participation of US personnel and foreign mercenaries.
No direct US government involvement is proposed in NSAM 273
beyond what was already underway under JFK. The plans later
developed by the DOD and CIA called for "Intensified sabotage
operations in North Vietnam by Vietnamese personnel," with the US
involved only in intelligence collection (U-2, electronics) and
"psychological operations" (leaflet drops, "phantom covert
operations," "black and white radio broadcasts").
These two NSAMs (263 in October, 273 on Nov. 26 with a Nov. 20
draft written for Kennedy) are the centerpiece of the thesis that
Kennedy planned to withdraw without victory, a decision at once
reversed by LBJ (and perhaps the cause of the assassination).
They have been the subject of many claims and charges. Typical
is Oliver Stone's Address to the National Press Club alleging
that a "ten-year study" by John Newman (_JFK and Vietnam_)
"makes it very clear President Kennedy signaled his intention to
withdraw from Vietnam in a variety of ways and put that intention
firmly on the record with National Security Action Memorandum 263
in October of 1963," while LBJ "reverse[d] the NSAM" with NSAM
273; Kennedy was assassinated for that reason, Stone suggests.
Zachary Sklar, the co-author (with Stone) of the screenplay
_JFK_, also citing Newman's book, claims further that the draft
prepared for Kennedy "says that the U.S. will _train South
Vietnamese_ to carry out covert military operations against North
Vietnam" while "In the final document, signed by Johnson, it
states that _U.S. forces_ themselves will carry out these
covert military operations," leading to the Tonkin Gulf incident,
which "was an example of precisely that kind of covert operation
carried out by U.S. forces" (his emphasis). Arthur Schlesinger
claims that after the assassination, "President Johnson,
listening to President Kennedy's more hawkish advisers..., issued
National Security Action Memorandum 273 calling for the
maintenance of American military programs in Vietnam `at levels
as high' as before -- reversing the Kennedy withdrawal policy."
As further proof he cites a paragraph from NSAM 273: "It
_remains_ the _central objective_ of the United States in
South Vietnam to _win_ their contest against the _externally
directed_ and supported communist conspiracy." He highlights
these words to show that LBJ was undertaking "both the total
commitment Kennedy had always refused and the diagnosis of the
conflict" that Kennedy had "never quite accepted."
These alleged facts are held to establish the historic change at
the assassination.
The claims, however, have no known basis in fact, indeed are
refuted by the internal record, which gives no hint of any
intention by JFK to withdraw without victory -- quite the
contrary -- and reveals no "reversal" in NSAM 273. Newman's book
adds nothing relevant. The call for maintenance of aid is in the
draft of NSAM 273 prepared for Kennedy, and was also at the core
of his tentative withdrawal plans, conditioned on victory and
"Major U.S. assistance" to assure it. Furthermore, Kennedy's
more dovish advisers approved and continued to urge LBJ to follow
what they understood to be JFK's policy, rejecting any thought of
withdrawal without victory. The final version of NSAM 273 does
not state that US forces would carry out covert operations in any
new way; nor did they, in the following months. There were
covert attacks on North Vietnamese installations just prior to
the Tonkin Gulf incident, but they were carried out by South
Vietnamese forces, according to the internal record.
Schlesinger's highlighted words appear regularly in both the
public and private Kennedy record, as does the diagnosis, along
with JFK's insistent demand that everyone must "focus on winning
the war." The hidden meanings are in the eye of the beholder.
The two versions of NSAM 273 differ in no relevant way, apart
from the weakening of paragraph 7 in the final version.
Furthermore, the departure from NSAM 263 is slight, and readily
explained in terms of changing assessments. Efforts to detect
nuances and devious implications have no basis in fact, and if
pursued, could easily be turned into a (meaningless) "proof" that
LBJ toned down Kennedy aggressiveness.
The call in NSAM 273 (both the draft and the weakened LBJ
version) for consideration of further ARVN operations against the
North is readily explained in terms of the two basic features of
the post-coup situation: the feeling among Kennedy's war planners
that with the Diem regime gone, the US at last had a stable base
for Kennedy's war in the South, with new "opportunities to
exploit"; and the increasing concern about the military situation
in the South, undermining earlier optimism. The former factor
made it possible to consider extension of ARVN operations; the
latter made it more important to extend them. In subsequent
months, Kennedy's planners (now directing Johnson's war)
increasingly inclined towards operations against the North as a
way to overcome their inability to win the war in the South,
leading finally to the escalation of 1965, undertaken largely to
"drive the DRV out of its reinforcing role and obtain its
cooperation in bringing an end to the Viet Cong insurgency,"
using "its directive powers to make the Viet Cong desist"
(Taylor, Nov. 27, 1964).
4. LBJ and the Kennedy Doves
----------------------------
Kennedy's more dovish advisers recommended the policies that
Johnson pursued, and generally approved of them until the 1965
escalation, often beyond. They lost no time in making clear that
JFK's commitment to victory would not be abandoned. On December
10, Forrestal, Ball, Harriman and Hilsman, reiterating JFK's
consistent stand, assured Lodge that "we are against neutralism
and want to win the war." The same unwavering commitment was
reiterated by Ball, who informed Lodge on Dec. 16 that "Nothing
is further from USG mind than `neutral solution for Vietnam.' We
intend to win." A year later (Nov. 1964), Ball held that the
Saigon regime must continue to receive US aid until the Viet Cong
is defeated and that "the struggle would be a long one, even with
the DRV out of it." Ball and other doves continued to support
Johnson's policies, which they regarded as a continuation of
Kennedy's. On May 31, 1964, Ball praised "the President's wise
caution" and refusal to "act hastily."
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, later portrayed as an
advocate of withdrawal, had raised only tactical objections to
JFK's escalation. He advised JFK to abandon "rhetorical
flourishes" about the great stakes (advice that the President
rejected, as noted). And recognizing that Diem was not fighting
the war effectively, he advised withdrawal of some advisors "as a
symbolic gesture, to make clear that we mean business when we say
that there are some circumstances in which this commitment will
be discontinued." Mansfield generally supported Johnson's
policies. At an NSC meeting on April 3, 1964, LBJ rejected
Senator Morse's proposal for "using SEATO and the UN to achieve a
peaceful settlement" in favor of McNamara's view that withdrawal
or neutralization would lead to a Communist takeover and
therefore remain unacceptable options. Mansfield agreed, urging
"that the President's policy toward Vietnam was the only one we
could follow." He firmly rejected the withdrawal option and the
diplomatic moves counselled by Morse. In January 1965, Mansfield
publicly supported "the President's desire neither to withdraw
nor carry the war to North Vietnam" (_PP_). Later, he bitterly
condemned critics of Johnson's escalation.
Quite generally, Kennedy's most dovish advisers sensed no change
at the transition and lent their support to Johnson. Some
praised his "wise caution," while others called for more
aggressive action. By mid-1964, Forrestal was coming to support
escalation of actions against the North. Hilsman's position was
similar. In a March 14 memorandum he stressed the need "to take
whatever measures are necessary in Southeast Asia to protect
those who oppose the Communists and to maintain our power and
influence in the area," including "whatever military steps may be
necessary to halt Communist aggression in the area" (crucially,
VC "aggression"). We should station a Marine battalion in Saigon
on the pretext of protecting American dependents. Attacks
against the North might be "a useful _supplement_ to an
effective counterinsurgency program," but not "an effective
_substitute_" for it. We must "continue the covert, or at
least deniable, operations" against the North in order to keep
"the threat of eventual destruction alive in Hanoi's mind."
Recall that he had made the same recommendations in April 1963,
in virtually the same words, including the advice to "continue"
the ongoing covert operations against the North with their
implicit threat of destruction.
The support for LBJ among the Kennedy doves comes as no surprise,
given their familiarity with the internal record, which shows no
deviation on the President's part from Harriman's judgment that
"there are no quitters here." As the optimistic predictions of
1962-3 collapsed after the coup that overthrew Diem, undermining
the precondition for withdrawal, they advocated a change of
tactics to achieve the "fundamental objective" always sought.
We might note, at this point, that the military leadership was
divided over the war. General Douglas MacArthur and his
successor as Army Chief of Staff, Matthew Ridgway, were strongly
opposed to the use of combat troops. The top US military
commander in Vietnam, MAAG Chief General Lionel McGarr, informed
JFK on February 22, 1962 that "in providing the GVN the tools to
do the job," the US "must not offer so much that they forget that
the job of saving the country is theirs -- only they can do it."
General Taylor and Pacific Commander Admiral Henry Felt shared
these qualms about combat troops. As plans to overthrow the
Diem-Nhu regime were underway in September 1963, Taylor expressed
his "reluctance to contemplate the use of U.S. troops in combat
in Vietnam," while agreeing with the President and his other top
advisers that "our sole objective was to win the war." A year
after the assassination, agreeing with McGarr, Taylor continued
to urge that the US keep to the "principle that the Vietnamese
fight their own war in SVN" (Nov. 3, 1964). He therefore opposed
sending logistical forces for flood relief because that would
require dispatch of "US combat troops in some numbers to provide
close protection." Two weeks later, he informed President Johnson
directly that he was now "quite certain [US combat troops] were
not needed...as the estimates of the flood damage diminish." In
September 1964, Taylor had explained that the military command
"did not contemplate" committing combat forces because Commanding
General Westmoreland, also echoing McGarr, felt that use of
American troops "would be a mistake, that it is the Vietnamese'
war."
In later years, great import has been attributed to JFK's public
reiteration of the McGarr-Westmoreland-Taylor "principle" in his
Sept. 1963 statement that "In the final analysis it is their war.
They have to win it or lose it." It is, therefore, worth
stressing that the "principle" was standard throughout in
internal and public discussion, through 1964, including LBJ's
public statements.
General David Shoup, Marine Commandant through the Kennedy years,
reports that when the Joint Chiefs considered troop deployment,
"in every case...every senior officer that I knew...said we
should never send ground combat forces into Southeast Asia."
Shoup's public opposition to the war from 1966 was particularly
strong, far beyond anything said by the civilian leadership,
media doves, or others who later presented themselves as war
critics.
These observations add further weight to the conclusion based on
the record of internal deliberations, in which JFK insists upon
victory and considers withdrawal only on this condition. Had he
intended to withdraw, he would have been able to enlist respected
military commanders to back him, so it appears, including the
most revered figures of the right. He made no effort to do so,
preferring instead to whip up pro-war sentiment with inflammatory
rhetoric about the awesome consequences of withdrawal.
5. Interpretations: the early version
-------------------------------------
The final source of evidence on JFK's plans is the memoirs and
other comments of his advisers. These come in two versions:
before and after the Tet offensive. We review these in the next
two sections, then turning to the 1991-2 revival and revisions.
This survey only adds conviction to what we have already found.
Kennedy's commitment to stay the course was clear to those
closest to him. As noted, Arthur Schlesinger shared JFK's
perception of the enormous stakes and his optimism that the
military escalation had reversed the "aggression" of the
indigenous guerrillas in 1962. There is not a word in
Schlesinger's chronicle of the Kennedy years (1965, reprinted
1967) that hints of any intention to withdraw without victory.
In fact, Schlesinger gives no indication that JFK thought about
withdrawal at all. The withdrawal plans receive one sentence in
his voluminous text, attributed to McNamara in the context of the
debate over pressuring the Diem regime. There is nothing else in
this 940-page virtual day-by-day record of the Kennedy
Administration by its quasi-official historian. Far more detail
had appeared in the press in October-December 1963.
These facts leave only three possible conclusions: (1) the
historian was keeping the President's intentions secret; (2) this
close JFK confidant had no inkling of his intentions; (3) there
were no such intentions.
By 1966, it was becoming clear that things were not going well in
Vietnam. In his _Bitter Heritage_ (1966), Arthur Schlesinger
expressed concern that the US military effort had dubious
prospects, though "we may all be saluting the wisdom and
statesmanship of the American government" if it succeeds.
Referring to Joseph Alsop's predictions of victory, Schlesinger
writes that "we all pray that Mr. Alsop will be right," though he
doubts it. The only qualms are tactical: what will be the cost
to us? Schlesinger describes himself as holding high the spirit
of JFK. He flatly opposes withdrawal, which "would have ominous
reverberations throughout Asia," and again gives no hint that
Kennedy ever considered such a possibility.
Another close associate, Theodore Sorenson, also published a
history of the Administration in 1965. Sorenson was Kennedy's
first appointed official, served as his special counsel and
attended all NSC meetings. He makes no mention of withdrawal
plans. Quite the contrary. Kennedy's "essential contribution,"
he writes, was to avoid the extremes advocated "by those
impatient to win or withdraw. His strategy essentially was to
avoid escalation, retreat or a choice limited to these two, while
seeking to buy time..." He opposed withdrawal or "bargain[ing]
away Vietnam's security at the conference table." Sorenson's
conclusion is that JFK "was simply going to weather it out, a
nasty, untidy mess to which there was no other acceptable
solution. Talk of abandoning so unstable an ally and so costly a
commitment `only makes it easy for the Communists,' said the
President. `I think we should stay'." So his account ends.
Again, we may choose among the same three conclusions.
No one was closer to JFK than his brother Robert. He had
expressed his position in 1962: "The solution lies in our winning
it. This is what the President intends to do... We will remain
here [in Saigon] until we do." In 1964 oral history, RFK said
that the Administration had never faced the possibilities of
either withdrawal or escalation. Asked what JFK would have done
if the South Vietnamese appeared doomed, he said: "We'd face that
when we came to it." "Robert's own understanding of his brother's
position," his biographer Arthur Schlesinger reports, was that
"we should win the war" because of the domino effect. The
problem with Diem, RFK added, was that we need "somebody that can
win the war," and he wasn't the man for it. Accordingly, it is
no surprise that RFK fully supported Johnson's continuation of
what he understood to be his brother's policies through the 1965
escalation.
The last of the early accounts of the Kennedy Administration was
written by Roger Hilsman in late 1967, shortly before the Tet
offensive and well after severe doubts about the war were raised
at the highest levels. He takes it for granted that the goal
throughout was "to defeat the Communist guerrillas." He writes
that had JFK lived, "he might well have introduced United States
ground forces into South Vietnam -- though I believe he would not
have ordered them to take over the war effort from the Vietnamese
but would have limited their mission to the task of occupying
ports, airfields, and military bases to demonstrate to the North
Vietnamese that _they_ could not win the struggle by escalation
either" -- the enclave strategy that had been advocated by Ball
and Taylor in early 1965, then by others. The question of how to
respond to a collapse of the Saigon regime was delayed, he
writes, in the hope that it would not arise. Hilsman feels that
LBJ "sincerely even desperately wanted to make the existing
policy work," without US combat forces, citing his statement of
Sept. 25, 1964 that "We don't want our American boys to do the
fighting for Asian boys." He cites the White House statement
announcing the adoption of the McNamara-Taylor October 1963
recommendations, adding nothing of substance to what was
published in the press at the time. His only comment is that the
optimistic predictions on which withdrawal was predicated would
come "to haunt Secretary McNamara and the whole history of
American involvement in Vietnam."
The internal record of 1964 shows that Kennedy doves saw matters
much as described in the 1964-67 memoirs, and therefore continued
to support Johnson's policies, some pressing for further
escalation, others (Ball, Mansfield) praising Johnson for
choosing the middle course between escalation and withdrawal.
We have now reviewed all the crucial evidence: the events
themselves, the public statements, the record of internal
deliberations and planning, the opinions of the military, the
attitudes of the Kennedy doves, and the pre-Tet memoirs and
commentary. The conclusions are unambiguous, surprisingly so on
a matter of current history: President Kennedy was firmly
committed to the policy of victory that he inherited and
transmitted to his successor, and to the doctrinal framework that
assigned enormous significance to that outcome; he had no plan or
intention to withdraw without victory; he had apparently given
little thought to the matter altogether, and it was regarded as
of marginal interest by those closest to him. Furthermore, the
basic facts were prominently published at the time, with more
detail than is provided by the early memoirs.
6. The Record Revised
---------------------
After the Tet Offensive, major domestic power sectors concluded
that the enterprise was becoming too costly to them and called
for it to be terminated. President Johnson was, in effect,
dismissed from office, and policy was set towards disengagement.
The effect on the ideological system was dramatic. The liberal
intelligentsia felt the "need to insulate JFK from the disastrous
consequences of the American venture in Southeast Asia," Thomas
Brown observes in his study of Camelot imagery. "Kennedy's role
in the Vietnam war is unsurprisingly...the aspect [of his public
image and record] that has been subjected to the greatest number
of revisions by Kennedy's admirers... The important thing was
that JFK be absolved of responsibility for the Vietnam debacle;
when the need for exculpation is so urgent, no obstacles --
including morality and the truth -- should stand in the way"
(_JFK: History of an Image_, 1988).
The latter comment relates specifically to one of the earliest
post-Tet efforts to revise the image, the 1972 memoir by White
House aide Kenneth O'Donnell, whose stories have assumed center
stage in the post-Tet reconstruction. He writes that Kennedy had
informed Senator Mansfield that he agreed with him "on the need
for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam," adding that he
had to delay announcement of "a withdrawal of American military
personnel" until after the November 1964 election to avoid
"another Joe McCarthy scare." In 1975, Mansfield told columnist
Jack Anderson that Kennedy "was going to order a gradual
withdrawal" but "never had the chance to put the plan into
effect," though he had "definitely and unequivocally" made that
decision; in 1978, Mansfield said further that Kennedy had
informed him that troop withdrawal would begin in January 1964
(which does not fit smoothly with the O'Donnell story).
Noting Mansfield's (partial) confirmation of O'Donnell's report,
Brown points out that "one need not reject this story out of
hand...to doubt that it was a firm statement of Kennedy's
intentions in Vietnam. Like many politicians, JFK was inclined
to tell people what they wanted to hear." Every authentic
historian discounts such reports for the same reason: "Kennedy
probably told [Mansfield] what he wanted to hear," Thomas
Paterson observes. The same holds for other recollections,
authentic or not, by political figures and journalists.
Whatever else he may have been, Kennedy was a political animal,
and knew enough to tell the Senate Majority Leader and other
influential people what they wanted to hear. He was also keenly
sensitive to the opposition to his policies among powerful
Senators, who saw them as harmful to US interests. He also was
aware that public support for the war was thin, as was McNamara
and others. But JFK never saw the general discontent among the
public, press, and Congress as an opportunity to construct a
popular base for withdrawal; rather, he sought to counter it with
extremist rhetoric about the grand stakes. He hoped to bring the
war to a successful end before discontent interfered with this
plan. Had he intended to withdraw, he would also have leaped at
the opportunity provided by the GVN call for reduction of forces
(even outright withdrawal), and its moves toward political
settlement. As for the right-wing, a President intent on
withdrawal would have called upon the most highly-respected
military figures for support, as already noted. There is no
indication that this reasonable course was ever considered, again
confirming that withdrawal was never an option.
The O'Donnell-Mansfield story is hardly credible on other
grounds. Nothing would have been better calculated to fan
right-wing hysteria than inflammatory rhetoric about the cosmic
issues at stake, public commitment to stay the course, election
on the solemn promise to stand firm come what may, and then
withdrawal and betrayal. Furthermore, Mansfield's actual
positions differed from the retrospective version, as noted. Far
more credible, if one takes such reconstructions seriously, is
General Wheeler's recollection in 1964 (not years later) that
Kennedy was interested in extending the war to North Vietnam.
Despite such obvious flaws as these, the O'Donnell-Mansfield
stories are taken very seriously by Kennedy hagiographers.
The Camelot memoirists proceeded to revise their earlier versions
after Tet, separating JFK (and by implication, themselves) from
what had happened. Sorenson was the first. In the earlier
version, Kennedy was preparing for the introduction of combat
troops if necessary and intended to "weather it out" come what
may, not abandoning his ally, who would have collapsed without
large-scale US intervention. Withdrawal is not discussed.
Diplomacy is considered a threat, successfully overcome by the
overthrow of the Diem government. But post-Tet, Sorenson is
"convinced" that JFK would have sought diplomatic alternatives in
1965 -- with the client regime in still worse straits, as he
notes. The October 1963 withdrawal plan, unmentioned in the old
version, assumes great significance in the post-Tet revision,
with significant omissions: notably, the precondition of military
success.
Arthur Schlesinger entered the lists in 1978 with his biography
of Robert Kennedy. Unlike Sorenson, he does not confine himself
to speculation about JFK's intent. Rather, he constructs a new
history, radically revising his earlier account. Thus, while the
pre-Tet versions gave no hint of any intent to withdraw without
victory, in the post-Tet biography of Robert Kennedy, JFK's
alleged withdrawal plans merit a full chapter, though RFK's
"involvement in Vietnam had been strictly limited before Dallas,"
Schlesinger observes. This startling difference between the pre-
and Post-Tet versions is not attributed to any significant new
information, indeed is not mentioned at all. In 1992, in a
review of Newman's book, Schlesinger went a step further,
claiming that he had put forth the JFK withdrawal thesis all
along.
Post-Tet, the October 1963 decisions, emerging from their earlier
obscurity, become "the first application of Kennedy's phased
withdrawal plan." Unmentioned before, this plan now serves as
prime evidence that Kennedy had separated himself from the two
main "schools": the advocates of counterinsurgency and of
military victory. The plan shows that JFK was opposed to "both
win-the-war factions,...vaguely searching for a nonmilitary
solution." His public call for winning the war is apparently to
be understood as a ploy to deflect the right-wing.
Pre-Tet, it was JFK and Arthur Schlesinger who rejoiced over the
defeat of "aggression" in Vietnam in 1962. Post-Tet, it is the
_New York Times_ that absurdly denounces "Communist
`aggression' in Vietnam," while "Kennedy was determined to
stall." And though RFK did call for victory over the aggressors
in 1962, he was deluded by "the party line as imparted to him by
McNamara and Taylor," failing to understand the huge gap between
the President's views and the McNamara-Taylor party line -- which
Schlesinger had attributed to the President, with his own
endorsement, in the pre-Tet version. In the post-Tet version,
the Joint Chiefs join the _New York Times_, McNamara, and
Taylor as extremists undermining the President's moderate
policies. Commenting on JCS Chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer's
invocation of the "well-known commitment to take a forthright
stand against Communism in Southeast Asia," Schlesinger writes
sardonically that it may have been "well-known" to the Chiefs,
but they "failed in their effort to force it on the President" --
who regularly voiced it in still more strident terms, including
several cases that Schlesinger had cited, pre-Tet: e.g., JFK's
fears of upsetting "the whole world balance" if the US were to
retreat in Vietnam. Or, we may add his summer 1963 statement
that "for us to withdraw from that effort [to secure the GVN]
would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam but Southeast
Asia," which Schlesinger quoted and praised as "temperate,"
pre-Tet (902-3).
This book and later Schlesinger efforts are so replete with
misrepresentation and error as to defy brief comment. I will
return to them elsewhere. They illustrate the seriousness of the
post-Tet endeavor, and its dim prospects.
The third early Kennedy memoirist, Roger Hilsman, has written
letters to the press responding to critics of the withdrawal
thesis in which he takes a stronger stand on JFK's intent to
withdraw than in his highly qualified 1967 comments. His factual
references are misleading, but a close reading shows that Hilsman
is careful to evade the crucial questions: in particular, the
precondition of victory. He cites Kennedy's statement that "it
is their war" to win or lose as proof of his plan to withdraw,
claiming without evidence that Johnson at once reversed that
intent. He had said nothing of the sort pre-Tet; quite the
contrary, as we have seen (including the internal record).
Furthermore, if JFK's statement demonstrates his intent to
withdraw, we would have to draw the same conclusions about
McGarr, Taylor, Westmoreland, and LBJ. That, of course, is
precisely why Hilsman makes no such claim in his 1967 memoir, in
which he emphasizes LBJ's statement that "We don't want our
American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys" to show his
"sincere" and "desperate" effort to carry out JFK's plans. The
same holds of efforts by Schlesinger and others to read great
significance into JFK statements that were conventional and mean
little.
However informative they may be with regard to the duties and
responsibilities of cultural management, the post-Tet revisions
by leading Kennedy intellectuals have no value as history.
Rather, they _constitute_ a chapter of cultural history, one
that is of no slight interest, I believe.
7. The Hero-Villain Scenario
----------------------------
The withdrawal-without-victory thesis is typically understood to
subsume a second one: that LBJ was responsible for an immediate
reversal of policy from withdrawal to escalation. The major
effort to establish the dual thesis is Newman's book, which has
received much attention and praise over a broad spectrum. It was
the basis for the influential Oliver Stone film _JFK_, and is
taken by much of the left to be a definitive demonstration of the
twin theses. The book was strongly endorsed by Arthur
Schlesinger, who describes it as a "solid contribution," with its
"straightforward and workmanlike, rather military...organization,
tone and style" and "meticulous and exhaustive examination of
documents." Former CIA Director William Colby, who headed the Far
East division of the CIA in 1963-64, hailed Newman's study of
these years as a "brilliant, meticulously researched and
fascinating account of the decision-making which led to America's
long agony in Vietnam"; _America's_ agony, in accordance with
approved doctrine.
The book is not without interest. It contains some new
documentary evidence, which further undermines the
Newman-Schlesinger thesis when extricated from the chaotic jumble
of materials interlarded with highlighted phrases that
demonstrate nothing, confident interpretations of private
intentions and beliefs, tales of intrigue and deception of
extraordinary scale and complexity, so well-concealed as to leave
no trace in the record, and conclusions that become more strident
as the case collapses before the author's eyes. By the end, he
claims that the National Security Council meetings of _1961_
"more than resolve the question" of whether Kennedy would have
sent combat troops under the radically different circumstances
faced by his advisers in 1965, a conclusion that captures
accurately the level of argument.
Newman's basic contention seems to be that JFK was surrounded by
evil advisers who were trying to thwart his secret plan to
withdraw without victory, though unaccountably, he kept giving
them more authority and promoting them to higher positions,
perhaps because he didn't understand them. Thus JFK thought that
Taylor was "the one general who shared his own views and that he
could, therefore, trust to carry out his bidding." Shamelessly
deceived, JFK therefore promoted him to Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs and relied on him until the end, though Taylor was
undermining him at every turn; Taylor became "the second most
powerful person in the White House," Newman observes (180), with
no attempt to resolve the paradox. There are a few "good guys,"
but in the chaos, it is hard to be sure who they are: perhaps
Harriman, Forrestal, Hilsman, and McNamara, though even they
joined the malefactors who beset our hero on every side (Harriman
and Hilsman "mired Kennedy in a plot to overthrow Diem," etc.).
The withdrawal-without-victory thesis rests on the assumption
that Kennedy realized that the optimistic military reports were
incorrect. Newman agrees that through 1962 JFK accepted the
optimistic reports, but asserts that by March 1963, he had
"figured out...that the success story was a deception." There is
"hard evidence" for this, he claims, referring to an NBC
documentary on the Diem assassination in November 1963 that
questioned the optimistic intelligence reports. The remainder of
the evidence is that "in his heart he must have known" that the
military program was a failure. Unlike his advisers (at least,
those not in on the various "deceptions"), he "had to notice when
the military myth was shaken by Bowles and Mendenhall in late
1962," and by Mansfield's pessimism. "When the drama of the
Wheeler versus Hilsman-Forrestal match ended up in his office in
February 1963, the implication that the story of success was
untrue could no longer be overlooked" (by Kennedy, uniquely); the
"drama" is the difference of judgment as to the time scale for
victory, already reviewed.
Not a trace of supporting evidence appears in the internal
record, or is suggested here. Furthermore, the reports by Bowles
and Mendenhall date from _before_ the time when JFK was still
deceived, according to Newman's account, and Mendenhall's at
least never even reached him, he notes. As for Bowles, who had
been cut out of policymaking sectors much earlier, Newman does
not mention that after visiting Vietnam in July 1963, he sent a
highly confidential report to McGeorge Bundy (which, in this
case, the President may have seen), in which he wrote that "the
military situation is steadily improving" although "the political
situation is rapidly deteriorating," repeating the standard view
of military success, political failure, recommending various
escalatory steps, and expressing his hope that with "a bit of
luck," we may "turn the tide" and "lay the basis for a far more
favorable situation in Southeast Asia."
On this basis, we are to believe that JFK alone understood that
official optimism was unwarranted.
Curiously, there is one bit of evidence that does support the
conclusion, but Newman and other advocates of the thesis do not
make use of it. Recall that at the NSC meeting considering the
McNamara-Taylor recommendations that were partially endorsed in
NSAM 263, Kennedy insisted on dissociating himself even from the
plan to withdraw 1000 personnel because he did not want to be
"accused of being over optimistic" in case the military situation
did not make it feasible. He allowed the sentence on withdrawal
to remain only if attributed to McNamara and Taylor, without his
acquiescence. In public too he was more hesitant about the
withdrawal plan than the military command. One might argue,
then, that JFK did not share the optimism of his advisers, and
was therefore unwilling to commit himself to withdrawal. This
conclusion has two merits not shared by the thesis we are
examining: (1) it has some evidence to support it; (2) it
conforms to the general picture of Kennedy's commitment to
military victory provided by the internal record.
Newman's efforts to demonstrate the "far-reaching and profound
nature of this reversal" that changed the course of history when
the iniquitous LBJ took over are no more impressive. Thus he
cites an alleged comment reported by Stanley Karnow, in which LBJ
privately told the Joint Chiefs: "Just get me elected and then
you can have your war." Putting aside the reliability of the
source (which, elsewhere, Newman dismisses as unreliable when
Karnow questioned the withdrawal thesis), the full context
reveals that Karnow attributes to Johnson very much what
O'Donnell attributes to Kennedy; assuage the right, get elected,
and then do what you choose. What LBJ chose was to drag his feet
much as JFK had done.
Newman concedes that as of October 2, 1963, when the
McNamara-Taylor withdrawal recommendations were presented, "So
far, it had been couched in terms of battlefield success." But
there was a "sudden turnabout of reporting in early November."
"As the Honolulu meeting approached the tide turned toward
pessimism as suddenly and as swiftly as the optimistic interlude
had begun in early 1962," Newman writes. The participants in the
Nov. 20 meeting received "shocking military news." "The upshot of
the Honolulu meeting," he continues, "was that the shocking
deterioration of the war effort was presented in detail to those
assembled, along with a plan to widen the war, while the
1,000-man withdrawal was turned into a meaningless paper drill."
The three components of the "upshot" are of course related. The
fact that prior to the "sudden turn toward pessimism" the entire
discussion of withdrawal had been "couched in terms of
battlefield success" thoroughly undermines Newman's thesis, as
becomes only more clear if we introduce the internal record that
he ignores.
In the end, Newman relies almost exclusively on the virtually
meaningless O'Donnell-Mansfield post-Tet reconstructions, while
ignoring the internal record, briefly reviewed, which conforms
closely to JFK's public stance. His tale is woven from dark
hints and "intrigue," with "webs of deception" at every level.
The military were deceiving Kennedy's associates who were
deceiving Kennedy, while he in turn was deceiving the public and
his advisers, and many were deceiving themselves. At least, I
think that is what the story is supposed to be; it is not easy to
tell in this labyrinth of fancy. We are invited to view the
"unforgettable image of a President pitted against his own
advisers and the bureaucracy that served under him" from the very
outset, without a hint of evidence and no explanation as to why
he chose to rely on them in preference to others. Newman
concedes that JFK's public statements refute his thesis, but
that's easily handled: JFK was cleverly feinting to delude the
right-wing by preaching about the high stakes to the general
public -- who largely didn't care or were uneasy about the war,
as JFK and his advisers knew, and could only be aroused to oppose
withdrawal by this inflammatory rhetoric.
By the end, we are wandering along paths "shrouded in mystery and
intrigue," guided by confident assertions about what various
participants "knew," "pretended," "felt," "intended," etc. The
facts, whatever they may be, are interpreted so as to conform to
the central dogma, taken to have been established. Given the
rules of the game (deceit, hidden intent, etc.), there can be no
counter-argument: evidence refuting the thesis merely shows the
depths of the mystery and intrigue. I will put aside further
discussion here, returning to a fuller examination elsewhere.
Whatever genre this may be, any pretense of unearthing the facts
has been left far behind. As in the case of the post-Tet
memoirs, the Newman study and its reception are of considerable
interest, but not as a contribution to history: rather, as an
interesting chapter of cultural history in the late 20th century.
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