Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Fifth Freedom
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
116
subversion and aggression) was fighting under the leadership of former
French collaborators under CIA control. Through the sixties, Pathet Laocontrolled
areas were subjected to the fiercest bombing in history (soon
to be exceeded in Cambodia), in an effort “to destroy the physical and
social infrastructure” (in the words of a Senate subcommittee). The
government conceded that this bombardment was not related to the war
in South Vietnam or Cambodia. This was what is called in American
Agitprop a “secret bombing”—a technical term referring to US
aggression that is well-known but concealed by the media, and later
blamed on evil men in the government who have departed from the
American Way—as also in the case of Cambodia, a fact that is
suppressed until today. The purpose of this attack against a country of
scattered villages, against people who may not have even known that
Laos existed, was to abort a mild revolutionary-nationalist movement
that was attempting to bring about some reforms and popular
mobilization in northern Laos. 67
Why should such great powers as Grenada and Laos evoke this
hysteria? The security arguments are too ludicrous to consider, and it is
surely not the case that their resources were too valuable to lose, under
the doctrine of the Fifth Freedom. Rather, the concern was the domino
effect. Under the rotten apple theory, it follows that the tinier and
weaker the country, the less endowed it is with resources, the more
dangerous it is. If even a marginal and impoverished country can begin
to utilize its own limited human and material resources and can
undertake programs of development geared to the needs of the domestic
population, then others may ask: why not us? The contagion may
spread, infecting others, and before long the Fifth Freedom may be
threatened in places that matter.