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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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support for the Saigon regime, pleaded for an end to the war because
“Viet-Nam as a cultural and historic entity . . . is threatened with
extinction . . . [as] . . . the countryside literally dies under the blows of
the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size,”
Reston explained that America
is fighting a war now on the principle that military power shall not
compel South Vietnam to do what it does not want to do, that
man does not belong to the state. This is the deepest conviction of
Western Civilization, and rests on the old doctrine that the
individual belongs not to the state but to his Creator, and therefore
has “inalienable rights” as a person, which no magistrate or
political force may violate.
A year later, long after the Tet offensive had caused much of the
corporate elite to turn against the war as a “bad investment,” one of the
leading academic opponents of the war, the distinguished Asia scholar
John King Fairbank, informed the American Historical Association in his
presidential address that we became engaged in Vietnam “mainly
through an excess of righteousness and disinterested benevolence.” 205
The same touching faith in American innocence and benevolence in
Indochina persists until today in any commentary that can reach a
substantial audience, untroubled by the plain facts.
Returning to Latin America, William Shannon, Distinguished
Professor at Boston University and noted liberal commentator, proclaims
that “for a quarter century, the United States has been trying to do good,
encourage political liberty, and promote social justice in the Third
World,” particularly in Latin America, “where we have traditionally been
a friend and protector” and where we intervened “with the best of
motives,” though “benevolence, intelligence and hard work have proved