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

The Fifth Freedom
Commie-dominated bloc of slave states, was unable to perceive the
possibility that the Vietnamese Communists might be guided even in
part by their own interests and concerns rather than merely acting as
agents of their foreign masters.
The higher truths of the state religion, which blinded intelligence to
the most elementary facts, also pervade the mainstream scholarly
literature, where we find as a point of doctrine that Vietnamese
Communists were “enflamed” by Stalin after World War II (Walt Rostow)
and that US intervention was “aimed at forestalling a southward
expansion of Chinese communism” (John King Fairbank; an analytic
error, this distinguished historian and critic of the war believes). In the
real world, the Vietnamese Communists did not need Stalin to “enflame”
them; French tyranny and then US subversion and aggression sufficed.
And it was clear enough, early on, that far from being an agency of
Chinese expansionism, Vietnamese nationalism (whether Communist or
not) would be an obstacle to it. The role of Stalin and Mao in the US
doctrinal system was to legitimate the US assault, motivated on quite
different grounds, as internal documents make clear. 18
When the attempt to subdue South Vietnam failed, the US widened
the war to all of Indochina in a manner that predictably led to eventual
North Vietnamese dominance after desperately blocking efforts on all
sides to neutralize South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. After failing in
its larger aims, the US devoted itself to maximizing suffering and
repression in the societies that it had destroyed, and helping to drive
them more firmly into the hands of the USSR by systematically closing
off all other options, insofar as possible. 19
Much the same was true as the US sought to overcome the heresy of
capitalist democracy in Guatemala, which threatened the interests of US
corporations. Guatemala was declared an agency of the global
Communist conspiracy and serious threats were mounted against it,
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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