Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
However, all is not lost. Even though "the Viet-Cong strength in the countryside
has made a 'quamum leap' from its position of early 1962," there is a compensating
factor, namely, "the counterinsurgent military capability was revolutionized
by substamial American troop inputs." This allows us emirely new
options. For example, we can implement more effectively some of the "experiments
with population and resources control methods" that were tried by the
USOM and the National Police as early as 1961, though with little success.
Given the new possibilities for "material and human resources control," we
may even recapture some of the population-a serious maHer; "Given the
enormous numbers of South Vietnamese citizens presently allied with the
Viet-Cong (for whatever reason), rhe recovery of these peasants for the national
cause must be made one of the central tasks of the pacification enterprise."
If we are going to succeed in implementing "material and human resources
comrol," we must moderate ARVN behavior somehow. Thus, according to an
AID report of February 1965, "A high incidem rate of stealing, robbing, raping
and obtaining free meals in the rural areas has nor endeared the popularion
towards ARVN or Regional Forces." Nor did it improve maners when many
civilians witnessed a case in which an ARVN company leader killed a draft
dodger, disemboweled him, "took his hean and liver our and had them cooked
at a restaurant," after which "the heart and liver were eaten by a number of soldiers."
Such acts cause great difficulties, especially in trying to combat an
enemy so vile as (Q practice "exemplary Communist behavior." 21
More generally, "the success of pacification requires that there be survivors
to be pacified," and given "the sheer magnitude of American, Korean,
Australian and indigenous Viemamese forces," which has so severely "strained
the economic and social equilibrium of the nation," it is sometimes difficult to
ensure this minimal condition.
There are other problems, for example, "the difficulty of denying food to
the enemy" in rhe Mekong Delta; "the hunger fo r land ownership," which, for
some curious reason, is never satisfied by our friends in Saigon; the corruption;
occasional bombing of the "wrong" village; the pervasive "Vier-Cong infiltration
of military and civilian government organization"; the fact that when we
relocate peasants to new hamlets, we often leave "the fox still in the henhouse,"
because of inadequate police methods; and so on.
Still, we have a good "pacification theory," which involves three steps:
"elimination of the Viet-Cong by search-and-destroy operations, protection
and control of the population and its resources by police and military forces,
and preparing and arming the peasants to defend their own communiries." If
we rarely reach the third stage, this is because we have not yet learned to "share
the sense of urgency of the revolutionary cause," or "to nourish these attitudes"
among our "Vietnamese associates." Thus we understand that the "real revol u­
rion" is the one we are implementing, "in contrast to the artificially stimulated
and controlled revolution of Diem and the Communists," but we have dif-