Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

CHOMSKY ON ANARCHISM
2 7 Viemam: A Dragon Embattled (New York, Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1967), Vol. 2,
p. 952. See also note 29.
28 World Communism (1939; reprinred Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press,
1962), p. 24.
29 Op. cit. , Vol. 2, p. 856. fu Buttinger explains, "Local elections would have given the
Vietminh control of most of the rural communities. The Vietminh was not only popular
and in effective political control of large regions, but it alone had people with
lile requisite organizational skills to exploit whatever opportunities for democratic
self-expression the regime opened up." He adds that "the NLF was truly the
Vietminh reborn," and speaks of "rhe similarity, or bener, near identity, of the
Vietminh and the NLF."
30 Roger Hilsman, "Internal War: The New Communist Tactic," in Franklin Mark
Osanka, ed., Modern Guerilla Wa rfare (New York, The Free Press, 1962), p. 460.
3 1 Alastair Buchan, directOr of the Institute for Strategic 5[t1dies in London, describes
the South Koreans as an "organization of fuian 'black and tans'" ("Questions about
Vietnam," Encounter, Vol. 30 Uanuary 1968], pp. 3-12).
On the reasons fo r the remarkable success of pacification success of pacification
in Sinh Dinh Province, see Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a Wtir (Garden City, N.Y.,
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967), p. 1967), p. 159. This was one of "the areas
where American-Korean multidivision operations have literally smothered the opposition"
with vast search-and-destroy operations" and continuing "tight military control"-or
so it seemed, until late 1967, and finally February 1968, when the lid blew
of( A report on Binh Dinh Province, the "showcase" province for pacification, in the
New York Times, February 20, tells the stOry. "The enemy moves in Decemberwhich
several military men called a 'softening up' for the offensive-resulted in a
wave of allied air strikes on villages. Hundreds of homes were destroyed"-rhe standard
American response. An American official reports: "What the Vietcong did was
occupy the hamlets we pacified JUSt for the purpose of having the allies move in and
bomb them out. By their presence, the hamlets were destroyed." No doubt our psychological
warfare specialists are now explaining to the Vietnamese, who seem to
have some difficulty understanding these subtleties, that the destruction of the villages
is the fault of the Vietcong. In any event, the report continues, "the entire 1968
program fo r the province has now been shelved" and "the program is now set back
anywhere from 14 to 18 months"-that is, back to the time of the initial saturation
with American and Korean troops. "It has all gone down the drain," said one gloomy
American official.
32 United States Policy and the Third World (Boston, Little, Brown, and Company,
1967), Ch. 3.
33 Morton H. Halperin, Contemporary Military Strategy (Boston, Little, Brown, and
Company, 1967), pp. 141-2. I am indebted to Herbert P Bix for bringing this contribution
to the social sciences to my attention.
34 Wolf, op. cit. , p. 69.
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