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Title: The Meaning of Vietnam
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: June 12, 1975
Language: en
Topics: Vietnam war, US foreign interventions
Source: Retrieved on 8th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/19750612/
Notes: From The New York Review of Books, June 12, 1975

Noam Chomsky

The Meaning of Vietnam

The US government was defeated in Indochina, but only bruised at home.

No outside power will compel us to face the record honestly or to offer

reparations. On the contrary, efforts will be devoted to obscuring the

history of the war and the domestic resistance to it. There are some

simple facts that we should try to save as the custodians of history set

to work.

In its essence, the Indochina war was a war waged by the US and such

local forces as it could organize against the rural population of South

Vietnam. Regarding the Geneva Accords of 1954 as a “disaster,”

Washington at once undertook a program of subversion throughout the

region to undermine the political arrangements. A murderous repression

in South Vietnam led to the renewal of resistance. Kennedy involved US

forces in counterinsurgency, bombing, and “population control.” By 1964

it was obvious that there was no political base for US intervention. In

January 1965, General Khanh was moving toward an alliance with

anti-American Buddhists and had entered into negotiations with the NLF.

He was removed as the systematic bombardment of South Vietnam began, at

triple the level of the more publicized bombing of the North. The

full-scale US invasion followed, with consequences that are well known.

The civilian societies of Laos and then Cambodia were savagely attacked

in a war that was at first “secret” thanks to the self-censorship of the

press.

In January 1973 Nixon and Kissinger were compelled to accept the peace

proposals they had sought to modify after the November 1972 elections.

As in 1954, the acceptance was purely formal. The Paris Agreements

recognized two equivalent parties in South Vietnam, the PRG and the GVN,

and established a basis for political reconciliation. The US was

enjoined not to impose any political tendency or personality on South

Vietnam. But Nixon and Kissinger announced at once that in defiance of

the scrap of paper signed in Paris, they would recognize the GVN as the

sole legitimate government, its constitutional structure—which outlawed

the other party—intact and unchanged.

In violation of the agreements, Thieu intensified political repression

and launched a series of military actions. By mid-1974, US officials

were optimistically reporting the success achieved by the Thieu regime,

with its vast advantage in firepower, in conquering PRG territory where,

they alleged, a North Vietnamese buildup was underway. As before, the

whole rotten structure collapsed from within as soon as the “enemy” was

so ungracious as to respond, and this time Washington itself had

collapsed to the point where it could no longer send in bombers.

The American war was criminal in two major respects. Like the Dominican

intervention and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, it was a case

of aggression, conscious and premeditated. In 1954, the National

Security Council stated that the US reserved the right to use force “to

defeat local Communist subversion or rebellion not constituting armed

attack,” i.e., in violation of “the supreme law of the land.” The US

acted on this doctrine. Furthermore, the conduct of the war was an

indescribable atrocity. The US goal was to eradicate the revolutionary

nationalist forces which, US officials estimated, enjoyed the support of

half the population. The method, inevitably, was to destroy the rural

society. While the war of annihilation partially succeeded in this aim,

the US was never able to create a workable system out of the wreckage.

Opposition to the war at home made full-scale mobilization impossible

and placed some constraints on the brutality of the war planners. By

1971, two-thirds of the US population opposed the war as immoral and

called for the withdrawal of American troops. But the articulate

intelligentsia generally opposed the war, if at all, on

“pragmatic”—i.e., entirely unprincipled—grounds. Some objected to its

horror; more objected to the failure of American arms and the incredible

cost. Few were willing to question the fundamental principle that the US

has the right to resort to force to manage international affairs.

Throughout this period, there was a negative correlation between

educational level and opposition to the war, specifically, principled

opposition. (The correlation was obscured by the fact that the more

articulate and visible elements in the peace movement were drawn

disproportionately from privileged social groups.)

The gulf that opened between much of the population and the nation’s

ideologists must be closed if US might is to be readily available for

global management. Therefore, a propaganda battle is already being waged

to ensure that all questions of principle are excluded from debate

(“avoid recriminations”). Furthermore, the historical record must be

revised, and it will be necessary to pretend that “responsible”

political groups acting “within the system” sought to end the war, but

were blocked in their efforts by the peace movement. People cannot be

permitted to remember that the effective direct action of spontaneous

movements—both in the United States and among the conscripted army in

the field—that were out of the control of their “natural leaders” in

fact played the primary role in constraining the war makers.

The US government was unable to subdue the forces of revolutionary

nationalism in Indochina, but the American people are a less resilient

enemy. If the apologists for state violence succeed in reversing their

ideological defeats of the past years, the stage will be set for a

renewal of armed intervention in the case of “local subversion or

rebellion” that threatens to extricate some region from the US-dominated

global system. A prestigious study group twenty years ago identified the

primary threat of “communism” as the economic transformation of the

communist powers “in ways which reduce their willingness and ability to

complement the industrial economies of the West.” The American effort to

contain this threat in Indochina was blunted, but the struggle will

doubtless continue elsewhere. Its issue will be affected, if not

determined, by the outcome of the ideological conflict over “the lessons

of Vietnam.”