Catapult the propaganda
May 4th, 2008
Don’t laugh. He’s not kidding.
With the NY Times’ recent report on how the Pentagon made puppets out of retired generals, the corporate media, and the American people, we’re reminded yet again that if you’re looking for the truth, it’s best to avoid the executive branch.
Is this a new phenomenon, though? Or has it been the status quo since, well, ever? In later posts, I’m going to cover several examples of the executive branch not letting the truth get in the way of an economically beneficial war, but I want to start with Vietnam.
We’ve all heard of the Domino Theory of the Cold War, right? Basically, it said that if one country fell to the Soviet Union, its neighbors were next, one after another, like a cascade of, well, dominoes. As stated by President Eisenhower:
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.
There were some key assumptions to this theory, though. One is that a communist presence in a country was inherently evil. A second is that any communist presence in a country was a result of external force by the Soviet Union. A third is that the aim of US intervention in these oppressed countries was for the sake of the people living there. If all these were true, then a President would have an airtight justification, even a moral obligation, to pull the trigger whenever and wherever they saw fit. The problem is, what do you do when reality doesn’t fit those assumptions, but you’ve just got to go to war? You lie.
In the case of Vietnam, You pretend that Ho chi Minh and his Viet Cong didn’t have popular support, that instead, the Soviet Union, which was still recovering from WWII, was somehow responsible. You pretend that the people of Vietnam didn’t draw up their own Declaration of Independence after Japan’s withdrawal, that France had a right to return to its imperialist rule over Vietnam after the end of WWII. Of course, when they think no one will hear them, the executive branch tends to be more truthful:
Ho had built the Viet Minh into the only Vietnam-wide political organization capable of effective resistance to either the Japanese or the French. He was the only Vietnamese wartime leader with a national following, and he assured himself wider fealty among the Vietnamese people when in August-September, 1945, he overthrew the Japanese…established the Democractic Republic of Vietnam, and staged receptions for in-coming allied occupation forces…For a few weeks in September, 1945, vietnam was–for the first and only time in its modern history–free of foreign domination, and united from north to south under Ho Chi Minh. —The Pentagon Papers
Despite, this newly found and earned independence, Vietnam was immediately handed back to the French after WWII, but why? If the rhetoric of post-WWII Presidents was to be believed, the newly independent Vietnam should be a beacon of democracy and freedom for Asia, as it was the first country to assert its independence from colonial rule, beating India to its own passively resistant punch. The answer can be found in another one of those ‘never meant to see the light of day’ memos:
Southeast Asia, especially Malaya and Indonesia, is the principal world source of natural rubber and tin, and a producer of pretroleum and other strategically important commodities.
Petroleum, huh. Sound familiar?
Finally, and most telling, is an excerpt from a Joint chiefs Memo to President Kennedy in 1962:
In this regard, should a successful coup overturn Diem, we might discover that many of Diem’s difficult characteristics are national rather than personal. The Vietnamese are tough, tenacious, agile, proud, and extraordinarily self confident. Their recent political tradition is one of the multiplicity of parties and groups inclining toward conspiratorial and violent methods. The disappearance of a strong leader who can dampen and control these tendencies could well mean reversion to a condition of political chaos exploitable by the strongly led and well disciplined communists. If Diem goes, we can be sure of losing his strengths but we cannot be sure of remedying his weaknesses. Achievement of US objectives could be more difficult without Diem than with him. Therefore, it must be made clear to Diem that the United States is prepared and willing to bolster his regime and discourage internal factions which may seek to overthrow him.
I should mention that the ‘strongly led and well disciplined’ communists were the people of Vietnam, not the USSR. They were ‘strongly led’ by the native Ho chi Minh and ‘well disciplined’ by the Declaration of Independence they had written for themselves. The leader in danger of being overthrown, Ngo Dinh Diem, on the other hand, had no popular support. Similar to Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq, Diem was placed in power by the US; he was previously living in New Jersey. From a neutral perspective, the United States had made itself into the Soviet Union of the Domino Theory. To drive the point home, the coup against Diem was allowed to take place, and the generals that carried out kept the CIA informed of their plans, and the CIA kept President Kennedy informed through Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. No effort was made to warn or protect Diem. He and his brother were executed by the leaders of the coup.
Unforunately, the new leaders were no better at controlling a population that refused to rest until their independence was assured. This led to the need for further lies in order to escalate US involvement, specifically, the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The story, which resulted in the Congressional resolution that legalized full scale war in Vietnam, was as follows:
At 8:08 a.m. Greenwich meridian time, August 2,1964, the United States destroyer Maddox was on routine patrol in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, proceeding in a southeasterly direction away from the coast about 30 miles at sea from the mainland of North VietNam. The Maddox was approached by three high-speed North Vietnamese torpedo boats in attack formation. When it was evident that these torpedo boats intended to take offensive action, the Maddox, in accordance with naval practice, fired three warning shots across the bows of the approaching vessels. At approximately the same time, the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga, which was also in international waters and had been alerted to the impending attack, sent out four aircraft to provide cover for the Maddox, the pilots being under orders not to fire unless they or the Maddox were fired upon first…Our hopes that this was an isolated incident did not last long. At 2:35 p.m. Greenwich meridian time, August 4, when it was nighttime in the Gulf of Tonkin, the destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy were again subjected to an armed attack by an undetermined number of motor torpedo boats of the North Vietnamese navy. This time the American vessels were 65 miles from shore, twice as far out on the high seas as on the occasion of the previous attack. This time numerous torpedoes were fired. That attack lasted for over 2 hours.
The truth, as it would later be fought for and released, was that the CIA was actively attacking coastal installations, throwing the ‘unprovoked’ claim out the window. Not to mention, the ‘attacked’ ships were part of the Desoto program, which meant that they had electronic spy equipment on board, making it the opposite of a ‘routine patrol.’ Also, the ships had authorization to come in as close as 12 miles to the coast. So much for the ‘international waters’ claim. To top it all off, the second attack, the one that ‘lasted for over 2 hours’ and destroyed hopes ‘that this was an isolated incident’ never took place. It…never…took…place. The August 4 attack, as reported to then SecDef Robert McNamara, was nothing more than ‘freak radar echoes.’ The Viet Cong were literally too busy salvaging their lost ships from two days earlier. It seems the only difference between the case for war in Vietnam and the one for Iraq is the length of time it took for the truth to come out.
So remember, when your President says he has to repeat the lie until it’s accepted as truth, when he laughs about ‘catapult[ing] the propaganda,’ it’s not because he’s joking. It’s because it seems there’s nothing anyone can do about it, and to the corporations and wealthy minority he serves, that’s hilarious. Now, to be fair, we as consumers are addicted to the economic benefits these wars bring. We don’t find our outrage until the cost outweighs the benefits. The blue pill is much easier to swallow. I suppose that’s why “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.”
For the other side of this and many other events in American history, I highly recommend People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.)
