JOHNSON'S "PACIFICATION" PROGRAM -- TO WIN BACK...
OR MERELY TO KILL?
By Dick Roberts
The Guam "Summit" last March between Lyndon Johnson and his top allies in Saigon was no exception to a rule-ofthumb about the Vietnam war. This is that all high-level meetings announce big new strides which are about to be taken in the "pacification arena."
Thus New York Times Washington correspondent Max Frankel offered this analysis of Johnson's objectives in Guam:
"His main purpose...was to emphasize through his own comments and questions his overriding desire to win back, rather than merely to kill, Vietcong guerrillas;
"To seek genuinely free local and national elections in Vietnam in the months ahead; to preserve the national unity of south Vietnamese politicians and generals through the delicate election period;
"To obtain the highest priority for all projects that contribute to the pacification of the countryside."
More of the same? At first look that appears to be the case. Pacification has been a major theme of Washington propaganda from the beginning, going all the way back to the "advisers" and "strategic hamlets" of the Diem period.
. But there is increasing evidence that. a change is underway: not qualitatively, perhaps. But certainly quantitatively. A close reading of Frankel's analysis gives warnings. The main reason for the reshuffling of top U.S. command in Vietnam was to strengthen the pacification effort:
"The new men have been ordered to force the pace of the pacification program... "Much time at the Guam conference --.was devoted by the President to discussions of how military resources could be provided for the pacification program in much larger degree without hindering major battlefield operations.
"Military men, machines and supplies are deemed to be the only resources present in the war zones in large enough quantities to make pacification a success. Military men, machines and. supplies do not come under categories often associated with “pacification" -- at least in the popular mind. In actual fact, they are the key to pacification and this sentence in Frankel's article is the key to understanding the changes which are being undertaken...
The reality of ‘pacification is that it amounts to military occupation of the areas which have. been previously subjected to. "search and destroy" campaigns. The latter are supposed to "flush out" the guerrillas. ;
A. massive troop offensive is launched, supported by heavy artillery and saturation bombing. Villages are seized and burnt to the ground. Populations are removed to "refugee" concentration camps.
But what happens after the "search and destroy" campaign leaves the decimated area? The one thing. it has failed to do is make contact with the: guerrilla armies.
Bernard Fall turned his attention to this question in perhaps the last remarks he made before his death on a Vietnam battlefield in February. He was interviewed by a reporter named, Bronson P. Clark.
Clark relates that, "'The one overwhelming fact about this situation,'. Fall told me, ‘which makes all considerations of ideology or politics pale, is the enormous might of American fire-power.'
Operation Cedar Falls in the Iron Triangle la big "search and destroy" campaign -- D.R.] was fresh on his mind:
met looked like giant steel claws had raked the jungle.' He spoke of the ground effect.of fourteen consecutive B-52 raids which the triangle had received during the operation.
"'But remember, when it was all over the Vietcong struck again and from the Iron Triangle. That is the real story of this war. The Americans can destroy but they cannot pacify. They may 'win' the war but it will be the victory of the graveyard.'"
Fall's perturbations about the Pentagon's strategy have. evidently been shared by the Pentagon itself. The big question is how to make pacification work and that means, how to prevent the guerrillas from coming back.
For months prior to the Guam meeting, U.S. generals have been putting heavy pressure on Washington for reinforcements in the pacification effort. And the essence of the change, apparently sealed at Guan, was to shift the bulk: of the Saigon armies into the pacification arena.
"Search and destroy" will be reserved for the U.S. troops; military occupation for the Saigon forces.
This development was confirmed in detail by John Mecklin, a former Time- Life correspondent, writing. in Fortune magazine in April. In an.article entitled "The Struggle to Rescue the People," Mecklin states:
"In response to an American suggestion, the Ky government has agreed to assign at least half of the 321,000 men of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN, pronounced to rhyme with Marvin) to the job of pacification.
"These first-line troops will undertake the critical task, previously left to regional forces, of providing millions of peasants with true protection against Communist guerrilla bands."
Mecklin, like Fall, is unequivocal about the importance of pacification. The reality of the U.S. strategy is that pacification is not an incidental, nor secondary part of the invasion. It is the central aspect:: ,
"Success in pacification," says Mecklin, "represents the only visible way for the UL S. to escape from Vietnam, exeept, in defeat.” . "For as long as the Vietcong remain in control of the countryside, withdrawal of U.S.-forces would simply remove the last obstacle to .Communist strangulation of the rest of the country.
"Nor would recourse to escalated bombing of the north offer an alternative solution; aside from other possible effects, it would be irrelevant to the control the Communists exercise in the south."
This kind of talk is pretty strong for a country that has been fed lies about the real nature of the pacification program since its inception. One must remember, however, that Fortune is directed almost exclusively to the corporation executive.
Mecklin bolsters his argument with a detailed history and analysis of the pacification strategy. From 1954 to 1956, he believes, pacification was on a good footing under the direction of CIA-man Edward G.- Lansdale, "using techniques tried successfully against the Huks in the Philippines..."
"Then the policy changed. The U.S. deduced in 1956 that the main threat to the south was an overt invasion by conventional armies...American military advisers converted ARVN into a clanking, clumsy giant with tanks, heavy artillery, and thousands of trucks and jeeps. Pacification was turned over to woefully ineffective civilian workers, and control of the countryside was ceded to the Vietcong by default."
Mecklin then describes what is well known the world over: the disastrous defeats of the puppet army. "Today its ten divisions are little more than garrison keepers -- with a staggering 124,000 desertions in 1966."
As to the pacification scheme at this time, the roles were the reverse of the present. ARVN units fought the main pattles. U.S. "advisors" were assigned to pacification:
"The U.S,..Mission contributed tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment -- cement, radios, weapons, fertilizer, even ducklings and piglets. The number of hamlets labeled 'secure' became dazzling.
"Even so, it was all a crushing failure. After Diem's fall, the U.S. Mission discovered that thousands of supposedly ‘secure' hamlets were really controlled secretly by the Vietcong, who often used them for supply and rest havens."
Mecklin then comes to the major point: "Diem had. failed to provide the security he had promised, not so much because ARVN neglected its duty, but because totally inadequate provision was made for defense on the scale required by such an immense program...The major lesson: pacification can be made to work only if the people can be provided with believable assurances that the Vietcong will, in fact, be kept out of their communities forever." (Emphasis added.)
If Mecklin is confident about the lessons of past mistakes, it is worth noting that he is not so confident that the situation can be changed.
Above all, he distrusts the ability of the Saigon regime to carry its new assignment out.
"Ky himself has moderated his playboy activity, but it is common knowledge in Saigon that he has kept a table permanently reserved at Maxim's, an elegant Saigon nightclub owned by ARVN generals, where a single drink costs more ($3) than a peasant earns in a week."
There is "a rapacious cynicism in Saigon -- a city filled with draft dodgers, some paying as much as 150,000 piasters ($1,271) to ARVN officers to avoid duty, and a place where peasants bringing rice to market often must pay three or four bribes at police check points set up to spot VC movements along the approaches
to town."
"The shift is one of the most im-
portant undertakings ever attempted in
Vietnam," Mecklin states, "...except that
few Americars in Vietnam think it will
work very well."
"There is no.hope at all that
everything will work out in practice in
Vietnam the way it sounds on paper," Meck-
lin concludes his article. "But there is
hope that enough may:.be achieved in the
next few years -- say 10 or 15°percent of
the objectives. -- to get things. moving at
last." Oy
If 10 or 15 percent of the pacifi-
cation objectives will take the next few
years -- the war could last the next 10
or 15 years.
The truth about pacification, even
in its "new form," however, is that it
never ends. Military occupation must last
as long as the population is in revolt;
it is necessary to add, the population is
in revolt as long as it is militarily oc-
cupied.
One does not need a crystal ball
to predict when this new imperialist plan
will be junked for another one. It is the
height of arrogance for Washington to hope
that occupation can be carried out in the
long run by the south Vietnamese armies.
These young men are already show-
ing by their fantastic desertion rate
exactly. what they think of the Pentagon
blueprints. It will not be any different
when they are occupying; one can hardly
think of a more thankless task.
They are pitted against the just
forces of revolution; they are asked to
occupy their own homes while a foreign
aggressor crushes their brothers in the
battlefield.
This plan will go by the boards
too; and there is only one other plan
that can eventually replace it. That is
total U.S. occupation, and that is the
inherent logic of the Vietnam war as it
develops.