They call it ‘pacification’ but its really Conquest | by terror By RAE-MURPHY (Last of three articles) “The United States can do anything in this world that she wants to—so let’s get on with this task and get it cleared up.” —GENERAL JOHN K. WATERS, former commander of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, in an article in U.S. News and World Report which Vietnam war. Te fascist mentality of -the U.S. war hawks, which is sometimes stated crudely, as above, and sometimes placed ‘more cunningly, is at the bot- tom of the frantic and horrible Programs launched by the Am- erican military to destroy a peo- ple who would: defy their will. “All who stand in our way must be destroyed,” they say and, as Congressman Mendel Rivers put it, “foreign opinion can go fly a kite.” The United States military use two methods in their con- quest of South Vietnam. In the overwhelming area of the coun- tryside considered under the control of the National Libera- tion Front they have adopted a scorched earth policy. In other areas, mainly around American bases and in suburbs of the Cities, they are trying to effect @ program which they call “pa- Cification.” In the south, according to the New York Times, there are about 200 regions which are labelled “bombing zones,” Here the peo- ple are subjected to massive daily air raids, the generalized use of toxic chemicals and poison gases. The food is poisoned and the villages are systematic- ally destroyed. In these areas the Americans move their troops in by heliconter, which are sometimes called “Jolly Green Giants,” and in so-called “search-and-destroy” missions burn everything before them to the ground and in general con- duct a scorched earth policy. The object here is to kill as many people as possible and make the land uninhabitable or, as one magazine put it, “to deny the Viet Cong the means of life.” ‘completely proposed the further escalation of the carried out through the so-called “pacification” program. Here also the people of Vietnam are being used by the Americans as laboratory specimens, just as other Vietnamese are being used as guinea pigs for chemical war- fare. For it is not only in Viet- nam that the U.S. military feel they will require “pacification” programs to protect their em- pire. These “pacification” programs have been developed by the Americans and their Vietnamese puppets ever since 1956. One of the early efforts was known as the Staley-Taylor plan or “‘Ope- ration Sunrise,” which was sup- posed to have had the people subdued in 18 months. The main element of this plan was the concept of “strategic hamlets’ — better known in the English language -as concentration camps. x _ Square. The barbarism of this policy is’ in the unstated approach that everyone, babes in arms and old men, women, are the Viet Cong and must die. In the other areas of Vietnam this policy of genocide is being 4,5% tt oped. -a4uaiat WURAG.. CECT ese FA SONG The workings of this plan are described in the Dallas Evening News of Jan. 1, 1963:- “Suppos- edly the purpose of the fortified villages is to keep the Viet Cong out. But barbed wire denies en- trance and exit. Vietnamese far- mers are forced at gunpoint into these virtual! concentration camps. Their homes, possessions and crops are burned .. .” The same article describes how the opposition to this “re- settlement” was answered by the army of former puppet pre- sident Ngo Dinh Dien: “In the province of Kien-Tuong, seven villagers were led to the town Their stomachs were slashed and their livers extrac- ted and put on display. These victims were women and chil- dren. In another village a dozen mothers were decapitated before the eyes of compatriots. In still another village, expectant mo- thers were invited to the square by government forces to: be honored. Their stomachs were ripped and unborn babies re- moved==— : In spite of the terror, by the end of 1963, Diem was over- thrown and the “strategic ham- let” concept of Staley and Tay- lor was a total fiasco. Since then other “pacification” programs have been launched, all bearing high-sounding names but all with one purpose in mind—the conquest of the people. In an interview in U.S. News and World Report, General Wal- lace Green, commandant. of: the U.S. Marine Corps, describes the “‘pacification’’ program thus: “Our pacification program, is also known under the terms of ‘civic action,’ ‘revolutionary de- velopment’ or ‘rehabilitation.’ This program consists cf pulling out of the village and hamlet structure the Viet Cong who have been: living in these areas for years—identifying them, en- couraging them to return to the government side through the ‘open arms’ defector program, capturing, killing them, or forc- ing them into the jungle and mountains to the west — and then starting on community pro- grams to get people back on their feet. “Q.—How in the world do you identify the enemy in any par- ticular village? “A.—Back in the 1940s the Marine Corps, which has had a great deal of experience in small wars, developed a ‘cordon sys- tem’ for the pacification of small areas. We’re actually using this method—we call it the ‘County Fair’ operation. I saw one of these operations actually being conducted during my _ recent visit, and it was most interest- ing. “We select a hamlet, say of 500 or 600 people. We put a cordon around that hamlet, usu- ally before daylight. Then, with South Vietnamese troops, we enter the hamlet, assemble all the people, screen each indivi- dual, move the people out of the . hamlet into-an enclosure where we can start giving them med- ical treatment, feeding them and issuing identity cards. This takes about three days. “Now, if any of the Viet Cong in the village attempt to escape, . Long. . As . through the hamlet, a wrinkled the cordon snares them. If they attempt to hide, we find out where they are and dig them out. In this particular village, we killed 10 Viet Cong...” “Q.—Do -you occupy these hamlets?” “A.—Yes, and that’s an im- portant thing. When this screen- ing operation is over, we then leave one Marine squad, plus two squads of local militia.” A further description of these “pacification” raids is given in the Jan. 2 issue of Newsweek: “In the morning, it was time for the patrols to move out and check the dozens of farm huts in the neighborhood. The fields were empty—oddly so, since the Tice was ripe and ready for har- vest. Then some sniper rounds popped in the distance as a pa- trol slithered along a dike and came to a house. Inside, they _found two old men and a young- .er man. They also found 40 pounds of salt and 2,000 pounds ‘of rice. ‘That’s too much. for them to have for themselves,’ declared the Vietnamese inter- preter, Sgt. Nguyen Huu Ngoc, and the young man was taken along for questioning. “At the next hut inspected, the scene was studiedly domes- tic. A grandmother and a baby swung above the mud floor in a gunny sack hammock. The mo- ther was sewing. The father ~ smoked, and his 15-year-old son went on with his English lesson -at the table. As the GI’s walked in, no one looked up. ‘This is too pat,’ said Staff Sgt. Norman Sellers, the 36-year-old Missour- ian who led the patrol. After a search, they were about to leave when one of the Gl’s found the . remnants of a recent fire behind the house and a charred piece of camouflaged uniform. ‘Get that VC and -his VC son,’ or- dered Sellers. ‘We’d better take . them in for questioning.’ “The prisoners were led off, back across the dikes to Hung the patrol passed old woman cried softly. ‘Look at . her,’ said a GI. ‘They sure don’t »9” seem to want us here. By all accounts the various U ‘January 20, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PO9 ‘one area of the country Photo at left shows, toP! of a “strategic hamlet” $ one of guard towers; bodies of villagers killed ® Cong suspects. : “pacification” programs not gone well. On Sept. 19," R. W. Krommer, Pf Johnson’s special assistal pacification, gave the fdl statistics: “Since 1956, 53! lets with 580,000 inhale have been pacified.” Kree went on to say that the 8 1966 was 1,900 hamlets: Krommer’s figures al® taken seriously by Am correspondents. Both thé News and World Repoll the New. York Times @ them. According to Mohr, of the New York 1 Krommer’s figures inclu@y lages that have been “pat several times. Newsweek magazine dest (o— ol, ee - fl » il — te ee @ ee’) i Cc t -declared «padl a has been d thus: i “The province of Hau N i for example, has been thé’ , ject of an extremely opt) 4 report to Washington ft0™) U.S. Embassy in SaigoM | y truth seems to be, howev@ | Hau Nghia, where the Viel’ have one of their oldest P® bases, is farther from P# tion than ever. Vietnamest drivers, who a year ago wil drove over almost every # the province, now rell! drive even to two of thé? vince’s four district capital The “pacification” Pm also gets bogged down #) , traditions between the Al™, , government and the Am . “Invisible Government.” ™ village, for example, .a pron ] 1 1 1 ] j ! { ] when it was found out tH director of the school, Mil) Xuan Mai, was an agent Central Intelligence Agen was preaching a brand of ganda that was not only Viet Cong, but anti-Saig” ernment. { However, aside from. veracity, Krommer’s st! on “pacification” and thos® out later indicate that abo” percent of the populatio" been successfully force P| these misnamed concen! | camps. : It is part of the fat" American lexicon that 4, can be given a program wt effect seeks to turn it ing exact opposite. ‘Project 4 rack” is the clever name i development of experi gases and_ bacteriological fare, a “County Fair’ herding of people togeth be investigated and tagg®’ so many cattle. The “pacilié program” is but a variall® the principle of herding into concentration camp projects, according to the if cans, are part of the “P®; war” to win “mass supp0 the Saigon government. Commenting on the &%& failure of the “pacificatio? grams and the “political Newsweek magazine wa ably being more prophet, honest than it intended 7 stated: af “Under these circums! the attempt to win ric@, support for the Saigon 8° ment through pacificatl® tough proposition to start becomes almost Utopian. says one American, like fi to make the Sheriff of N? y99 ham popular’. da school had to be out