Williams became the founder of the ‘Madison’ school of revisionist historians, who figured prominently in the Vietnam-era teach-ins. Their hostility to the Democratic Party’s war in its early stages was critical in turning a generation of youth, including me, into radicals. Among them are Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperovitz and younger scholars grouped around the journal Radical America. By providing a platform for Williams, the American Socialist provided a ‘revolutionary continuity’ that was much more meaningful than that claimed by small, sectarian ‘vanguard’ parties claiming to be the avatar of Marx and Lenin.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/amersocialist/amersoc_5707.htm 

The Choice Before Us

by William Appleman Williams

(Mr. Williams has been assistant professor of history at the University of Oregon, and is moving to the University of Wisconsin this September. His books on American diplomacy attracted wide attention, and his articles have appeared in The Nation and other periodicals. This is his first article for the American Socialist.)
DOMESTIC radicalism has long been associated, in the thought of the Left and the Right alike, with unsettled international conditions. War and revolution have been linked together in the hopes of the rebels and in the fears of the reactionaries. Even more restrained observers tend to assume, or try to establish, a simple one-to-one relationship between war and radicalism. A great deal of pseudo-history has recently been written, for example, supposedly proving that the Bolshevik Revolution caused every war since 1917. And, since the Suez affair at any rate, everyone is familiar with the argument that the Western powers must at all costs avoid disagreements because another war among themselves would produce a Communist world.
Let it be granted that this familiar thesis does account, at least to a degree, and in the latter stages of the process, for some aspects of radical changes. The fact remains that it begs the crucial point about the relationship between radicalism and international affairs. Overlooked in all this free association between war and revolution is the hard truth that revolutions, whatever the suddenness of their eruption, are not spontaneous affairs. Major revolutions, or truly radical changes without violence, are preceded by a period of time during which the society in question is faced by a choice between competing solutions to the fundamental problems of political economy and social relationships. Almost without exception, these various approaches ultimately narrow down to two alternatives: a continuance of the existing order devolving into a and devastating war, or a radical reordering of domestic society. It is possible to specify examples which appear to contradict this proposition (Guatemala and Honduras come to mind), but closer inspection of such cases suggests that they fall into the category of revolutions occurring in the spheres of influence of major powers for the central thesis remains valid.

SIR! NO SIR! THE GI REVOLT

The Romance of Counterinsurgency « sans everything

The Romance of Counterinsurgency « sans everything

For the last half-century, counterinsurgency has been the type of war that liberals are most likely to idealize. In theory, counterinsurgency sounds great: it’s war fought to win “the hearts and minds” of the people, war that involves building alliances with the local population, war done with the best of intentions, war as a giant social welfare program (with guns).

first great liberal embrace of counterinsurgency was the Kennedy administration Green Berets to fight guerrilla wars.

around 2003 some liberals once again took up the idea of counterinsurgency. it’s really development work and human rights, except the people will carry guns.

counterinsurgency is more brutal than conventional warfare which are all about seizing territories with one army fighting another and sometimes civilian casualties as a by product.

Counterinsurgency is to seize control “hearts and minds”. civilians are the chief target. Civilians are the battlefield. counterinsurgency is warfare aligned with nation building.

1977 study, “The Counterinsurgency Era,” the late Douglas Blaufarb, a former CIA agent who oversaw counterinsurgency operations in Laos addresses the problem of “self-reform in crisis.” where outsiders press for political reform

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, the notion that reforms can be carried out in a wartime situation by a beleaguered regime is “the fatal fallacy in the liberal theory of counterinsurgency, with the United States so often obliged to work through repressive local leadership, the reform component dwindled into ineffectual exhortation.”

Kennedy, the need to help poor countries develop politically and economically into modern nation states so that they can be strong enough to resist communism

Yet effective counterinsurgency often involves building up small tribal groups. by strengthening the Meo hill-people of Laos further frayed the social fabric of Laos

Counterinsurgency emphasis on improving social conditions and spreading democracy. Green Berets and the Peace Corps are the same reforming spirit

In Vietnam. As the war ground on harsher tactics appeared, targeting of enemy collaborators for assassination. In the infamous Phoenix Program that began in 1967, a direct outgrowth of counterinsurgency, the American government paid for the murder of thousands of civilians allegedly tied to the Viet Cong. This was precisely the type of program that turned many Americans against the Vietnam War

The US then went on elsewhere, in Guatemala.

Numbed by years of killing, peasants adopted a quietist philosophy that rejected both sides. in 1975, South Vietnam couldn’t rally its own population to resist.

Successful counterinsurgency involves a deep familiarity with the local culture. Gaining political legitimacy is the key to successfully defeating an insurgency. such popular support can take years and there is tension between security for one’s troops and winning popular support….

Worse Than Vietnam?

INSURGENCY IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

“The invader's strategy must be one of lightning war. If we can hold out for three or more years, it will be most difficult for them to bear up under the strain.”

Mao's concepts of guerrilla warfare were later translated (in the 1961 book “On Guerrilla Warfare,” by S. B. Griffith) into three phases of insurgency.

the first phase of insurgency is a “survival” phase

Mao said that during the first phase of insurgency, the infrastructure of guerrilla warfare is developed: a recruiting campaign, repositioning of weapons and munitions, and a new ideology of resistance and a propaganda apparatus to spread the ideology.
All this happened in Iraq.

The US and other likely counter-insurgents are fortunate that most revolutionaries find it easier and “cooler” to follow leaders like Guevara than Mao. The protracted revolutionary war theory dictated by Mao is certainly more universal and effective for the majority of strategic settings but the idea has to be solid.

I would even propose that the “war of ideas” should have four components rather than two –

• the idea,

• the individual experience of the leader,

• the sales package, and the

• sales methods.

The final piece involving communication techniques that stimulates emotions and invokes passion in the people will establish the power base.

The idea itself is the core of the political phase, and since a lot of time is spent in this phase following guerrilla and conventional warfare setbacks, it must never be diluted. This demands charismatic and dynamic leadership. Therefore the perfect blend of a Guevara type “cool guy” and a Mao theory would ensure the best results for an upstart revolutionary.

Yes, the political movement must occur before the guerrilla operations and the leader must set the conditions for shifts in priority of effort between phases; however the very nature of the leader is key in a society that puts a lot of emphasis on the short term solution.

Mao’s theory is predicated on the idea that success may take decades to achieve. Additionally, he planned to have setbacks.

the coalition forces must win the war of ideas in the political realm in both Afghanistan and Pakistan to achieve long term success in the region.

Insurgency is a “survival” phase. Mao defines insurgency, the infrastructure of guerrilla warfare developed by recruiting, repositioning of weapons and munitions, and a new ideology of resistance and a propaganda apparatus to spread the ideology

small-scale offensive to shake the determination of the invading forces, attempted
by the use of roadside bombings, rocket-propelled grenade assaults and sniper attacks.

Point #1 – Protracted Campaign, revolutionary war meant millions dead. This required revolutionary endurance to frustrate the efforts of a large, modern Western Army. The need to exhaust the strategic patience of the U.S public. the longer one can draw out, the more it will cost. valuable resources – $$$ and U.S. lives

Point #2 – Political Mobilization, the first and most important phase is to build a dedicated cadre by recruiting and organizing popular support at the appropriate level, only selective use of violence and guerrilla warfare is permissible, exploited the needs and desires of the discontent, build an inexhaustible cadre of believers
who support their ideological pursuits. avoid one-on-one conventional confrontation with Coalition forces, used a wide range of violence, terrorist attacks, and methods of guerrilla warfare to attrit Coalition resolve and to excite additional popular support

the process of recruiting and organizing popular support. Who is the best salesman of ideas? you have to win the war of ideas.

the “Foco” revolutionary war theory jumps the first step of the Mao war theory. “Che” got success due to unique characteristics for that time. The political mobilization and support of the populace was completed before Che and Fidel started with the guerrilla operation.

• level of corruption
• lack of commitment
• military forces and the social problems
  

strategic victory is not determined by tactical success alone. One must understand the importance of gaining popular support. In iraq, One major difference from the theory is that although the insurgent groups are small, most of them do not have overwhelming support of the local population.

The first phase would be considered the “survival” phase. This is relevant in relation to Iraq. The start of the insurgency when major combat operations ended

• recruiting campaign,
• repositioning of weapons and munitions
• new ideology of resistance and a propaganda apparatus to spread the ideology

followed by

• small-scale offensive, which consisted of IEDs, rocket-propelled grenade assaults and sniper attacks
• to rally support for the insurgents at home and abroad,
• which raises funds and recruits
  

If there is a successful first phase, the second phase can progress

• larger-scale offensive activity
• carefully planned, coordinated attacks
• important human targets
• intelligence-gathering capability grows more sophisticated,
• frequent and deadly activity
  

insurgency also grows decentralized. killing or capture or key individuals, less significant

The last phase is the decisive stage. this phase has not taken place in Iraq. insurgents will remain in the current phase.

insurgency warfare is meant to convince the enemy’s decision-makers that victory was too costly and give up.

Mao succeeded in portraying himself as an ally to the peasants and an enemy to landowners, businessmen, and Imperialism. insurgents we face today lack the commitment to stand their ground for the protracted fight

***guerilla warfare tactics routinely target the same civilian population that they desire to influence, which in reality does nothing less than counter their message***

***the U.S. faces in the GWOT are opportunists and thugs, not revolutionaries
trying to undermine the new governments. They are fighting only because the U.S. is involved.

Taliban is not trying to free the people from Karzai. They want to get back into power for themselves, purely financially motivated***

do not do near as good of a job at influencing the population. They do it out of fear, rather than making themselves seen as heroes to the peasantry. Just as LaCour stated, these are a group of thugs for the most part who are simply in it for themselves and relish any event to attack the U.S. – not revolutionaries.

Welcoming the Taliban with Open Arms: Defectors and Deception in Afghanistan

Global Research, February 1, 2010

This week, the U.S.G initiated a program welcoming low and mid-level Taliban defectors. After an eight-year “dirty war” against the Taliban, the USG are
acknowledging their “insurgent” enemy is actually part of the “fabric” of Afghan society

They are offering bribes to defect. Defectors programs are an essential part of
U.S. pacification policy. In Vietnam, Chieu Hoi “Open Arms”, for example. Vietnam War offered “clemency to insurgents.” this too is propaganda, Defector “amnesty” or “clemency” or “open arms” programs, CIA intelligence op.

information management – language – is the essence of political warfare

The first step is concocting a slogan that appeals, “amnesty” or “clemency” or “open arms.” by appealing to American sensibilities.

the first step in creating deniability for the CIA. the CIA creates deniability by planting distorted articles in foreign and domestic newspapers. also by use of "official" communiqués that originate from within the Karzai government.

Next, the CIA conducts covert action under cover of Civic Action programs advertised as fostering freedom, patriotism, brotherhood, democracy.

this manipulation of language is called “black propaganda” and is the job of political and psychological (PP) warfare officers in the covert action branch. “PP” officers played role in packaging the Phoenix Program for sale to the American public as a program designed "to protect the people from terrorism.""

Intelligence Potential. After deniability, launch a covert action program but only if it has “intelligence poten­tial, on an enemy's political, military, and economic infrastructure.

defectors sap the enemy's fighting strength and morale, provide an accurate and timely source of intelligence, serve as guides and trackers after they are returned.

Others defectors are turned into double agents. They return to their former positions and are provided means of contacting their CIA case officer. They can then feed information leading to the arrest or...

Defector programs also provide CIA “talent scouts” with cover for recruiting criminals, Burglars, arsonists, forgers, and smugglers have unique skills and no compunctions for conducting interrogations

In Vietnam, the entire Fifty-second Ranger Battalion was recruited from Saigon prisons.

With Obama’s surge providing cover for the CIA covert actions, CIA moving to the forefront of this “intelligence” surge. That is why the Taliban defector buyout program is being launched now.

what makes such an intelligence operation “covert”? the CIA's ability to deny its involvement in the defector buyout program to the American public.

A Case Study

Under cover of Civic Action, the CIA is waging a plausibly deniable dirty war against the Taliban using black propaganda, defectors, criminals, selective terror, indefinite detention and a slew of other devious tactics disguised as bringing freedom and democracy, but in fact designed to provide internal security for the puppet Karzai regime.

The CIA perfected this practice in Vietnam, where it waged clandestine political and psychological warfare with the U.S. Information Service (USIS). the USIS had as its raison d'être promotion of the "Amer­ican way." the USIS employed all manner of “media,” from TVs, radios, and satellites to armed propaganda teams, wanted posters, and terrorism.

Frank Scotton, a CIA officer masquerading as an USIS officer, received a government graduate assistantship to the East-West Cen­ter at the University of Hawaii.

CIA-sponsored East-West Center, it was cover for a training program in which Southeast Asians were brought to Hawaii and trained to go back to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to create agent nets."

the USIS, which "dealt with people," unlike the State Dpt. which "ob­served from a distance

arriving in Vietnam in 1961, initiating his vast agent net, Scotton turned
to “energizing" the Vietnamese through political action that advanced American policies.

Scotton turned to the CIA's defector program, which in April 1963 was placed under cover of the Agency for International Development and named the Chieu Hoi (Open Arms) amnesty program.

There Scotton prove the viability of CIA political action and psywar programs worked with Vietnamese Special Forces Captain Nguyen Tuy, a graduate of Fort Bragg's Special Warfare Center who commanded the Fourth Special Operations De­tachment,


sent to the CIA station in Kabul, translations are never considered accurate unless
confirmed in the original language by the same person, but that rarely happens, interrogations conducted through defectors are rarely considered reliable, defector program will likely be exploited by Taliban secret agents, just as the Chieu Hoi program was penetrated in Vietnam. “It was the biggest hole in the net.

“the revolving door syndrome,” CIA is turning to the Taliban buyout program Obama’s surge will produce thousands of more detainees and prisoners. The CIA was plagued by overcrowding, little space for actual "Communist offenders. more people were captured
large percentage, squeezed out of the revolving door

Defectors and the Phoenix Program

June 1967, CIA’s Chieu Hoi was incorporated within the new Phoenix Program. Chieu Hoi as "one of the few areas where police and paramilitary advisers cooperated."

Phoenix, to coordinate all intelligence programs. CIA could identify and neutralize Viet Cong

“My motto was to recruit them; if you can't recruit them, defect them (that's Chieu Hoi); if you can't defect them, capture them; if you can't capture them, kill them."

Brickham also emphasized that Chieu Hoi was a means for the CIA to develop “unilateral penetrations unknown to the [South Vietnamese] police."

In other words, the Taliban defector buyout program will be conducted unilaterally by the CIA, apart from the Karzai government.

by 1969 more than a hundred thousand defectors had been processed through 51 Chieu Hoi centers

But many Chieu Hoi defectors simply re­gurgitated the American line in order to win amnesty, make a quick visit to their families, enjoy a few home-cooked meals, and then return to the war for independence, fat and rested.

Legitimate Chieu Hoi defectors were pariahs who were not accepted back in their villages.

Political and Psychological Warfare

The same lesson applies in Afghanistan. The U.S. has no legitimate reason to be there, and thus it must rely on psychological ploys, rather than any appeal to nationalism, to win the Afghanis over to the American Way of doing things.
the U.S. is instituting a defector program, with a publicity campaign managed in the field by psyops teams replete with radios, leaflets, posters, banners, TV shows, movies, comic books falling from planes, and loudspeakers mounted on trucks to spread the word.

This is how defectors will be created in Afghanistan as well. Psyops leaflets aimed at creating defectors will portray the Taliban as a socially disruptive force that can only be stopped by America.

And while the CIA relies on cartoons to sell itself, the Taliban go from person to person, proving that technology was no substitute for human contact. Ultimately the U.S. was defeated in Vietnam for just this reason.

VIETNAM BLOCKS FACEBOOK

Facebook, which had struggled to find a toehold in Vietnam, took off in 2009, and now claims 3 million members.

Then, in early November, Facebook users began having trouble accessing the site. The government had ordered it blocked, employees at internet service providers said.
Nguyen Phuong Nga said the government was blocking some websites "which were being used to provide information damaging to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."

But a few Vietnamese, in the country and outside, had begun using Facebook for political purposes. After young dissident Nguyen Tien Trung was charged with political crimes in June, his friends established a Facebook group, Release Nguyen Tien Trung, that attracted hundreds of followers.
Bat Nha monastery

The exiled organization Viet Tan, which advocates multiparty democracy, maintains a Facebook page, too.
Vietnam models its efforts to censor internet content on those of China, but it lacks the resources that allow China
to employ 50,000 tech-savvy workers

to monitor the online world.
Websites like those of the Voice of America and Human Rights Watch are often blocked by some internet providers, but accessible on others.

pdf Flyer

PAUL LE CONG DINH TWITTER REVOLUTION

Ho Chi Minh City police have arrested Catholic lawyer, Paul Le Cong Dinh on charges of working with foreigners to overthrow the government and creating "propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."

The lawyer reportedly "compiled papers distorting the government's economic and social policies, slandering high ranking officials, and causing division among people." He also sent his papers to websites based in foreign countries, media reported.

Authorities also charge Dinh, 41, with working with "reactionary forces" in foreign countries to overthrow the regime.

http://www.ifex.org/vietnam/2009/06/17/free_le_cong_dinh/
IFEX International Freedom of Expression eXchange: The global network for free expression

Dinh was arrested on 13 June in his home in Ho Chi Minh and faces up to 20 years in jail on charges of distributing anti-state propaganda, sedition and conspiring with subversives. Join the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC), Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, ARTICLE 19 and Index on Censorship to demand his immediate release.

PetroVietnam

Annually oil and gas production of Petrovietnam rapidly increased and reached 16.8 millions tons and 1.6 billions cubic meters respectively. Total petroleum production is over 98 millions tones of oil and 5.6 billions cubic meters of gas.

Despite the 1998 - early 1999 economic crisis and incredible fall in price of oil, mergers of petroleum giant and "wait and see" attitude by the others, petroleum exploration and production in Vietnam kept on advancing and resulted in new gas discoveries on the Khanh My structure in block 46, Ac Qui & Ca Voi structures in block 52/97 of Malay - Tho Chu Basin, and Su Tu Den structure in the Cuu Long Basin.