Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 10: Murdering History Segment 3/17
Previous segment | Next segment | Contents | Overview | Archive | ZNet


3. Missing Pieces

Also unmentioned in the historical musings is an air of familiarity about Japan's actions in Manchuria, as they established the "independent" state of Manchukuo in 1932 under the former Manchu emperor. The procedure was "a familiar one," Walter Lippmann wrote at the time, not unlike US precedents "in Nicaragua, Haiti, and elsewhere." Manchuria had claims to independent status, surely stronger claims than, say, South Vietnam 25 years later, a fact recognized by the US client regime, which always defined itself as the Government of all of Vietnam, even in an unamendable article of its US-imposed Constitution. Scholars noted that had it not been for Western intervention in support of Chinese rule over the outer regions, motivated by the desire to increase "the sphere of future Western investment and exploitation," the Tibetans, Mongols, and Manchurians might well have moved towards independence (Owen Lattimore, 1934). Japan undertook to "defend" the "independent state" against "bandits" who attacked it from China. The goal of Japan's Kwantung army was to "liberate the masses" from exploitation by military and feudal cliques and to protect them from Communist terrorists. Adopting the policies favored by Kennedy doves in later years, its military leadership undertook counterinsurgency campaigns, complete with "collective hamlets," earnest measures to win hearts and minds, and other ideas that have a certain resonance. Among a series of unpleasant -- hence unmentionable -- facts is the similarity of these operations to the no less brutal and atrocious ones conducted by the United States a few years later near China's southern border, operations that peaked in murderous violence shortly after the Japanese documents on Manchuria were released by the RAND Corporation in 1967, to be shelved with appropriate silence by the cultural managers.7

The similarity is not entirely accidental. Apart from the fact that the same thoughts naturally come to the minds of similar actors facing similar circumstances, US counterinsurgency doctrine was consciously modelled on the practices and achievements of World War II fascism, though it was the Nazis who were the preferred model. Reviewing US Army manuals of the 1950s, Michael McClintock notes the "disturbing similarity between the Nazi's view of the world and the American stance in the Cold War." The manuals recognize Hitler's tasks to have been much the same as those undertaken by the US worldwide as it took over the struggle against the anti-fascist resistance and other criminals (labelled "Communists" or "terrorists"). They adopt the Nazi frame of reference as a matter of course: the partisans were "terrorists," while the Nazis were "protecting" the population from their violence and coercion. Killing of anyone "furnishing aid or comfort, directly or indirectly, to such partisans, or any person withholding information on partisans," was "legally well within the provisions of the Geneva Convention," the manuals explain. The Germans and their collaborators were the "liberators" of the Russian people. Former Wehrmacht officers helped to prepare the army manuals, which culled important lessons from the practices of their models: for example, the utility of "evacuation of all natives from partisan-infested areas and the destruction of all farms, villages, and buildings in the areas following the evacuations" -- the policies advocated by Kennedy's dovish advisors, and standard US practice in Central America. The same logic was adopted by the civilian leadership from the late 1940s, as Nazi war criminals were resurrected and reassigned to their former tasks (Reinhard Gehlen, Klaus Barbie, and others), or spirited to safety in Latin America and elsewhere to pursue their work, if they could no longer be protected at home.8

The notions were refined in the Kennedy years, under the impetus of the President's well-known fascination with unconventional warfare. US military manuals and "antiterrorism experts" of the period advocate "the tactic of intimidating, kidnapping, or assassinating carefully selected members of the opposition in a manner that will reap the maximum psychological benefit," the objective being "to frighten everyone from collaborating with the guerrilla movement." Respected American historians and moralists were later to provide the intellectual and moral underpinnings, notably Guenter Lewy, who explains in his much-admired history of the Vietnam war that the US was guilty of no crimes against "innocent civilians," indeed could not be. Those who joined our righteous cause were free from harm's way (except by inadvertence, at worst a crime of involuntary manslaughter). Those who failed to cooperate with the "legitimate government" imposed by US violence are not innocent, by definition; they lose any such claim if they refuse to flee to the "safety" provided by their liberators: infants in a village in the Mekong Delta or inner Cambodia, for example. They therefore deserve their fate.9

Some lack innocence because they happened to be in the wrong place; for example, the population of the city of Vinh, "the Vietnamese Dresden," Philip Shenon casually observes in a Times Magazine cover story on the belated victory of capitalism in Vietnam: it was "leveled by American B-52 bombers" because it was "cursed by location" and hence "was a natural target" for the bombers, much like Rotterdam and Coventry. This city of 60,000 was "flattened" in 1965, Canadian officials reported, while vast surrounding areas were turned into a moonscape.10 One could learn the facts outside the mainstream, where they were generally ignored, or even flatly denied; for example, by Lewy, who assures us, on the authority of US government pronouncements, that the bombing was aimed at military targets and damage to civilians was minimal.

Plainly, it is better to keep the history under wraps. The Politically Correct approach, adopted without notable deviation on the anniversary, is to date Japan's criminal course to the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor; to bring in Japan's earlier atrocities only as a device to sharpen the distinction between their evil nature and our purity; to put aside the uneasy relation between the doctrine that the war began on December 7, 1941 and the fact that we denounce Japan for atrocities committed through the 1930s, which were, furthermore, deemed acceptable in influential circles; and more generally, to eliminate from the mind discordant notes from past and present history.

It is interesting to see the reaction when the rules of decorum are occasionally violated by comparisons between Japan's policies and actions and ours in Vietnam. For the most part, the comparisons are so unthinkable as to be unnoticed, or are dismissed as absurdity. Or they may be denounced as apologetics for Japan's crimes, an interpretation that is quite natural. Given that our perfection is axiomatic, it follows that any comparison drawn confers upon others a share of our nobility, and thus counts as apologetics for their crimes. By the same irrefutable logic, it follows that applause for our crimes is not apologetics, but merely a proper tribute to our magnificence; and silence about them is only a shade less meritorious than enthusiastic approval. Those who fail to comprehend these truths can be condemned for their "irrational hatred of America." Or, if not so completely beyond the pale, they can be offered a course of instruction, like the Japanese generals.

The ban on such subversive thoughts was revealed on the Pearl Harbor anniversary in a striking way, to which we return (section 8). Another example is provided by a commentary on the anniversary by the noted Japan scholar John Dower, solicited by the Washington Post. Dower commented that there is "more than a little irony in observing Americans ramble on about other people's military violence and historical amnesia," considering how Vietnam and Korea have entered officially-sanctioned memory. The invited column was rejected.11

Another pertinent question was omitted from the deliberations on the aggression launched by Japan on December 7, 1941: How did we happen to have a military base at Pearl Harbor, or to hold our Hawaiian colony altogether? The answer is that we stole Hawaii from its inhabitants, by force and guile, just half a century before the infamous date, in part so as to gain the Pearl Harbor naval base. The centenary of that achievement falls shortly after the opening of Year 501, and might have merited a word as we lamented Japan's failure to face up to its perfidy. Lifting the veil, we find an instructive story.


Go to the next segment.

7 Ibid., for excerpts.

8 See TTT, 194f.; Simpson, Blowback; Reese, Gehlen.

9 McClintock, Instruments, 59ff., 230ff. Lewy, America in Vietnam. For discussion of this parody of history, see the review by Chomsky and Edward Herman, reprinted in TNCW. For Lewy's thoughts on how to eliminate the plague of independent thought on the home front, see NI, 350f.

10 Bernard Fall, Ramparts, Dec. 1965, reprinted in Last Reflections. For a postwar eyewitness description, see John Pilger, New Statesman, Sept. 15, 1978. Shenon, NYT magazine, Jan. 5, 1992.

11 Dower, "Remembering (and Forgetting) War," ms, MIT.