Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 10: Murdering History Segment 14/17
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7. "Thief! Thief!"

The renewal of the punishment of Vietnam for its crimes, the voices of the unheard victims, the search into the depths of the "individual human soul" (but nothing more) in the case of our admitted departure from purity, and our contemplation of "the Mind of Japan" -- all of these fall on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, along with the resurgence of self-pity over our tragic fate.

Those who might believe that the POW-MIA issue reflects the profound humanitarian impulses of our leaders will quickly be disabused of this naive idea by a look at a few comparisons. Walter Wouk, a Vietnam veteran who chairs the New York State Senate Vietnam Veterans Advisory Council, writes:

At the end of World War II the U.S. had 78,751 MIAs, 27 percent of the war's U.S. battle deaths. The Korean War resulted in 8,177 MIAs which represented 15.2 percent of the Americans killed-in-action. Of the 2.6 million Americans who served in Vietnam, 2,505 -- less than 5.5 percent of the U.S. battle deaths -- are listed as missing in action. But even that figure is misleading. Of that number 1,113 were killed in action, but their bodies were not recovered. Another 631 were presumed dead because of the circumstances of their loss -- i.e., airmen known to have crashed into the sea -- and 33 died in captivity. The remaining 728 are missing. It should be noted that 590 of the missing Americans (81 percent) were airmen; and there were strong indications that more than 442 of these individuals (75 percent) went down with their aircraft.

Are the Vietnam MIAs in a special category because of the refusal of the savage Communists to allow a thorough search? In the major study of the MIA campaign, Bruce Franklin points out that remains of MIAs from World War II are discovered almost every year in the European countryside, where no one has hampered any search for 45 years. Remains from General Custer's 1876 battle were still being located in the 1980s, as were skeletons of Confederate soldiers and US soldiers killed in Canada during the War of 1812.50

The truth of the matter is not hard to perceive. The state-media complex has been resorting to a trick familiar to every petty crook and tenth-rate lawyer: when you are caught with your hand in someone's pocket, cry "Thief! Thief!" Don't try to defend yourself, thus conceding that there is an issue to confront: rather, shift the onus to your accusers, who must then defend themselves against your charge. The technique can be highly effective when control over the doctrinal system is assured. The device is familiar to propagandists, virtually a reflex, adopted unthinkingly. The PC propaganda operation is a transparent example (chapter 2.4).

The device also comes naturally to the corporate rulers, who commonly present themselves as pathetic and embattled, desperately trying to survive the onslaught of the liberal media, powerful unions, and hostile government forces that keep them from earning an honest dollar. Their media propagandists play the same game. During the Pittston mine workers strike in 1989-1990, the company president ran daily press conferences, though it was hardly necessary, since the media were eager to do his work for him. In the first (and only) TV gesture toward coverage, Robert Kulwich of CBS commented that Pittston Coal Group president "Mike Odom is willing to say that the union has done a very slick public relations job, and that he has some catching up to do." That takes care of the fact that the national media -- to the limited extent that they covered this historic labor struggle at all -- adopted the company point of view reflexively, deflecting union efforts to present the issues as the workers saw them with their practiced efficiency.51

The same device is standard in debate over the media. It is child's play to demonstrate their subordination to state power with regard to Indochina, Central America, and the Middle East. Accordingly, the sole issue we are permitted to discuss is whether the media went too far in their adversarial zeal, perhaps even undermining the foundations of democracy (the questions pondered in the solemn deliberations of the Trilateral Commission and Freedom House). An academic study of the media on Central America and the Middle East, led by a man with proper liberal credentials, considers only the question of the anti-establishment fervor of the media: Was it too extreme, or did they manage to keep it within tolerable bounds? As in this case, the "Thief! Thief!" technique is particularly effective when the analyst can be placed at the outer limits of dissidence. Thus long-time NPR Middle East correspondent Jim Lederman inquires into the fervent support of the US media for the cause of the Palestinians, their manipulation by Yasser Arafat, and their consuming hatred of Israel -- all so obvious to any reader. Exhibiting his left-liberal credentials, he concludes that there is no proof of a conscious anti-Semitic conspiracy, despite appearances.52

In such ways, mountains of evidence can be made to disappear with a mere flick of the wrist. The technique requires lock-step loyalty on the part of the cultural managers. But the unwashed masses are sometimes more difficult to handle.

In the case of Vietnam, by the late 1960s substantial sectors of the public were joining those whom Kennedy-Johnson National Security adviser McGeorge Bundy called "the wild men in the wings," questioning the "first team" that was running the war, and even the justice of the US cause.53 With all the help provided by the mass media, things were reaching the point where the murderous barbarism of the US war could no longer be concealed or defended. The predictable response was to cry "Thief! Thief!" Of course, there was nothing new in this. But the Indochina wars were reaching the stage where something was needed beyond the norm.


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50 Wouk, CT, June 2, 1992. Franklin, MIA.

51 Puette, Through Jaundiced Eyes, ch. 7.

52 For discussion of these examples, see TNCW, 68f., 89f. MC, secs. 5.1, 5.5.2, App. 3. NI, App. I, sec. 2. Lederman, Battle Lines; see my "Letter from Lexington," Lies of Our Times, Sept. 1992, for details.

53 Bundy, Foreign Affairs, Jan. 1967. See MC, 175.