THE REFUGEE STRATEGY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100190013-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: April 11, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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WASHINGTON P0:
The Refugee Strategy
America's 21-year war in ' Vietn?im
Is ending as it began-with massive
population displacements encouraged
by U.S. policy. which would not have
occurred without American, interven-
tion, and which are. storing up human
and political problems which will af-
? flirt both Vietnam and America for
years to come.
i The American aircraft today fly am-
munition into.. Saigon and fly babies,
out: 'The CIA's Col. Edward G. Lans-
dale was doing the same thing in.
Hanoi exactly 20 years ago. Unwary
children were hustled into airplanes
as they took off, to ensure their rela-
tives followed on the next one. Before
evacuating refugees stampeded into
Haiphong by U.S. rumor campaigns,
ships of the American "_Mercy Flotilla"
cached arms in the Tonkin delta.
o.
Mr. Allman is 'a freelance writer.
Who specializes in Indochina affairs.
This article was written for The Man-
cliester Guardian.
.-The American effort to convert
South Vietnam from the "temporary
regrouping zone" established by the
1954. Geneva Accord into "this valiant
partner of the free world," as John
Foster Dulles described the Saigon
regime the United States established,
always. has rested on the. deliberate
production of refugees.. Ever since the
late Dr.' Thomas A. Dooley provided
the. CIA cover story for the 1934 op-
eration "Exodus" in his best selling
"Deliver Us From Evil," it has been
U.S. policy to deprive the guerrilla fish
their water, by driving populations
into vast urban shanty towns, or into
"strategic hamlets". which were barely
disguised concentration camps.
"Refugees make solid citizens," one
USAID manifesto explained. As the
fit;epower war began, Gen. William
Westmoreland described the social
and political rationale of his search.
and-destroy operations: "I expect a
tremendous increase in the number
of refugees." The strategy was defined
in the jargon of the time by Ambassa-
dor Robert Komer,. who had overall
responsibility for the Phoenix pro-
gram of counter-terror. "If we can at-
trite the population base of the Viet-
cpng," he said, "it'll accelerate the
process of degrading the V.C."
`Eight million South Vietnamese and
half of Laos' three million pecple
were made refugees, often dozens of
times. The Nixon-Kissinger Cambodia
-invasion created two million refugees
in three months. Official U.S. reports
that. the firepower war was killing.
twice., as. many_ children under 13. as
fully armed U.S. combat troops that
refugee children were developing dis
eases.. such as night blindness, pre
viously unknown in Indochina, were
welcomed by U.S. officials as signs o.
"progress." Depopulating the country
side, not military progress, provides
the U.S. statistics .that the population
of Vietnam was increasingly "friendly
and secure.
. America, according to the Harvarc
counter-insurgency expert, and a Ion:
time colleague of Kissinger. Professc
Samuel Huntington, had discover? u
"the answer to wars of national libcr
tion." It consisted of defeating a "rural
revolutionary movement" h.. "forced-
draft urbanization.'- Explaining the
massive refugee movements produced
by his Vietnamization program; the
Cambodia invasion and the bombing
of Laos,. President Nixon declared:
"The enemy will be denied all but the _
most limited and furtive access to the
people."
It Was this "refugee policy" that
created what Sen. J. W. Fulbright.
called "a society of prostitutes and
mercenaries"-and . the caricature of
civilization produced in South Viet-
nam by the American way of war is
what now accounts for the collapse of
a state that never had and economic,.
pclitical or social basis except that
provided by the Americans..
The South Vietnamese soldiers flee-
ing an enemy' which has `not yet at-
tacked-and trying to.push their mo-
tor bikes on to U.S. ships-sum up
the product, of American "nation.
building"-a militarist -society with
nothing worth fighting for; a con-
,sunier society that produces nothing.
The present Communist offensive has
nudged the house of cards Vietnamiza-. :
tion built. . '
Official. U.S. concern with the vic-
tims of a 20-year refugee policy dates
from last week. President Ford's "mis-
sion of mercy" is merciful principally
to Americans. It camouflages responsi-
bility for uprooting more than 12 mil-
lion people in the satisfaction of pro-
viding spare bedrooms 8.000 miles
away for children. who will- grow up
in an alien society.
It provides the ideal emotional and
bureaucratic escape from America's
real responsibilities. Instead of plan-
ping comprehensive aid for redevelop-
ment, the Washington task ' forces
grind- out scenarios for airlifting. mil-
lions to freedom. As thousands claw
and bribe their ways on to U.S. air-
craft, U.S. officials, rather than
trying to understand the bases of their
Vietnam failure, assert yet again that
a nation is "voting with its feet"
against communism. '
The validity of such assertions can
be judged by imagining the chaos if
a U.S. President suddenly announced
that one million Bengalis, Ethiopians
were the Vietnamization. program's
sole. potential contribution to Viet-
nam's future. They will also ensure
automatic Communist control -by re- . .
moving' the one group whose useful-
ness might have moderated a doctrin-
,ire Marxist jjapproaclt to Vietnamese
reconstruction:
Americans corsistently have refused
to accept their efforts in'V!etnam as
a case of ctnpire building. Yet the gan
between the'! partition . of India and
the tragedy ;f of Bangladesh; between
the Bay of Pigs. and hiring Cuban ex-
iles to burgle Watergate; 'between em-
pires taking] their "loy'alists" home
with them, and the plight.of the Indo-
nesians in the -Netherlands. and of the
Uganda. Asians in Britain, suggest the
long range problems that mass evacua-
tions will create. .
At least so far as Americans are
concerned, however, the principal dis-
astcr President Ford's evacuation will
ensure may The psychological. Ameri-
ca's 20-year war. has become a striking
historical example of a nation simply
unwilling to.''admit a mistake-of the
persistent refus&l, to' search for the
reasons for the greatest national mis-
judgment in Ameican history.
Kissinger is no less locked into the
Vietnam illusion than was John Ken.
nedy ' or Dean Acheson. With his
evacuation program, President Ford,
like all his predecessors, has made his -
own' Vietnam "commitment"-not to
the people of South Vietnam, but to
self-deception". The evacuation of Viet.
namese orphans, emotionally under.
standable, can rightly be described as
cradle-snatching: But its real signifi-
cance, so far as Americans are con-
cerned, is that it starkly reveals how '
many Americans still implicitly be-
lievc it is better for Vietnamese to be-
come Americans. rather than to re?
main Vietnamese, as is their birth- II,
right. if it means living, under a r:ov
crnment tire!!' America does not like.
American power neverthelezs has
at last reached a situation in which.
it is impotent: nothing the United
States can do now can prevent most
Vietnamese at last'from being left to .
work out their own destinies in their
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/08: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100190013-9