[“In His Extended Study, Viet Cong, Published In 1966, Pike Went To Some Length To Show That The Success

[“In his extended study, Viet Cong, published in 1966, Pike went to some length to show that the success of the Viet Cong came not so much from their use of violence and terror (as many Americans assumed) but from their organizational methods. By 1970 he had given the subject a new emphasis. “Terror,” he said, “is an essential ingredient of nearly all [the Viet Cong's] programs.” And he went ahead to show his own colors:

A frank word is required here about “terror” on the other side, by the Government and Allied forces fighting in Viet-Nam. No one with any experience in Vietnam denies that troops, police and others commanding physical power, have committed excesses that are, by our working definition, acts of terror.… But there is an essential difference in such acts between the two sides, one of outcome or result. To the communist, terror has a utility and is beneficial to his cause, while to the other side the identical act is self-defeating. This is not because one side is made up of heroes and the other of villains. It is because, as noted above, terror is integral in all the communist tactics and programs and communists could not rid themselves of it even if they wanted to. Meanwhile, the other side firmly believes, even though its members do not always behave accordingly, that there is a vested interest in abstaining from such acts.

Interestingly, Pike's “working definition” of terror was the “systematic use of death, pain, fear and anxiety among the population (either civilian or military) for the deliberate purpose of coercing, manipulating, intimidating, punishing or simply frightening the helpless into submission.” And by that definition the entire American bombing policy in Vietnam, North and South, was a strategy of terror. Even within the narrower definition of “terror” as an unconventional, clandestine act of violence — an assassination or a satchel-charge bombing — the Allies had been using terror deliberately for a number of years through professionally trained paramilitary units such as the Special Forces and the Provincial Reconnaissance Units.

As head of the Psychological Warfare section, Pike knew this as well as anyone in Vietnam. Only he, like many Americans who backed the Vietnam War, ascribed the best of motives to the Americans and their allies, while laying all the evil at the door of the enemy. It was the same kind of bad faith and bad conscience that in 1967 inspired all the American rhetoric about “revolutionary development” and “building democracy” in Vietnam. It was the same kind of rhetoric that inspired the unrestricted use of violence upon the Vietnamese.”]

frances fitzgerald, from fire in the lake: the vietnamese and the americans in vietnam, 1972

More Posts from Awaybyrail and Others

1 month ago

nooooooo free her

awaybyrail - it is what it is until it is something else
7 months ago

HI Maia, i don't know if u answer questions like these but i feel like this is up your alley way... do you have a note taking software you would recommend/use that doesn't have AI bull shit in it and is somewhat okay privacy wise. I have grown tired of notion after my many years but every notes app I look into is screaming 'we use AI' at me. anyway, greetings...

i personally use obsidian and like it enough to pay for some of its features (which are all possible to achieve with free community plugins instead, there's like basically no reason you'd HAVE to pay them)


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7 months ago

i dont think the "ocean at night in the dark" thing is intended to be in reference to color, necessarily - more just unseen immensity. my take was that porch collapse is meaningfully gray and vaporous, but within the pale itself, color is more metaphorical than anything. like it might be "the morning", "white light", "dark gray and orange" or whichever, but these are more ideas related to colors than colors themselves

quick question to the lore masters: is the pale white or black? the paledriver says it's like looking into the ocean at night when harry asks how it looks. but it's called pale lol and in some canon artwork i saw it look like white clouds. i suppose realistically, the light should not be able to penetrate it at some point right? and if it's the opposite to things existing it makes more sense it's a literal hole in the world so should look pitch black?

1 year ago
Reverb In An Empty Hall.
Reverb In An Empty Hall.
Reverb In An Empty Hall.
Reverb In An Empty Hall.
Reverb In An Empty Hall.

reverb in an empty hall.

prints (all proceeds go towards aid for Gaza)


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4 months ago
Tfw No Werehyena Gf

tfw no werehyena gf


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1 year ago

Mr. Evrart is helping me find my gun Watch her in HD: https://youtu.be/OkXG9cyZlpo

1 month ago

Tortures

by Wisława Szymborska tr. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Nothing has changed. The body is a reservoir of pain; it has to eat and breathe the air, and sleep; it has thin skin and the blood is just beneath it; it has a good supply of teeth and fingernails; its bones can be broken; its joints can be stretched. In tortures, all of this is considered.

Nothing has changed. The body still trembles as it trembled before Rome was founded and after, in the twentieth century before and after Christ. Tortures are just what they were, only the earth has shrunk and whatever goes on sounds as if it’s just a room away.

Nothing has changed. Except there are more people, and new offenses have sprung up beside the old ones — real, make-believe, short-lived, and nonexistent. But the cry with which the body answers for them was, is, and will be a cry of innocence in keeping with the age-old scale and pitch.

Nothing has changed. Except perhaps the manners, ceremonies, dances. The gesture of the hands shielding the head has nonetheless remained the same. The body writhes, jerks, and tugs, falls to the ground when shoved, pulls up its knees, bruises, swells, drools, and bleeds.

Nothing has changed. Except the run of rivers, the shapes of forests, shores, deserts, and glaciers. The little soul roams among these landscapes, disappears, returns, draws near, moves away, evasive and a stranger to itself, now sure, now uncertain of its own existence, whereas the body is and is and is and has nowhere to go.


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8 months ago

reblog this to let a curious kitten explore your dash

an exhausted mirror selfie of maia
5 months ago

but on the positive side the photos you take of the armed police shooting you can have swirly bokeh

Opinions on the Zenit Photosniper?

they’re calling it ‘a great way to get shot by armed police’

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awaybyrail - it is what it is until it is something else
it is what it is until it is something else

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