The military escalation of the United States in Vietnam began as here with a few advisors and the training of a couple of battalions.
Since last week a new battalion of 950 men trained and financed by the United States "is combating drug trafficking in the jungles of Colombia," an enthusiastic press tells us. It is the first of three, which could reach as many as eight, a whole anti-narcotics brigade. Now according to General Keith Huber, Chief of Operations of the Southern Command of the United States and promoter of the project, "this is not counterinsurgency," but rather "a war, a conflict which we must all win together. Drugs are a chemical weapon of mass destruction which kills our children one by one."
You should not believe him: it is counterinsugency. This is revealed by the contradictions of General Huber himself; the supposed war against drug trafficking is a fiction. It is not being won, but lost. The United States is not interested in winning it, but rather in maintaining it. Drugs are not a chemical weapon, but rather a political one, and a weapon of the United States. A weapon of mass destruction does not kill one by one, and besides the drugs do not kill children. But besides being evidently false, what General Huber says is contradicted in what follows by his colleague, General Fernando Tapias, Commander of the Armed Forces, explaining that "the way things are going, with the armed groups protecting drug-trafficking, zones of drug crop production, the zones where drug crops are grown have been converted into a no-man's land." What is being referred to is combating of these armed groups. And that is called counterinsurgency.
This is the way the U. S. escalation of the war in Vietnam began.
Tapias explains that the new battalion received besides M-19 rifles, M-60 machine guns, 8 mm mortars, M-203 grenade launchers and UH-1H helicopters, "an intensive instruction in human rights, intelligence, recognizance, indirect fire, light infantry tactics and medical knowledge." More that 30 hours, the general insists, relating to human rights and International Humanitarian Law, "as much theoretical as practical on training fields," Very well. But would there not be some way of giving them also a couple of hours at least of training, theoretical on practical , in front of a blackboard or on a training field, in history? Because that way they would find out how things went in Vietnam, and perhaps then they would think twice before accepting with such pleasure the U. S.. "aid."
The military escalation by the United States in Vietnam began just as here with the sending of a few dozen advisors and with training of a couple of Vietnamese battalions. And it continued to grow just as here, being supported by the lies of the governments.
Of the Vietnamese government, they also experienced grotesque episodes there, such as we have known in Colombia: that little school built in Juanchaco by the Marines in the times of President Gaviria; that "civilian fumigator" who died in an accident and whose coffin was carried on their shoulders by generals in the time of President Samper; that ghost plane with its crew of U. S. "advisors" which crashed in the jungle, now in the time of President Pastrana. And above all, the lies of the U. S. government, as much of Democrats as of Republicans. The lie of President Kennedy, who multiplied "aid" in arms and brought up to several thousand the number of military advisors. That of Johnson, who falsified the so-called "Tonkin Gulf Incident" to justify the intervention of troops. That of Nixon, who secretly spread the war to Cambodia. Robert McNamera, who was Secretary of Defense during those years, published two or three years ago some memoirs in which he recognizes, with a certain timid regret, this chain of falsehoods and misleading statements which resulted in all of Southeast Asia catching fire. By then General Ky - the Vietnamese Tapias - was a waiter in Los Angeles, having escaped in one of the last U. S. helicopters to leave Vietnam. And President Diem - the Pastrana of Vietnam - had been assassinated by order of the U. S. government; his widow denounced the crime to the four corners of the Earth, without anyone paying the least attention to her, as if she were crazy. And Vietnam - the Colombia of that time - was reduced to ashes. And governed by the former Communist guerrillas against whom the escalation had been made. It remains so today.
Because it is worthwhile to point out another paradox. Communism has disappeared in all of the countries which were Communist, from Russia on down, including those which were occupied by Soviet troops. And it only subsists in those countries in which the United States intervened militarily to eradicate it: in China, in Korea, in Cuba, in Vietnam. The reason is very simple: it is that in those countries Communism received the impulse of anti-Americanism.
But they do not teach our generals history. They teach them lies.