Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [279]
4. “Introduction” to Braestrup, Big Story, p. xviii; the latter phrase is the title of a 1967 Freedom House pamphlet inspired in part by Vietnam War coverage; see also p. vii.
5. John P. Roche, Washington Star, October 26, 1977, commenting on Braestrup’s study.
6. John Corry, “Is TV Unpatriotic or Simply Unmindful?” New York Times, May 12, 1985. Corry alleges that this is true with regard not only to Vietnam but also to Central America—and, in fact, generally.
7. General Kinnard, now a military historian, was field commander for the 1970 Cambodia invasion. One of the commentators is the French historian Philippe Devillers, elsewhere a critic of the war but appearing here only in endorsement of one element of the AIM critique.
8. In Braestrup, Big Story, I, xix.
9. Bernard Fall, “Vietnam Blitz,” New Republic, October 9, 1965. A French military historian and journalist, Fall was one of the few genuine experts on Vietnam writing in the United States at that time. He was also an extreme hawk, although he turned against the war when he saw that it was simply destroying the country and society of Vietnam.
10. Hallin, “Uncensored War,” pp. 192ff.
11. Editorial, New York Times, May 7, 1972.
12. “An Irony of History,” Newsweek, April 28, 1975; final document in William Appleman Williams, Thomas McCormick, Lloyd Gardner, and Walter LaFeber, America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (New York: Anchor, 1985).
13. Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 24, 1975; December 27, 1979. For these and similar comments by perhaps the most outspoken critic of the war in the mainstream media, see Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), pp. 28, 144f. and 417n.
14. Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 9, 439, 650.
15. John King Fairbank, “Assignment for the ’70’s,” American Historical Review 74.3 (February 1969); Irving Howe, Dissent (Fall 1979); Stanley Hoffmann, International Security (Summer 1981).
16. David Fromkin and James Chace, “What Are the Lessons of Vietnam?” in “Vietnam: The Retrospect,” Foreign Affairs (Spring 1985).
17. McGeorge Bundy, Foreign Affairs (January 1967); secret memorandum of February 7, 1965, in Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), III, 309; henceforth PP.
18. The notion that the United States seeks American-style democracy in areas of intervention persists in liberal thought despite obvious and durable U.S. satisfaction with regimes such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, or Mobutu, and despite regular intervention to overthrow or bar democratic regimes, as in Guatemala in 1954 and since, among many other examples, some discussed earlier. To postulate otherwise would be to acknowledge something other than benevolent ends. This would be intolerable.
19. For extensive references, see Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, particularly chapter 4.
20. Lawrence Lifschultz, Far Eastern Economic Review, January 30, 1981.
21. “Don’t Forget Afghanistan,” Economist, October 25, 1980.
22. See Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1970; hereafter, AWWA), pp. 213–14, noting also an exception: D. S. Greenway, Life, April 3, 1970. See also pp. 214ff. and Chomsky, For Reasons of State (New York: Pantheon, 1973; hereafter, FRS), 179, for a review of official data readily available to journalists, had they been interested to ascertain the facts. See also Fred Branfman, “Presidential War in Laos,” in Nina S. Adams and Alfred W. McCoy, eds., Laos: War and Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
23. See Hallin, “Uncensored War,” pp. 39f., for discussion.
24. Hallin, “Uncensored War,” p. 53. In 1962, the USIA announced a contest in Saigon to find a term more effective than “Vietcong” in inspiring “contempt,” or “disgust,” or “ridicule” among the country’s illiterate masses (AP, New York Times, June 4, 1962). Apparently, no more effective term of abuse could be devised.
25. E. W.