Weapons for Counterinsurgency
Many social change agents and activist organizations researched to gain a clear understanding and knowledge of the intended use of the weapons being developed and used by the United States in Vietnam and other Third World countries. The change agent organizations such as, the Honeywell Project, which was committed to the philosophy of non-violence, worked to expose the United States military industrial complex. Furthermore, organizations like the Honeywell Project worked to dissect the military and corporate jargon of the time to get a clear understanding of the United States’ spurious military and corporate justification of its development and use of counterinsurgency weapons in Vietnam.
The work of developing weapons begins with an objective. According to the United States Air Force dictionary, objective is defined as, “a goal to be obtained” (Heflin: 351). Objectives are often referred to by military officials as “national objectives” or “strategic objectives.” A strategy is developed to accomplish the desired objective and a person or group conceives of the weapons and force that will be needed to execute the desired objective. In order to achieve the objective there are targets that need to be destroyed. A military target can represent almost anything; a building, a bridge, a vehicle, or even a person. Some weapons work better than others for the specific targets. A defoliant weapon works well to kill plant vegetation while an anti-tank shell is most efficient if used to pierce through a tanks steel. Antipersonnel weapons are best used against people. Although different weapons are developed for specific targets the overall objective is the destruction of people. There is a focus in the industry on specialization that allows the makers of these weapons to fixate on designing the most effective lethal instruments. French sociologist Emile Durkheim believed society is based on a division of labor where as, each person is committed to a specialized task and is united by their dependence on others (Eitzen: 49). Since there was a division in the specialized design and production of these weapons, the responsibility of the weapons impact was spread over many shoulders. In fact, the disbursement of responsibility led to a general sense of detachment. An example of this detachment was evident at a 1967 Senate Hearing in which Congressman Sikes (D. Florida) asked an Air Force general, “Are you making the battlefield too dangerous for our own people to fight in? Or are you making the waters so dangerous that friendly forces cannot use them when the fighting is over?” Congressman Lipscomb (R., California) replied for the general: “That is not the Air Force problem” (Prokosch: 11).
In keeping with this climate of irresponsibility the United States military developed phraseology to remove the sinister realities of the weapons and the catastrophic results to their targets. The United States military used pervasive propaganda to influence every aspect of their operations in the Third World nations. Language was a powerful tool used to sway the public’s opinion and the troops sent off to wage these ‘limited wars.’
Phraseology is a fundamental tool in the business of propaganda. By using connotations that are inherent to language propagandists are able to achieve the desired effect with varying degrees of subtlety. The Random House Webster’s dictionary defines propaganda as:
- 1. Information or ideas methodically spread to promote or injure a cause, movement, nation, etc.
- 2. The deliberate spreading of such information or ideas (Random House: 1080).
Propaganda is most successful when it is kept simple. Manipulation of people’s basest feeling of fear and pride is often the most effective. Vietnam was the first war that was in America’s living rooms by way of television broadcast. This was yet another opportunity for the United States government to give its citizens a false sense of reality. Americans “window” into the seemingly unfolding events was definitely slanted.
Much groundwork had already been laid before the United States became involved in Vietnam. The Red Menace was tangible. The domino effect was perceived as inevitable without United States intervention. One of the most important goals of the United States’ propaganda was the dehumanization of the Vietnamese people. In order to justify the carnage wrought by the “antipersonnel” weapons it was crucial that their human (civilian) targets were dehumanized.
Kissinger’s The Necessity for Choice describes the evils of communist propaganda. He contends that the use of propaganda keeps insurrection to a minimum. “By constantly recruiting the most talented into its ranks, the Communist hierarchy deprives any, opposition of its potential leadership” (Kissinger: 299). Ironically, supposed democracies are also guilty of using the same strategy.
Vietnam served as a laboratory in which to test new United States ideas, strategies and equipment relevant to counterinsurgency warfare to be employed in many third world nations. Vietnam became the basic testing ground for weapons of counterinsurgency; this included chemical and biological weapons, incendiary weapons, and antipersonnel weapons.
Chemical warfare refers to “the tactics and technique of using chemical agents in offensive actions or of employing defensive measures against such actions” (Heflin: 112). This would include “anti-food agents” which poison animals and crops that harness the military effectiveness of the opposing military force, hallucinogens that cause temporary mental derangement and lethal chemical agents such as nerve gasses (NAMRIC: 20).
Biological warfare is the “employment of living organisms, toxic bacteriological products, and chemical plant-growth inhibitors to produce death or casualties in (people), animals, or plant” (Heflin: 80). These weapons are used to cause death, disability or disease in people, animals or plants (NARMIC: 20).
Beginning in August of 1961 herbicides were first employed experimentally in Vietnam and this included attacks on food crops. However, there was great debate over the initial use of defoliants in fear of “charges of barbarism for waging a form of chemical warfare” (Kolko: 144). Nevertheless, the use of these herbicides continued and by 1962 six thousand acres were treated and, according to Kolko’s book Anatomy of War, by 1967 one million seven hundred thousand acres were treated. He explained further:
Over a nine year period twenty percent of South Vietnam’s jungles and thirty-six percent of its mangrove forests were sprayed, with forty-two percent of the 1965 spraying being allocated to food crops. In 1963 the United States began to study the dioxin Agent Orange, the major defoliant being used, suspecting it might cause cancer, birth defects, and other grave problems- a fear that was confirmed by 1967 but that never affected policy in any way.
The purpose of the defoliant was to destroy the ground cover and food crops, which would force the civilian populations to move to the urban areas where control of the people became easier for the United States. In spite of this, a study for the Pentagon in 1967 concluded that crop destruction was counterproductive, politically and militarily. One explanation was that a large number of the peasants in Vietnam that had lost their crops added to the growing population of people who began disliking the United States. The Nixon Administration ended the spraying not because of the United States’ “public outcries or moral afterthoughts” but because there was a shortage of the herbicides for United States domestic users and the political impact on Vietnam’s peasants (Kolko: 145).
Incendiary or napalm weapons are “chemical agents designed to cause combustion” such as aluminum soap used to jellify gasoline (Heflin: 265). Usually this agent is used in napalm bombs.
By 1962 the United States Army had already flown fifty thousand sorties striking entire villages and agricultural areas with napalm bombs (Horwitz: 153). By June of 1962 nearly one thousand four hundred villages had been destroyed (Horowitz: 153). The purpose and use of such a weapon in Vietnam was to create isolation among the people. It is used to destroy villages and land which then forces the people to urban areas for food and medical needs. In a 1963 New York Times editorial Betrand Russell protested,
I am in profound disagreement with American objections to social change in Indo-China . . . because the war which is being conducted is an atrocity. Napalm jelly gasoline is being used against whole villages, without warning. Chemical warfare is employed for the purpose of destroying crops and livestock and to starve the population (Russell: 46).
The first incendiary weapons developed was by Nazi Germany and used against the Allied Forces during World War II. It was a flame-thrower that proved to be both hazardous and technically unsuccessful. However, the United States put to work Dr. Louis Fieser of Harvard University in the 1940′s to improve incendiary weapons, which he eventually developed napalm. The United States military counted on napalm for the Korean War and used it frequently in Vietnam. A report in the June 6th, 1965 edition of the New York Times reported:
As the communists withdrew from Quang Ngai last Monday, United States jet bombers pounded the hills into which they were headed. Many Vietnamese- one estimate was as high as 500- were killed by the strikes. The American contention is that they were Viet Cong soldiers. But three out of four patients seeking treatment in the Vietnamese hospital afterwards for burns from napalm, or jellied gasoline, were village women (Langguth: 1).
In a 1967 New York Times interview, Dr. Fieser expressed no guilt over the development of napalm:
You don’t know what’s coming. That wasn’t my business. That is for other people. I was working on a technical problem that was considered pressing. I distinguish between developing a munition of some kind and using it. . . I don’t know enough about the situation in Vietnam. It’s not my business to deal with the political or moral questions (New York Times: 8).
This again reiterates the idea of Durkheim’s theory previously discussed in which no one person accepts responsibility. The Honeywell Project, along with other activist organizations, did not accept this lack of responsibility and publicly exposed the number one military producer in Minnesota, Honeywell Incorporated for this exact same philosophy. Honeywell corporation’s defense contracts encompassed projects that mainly focused on antipersonnel weapons.
According to the United States Air Force Dictionary antipersonnel is defined as, “shells, bombs, or the like designed to destroy or obstruct personnel” (Heflin: 48). Antipersonnel weapons have no real effect on military structures. They cannot destroy buildings, bridges, trains or any hardware. Its whole intent and purpose is to “effectively penetrate unprotected human flesh” (NAMRIC: 40). Antipersonnel weapons can range from bombs that are packed with maiming pellets that open up mid-air and spread an area the size of ten football fields or have fragments that shred people and can nail them to trees or other structures (NAMRIC: 40).
The Honeywell Corporation was responsible for the production of many antipersonnel weapons, such as cluster bombs, used in Vietnam and other areas of the world in example, Cambodia, Laos, and Afghanistan. Cluster, as defined by the United States Air Force Dictionary is “a collection of small bombs held together by an adapter for dropping” (Heflin: 121). Honeywell was the developer of the “Pineapple” bomblet and “Guava” bomblet (Prokosch: 47). These bomblets were referred to as cluster bomb units because about five hundred fifty to six hundred forty of these bomblets are cased in bombshell containers. These containers were then dropped from military aircraft that would then open mid-air and allowed the bomblets to dispense.
Cluster bomb units are made of steel and about the size of a baseball and the hallow steel container is filled with about three hundred of these steel balls. The outside casing of the bomblet was cast with small steel fins that would catch the wind and put it into a spinning motion. The detonator inside the casing was operated by centrifugal force. The force and spinning proceeded to cock the detonator hammers and when the spinning had stopped the hammers would fall exploding the bomblets and shooting the steel pellets into a “sunburst pattern for a distance of about fifteen meters” (NAMRIC: 41).
The United States military rationalizes the use of antipersonnel weapons. It appeals to the public by declaring these weapons are used only on “military” targets. However, as mentioned earlier, military targets can represent anything to be destroyed. The United Air Force Dictionary defines military target as, “any industrial plant, city, or other object, or any person, group of persons, or force marked as a target for destruction, damage, injury, or rapture because of its direct or indirect use in the conduct or support of an enemy’s military endeavor” (Heflin: 327). This systemization allowed for attacks on civilian areas with antipersonnel weapons. These attacks reduce the people’s morale and diminish their will to resist. Most victims of antipersonnel weapons are not killed; rather, these weapons are designed to maim its victims. The design is intentional and the reason is twofold: Rather, than a single person dead and eliminated from military production the wounded person requires an average of six to ten people to care for him or her, along with the facilities and supplies. Second, a dead soldier is often looked upon as a martyr or a hero; the suffering and wounded victims have an inclination to have a far greater demoralizing effect on the remaining people (NAMRIC: 43). According to an article in Aviation Week in March of 1966, antipersonnel weapons “build a deterrent capability into conventional ordnance” in that they have a “separate and distinguishable psychological impact” (Brownlow: 26; NAMRIC: 43). In addition to this demoralizing effect, Honeywell Corporation also manufactured “proxy fuses” which were used in cluster bombs to delay the offset of some bomblets for many hours. The purpose of cluster bombs is to set off while people were tending to the initial wounded from the air raid. New York Review contributor Robert Crichton noted in 1967:
“Cluster Bomb Unit’s have created a need for drastic new surgical techniques. Because there is neither time nor facilities for X-rays, a Cluster Bomb Unit victim, if hit in the stomach, is simply slit from the top of the stomach to the bottom and the contents of the stomach emptied out on a table and fingered through for ‘frags’ as a dog is worked over for ticks. When the sorting is done the entrails are replaced and the stomach sewed back up like a football. This ‘football scar’ had become the true badge of misery in South Vietnam” (Crichton: 1)
Weapons are tangible objects and easy to protest against. Propaganda is more subtle and more difficult to counter. It was used as a tool to justify the use of weapons and the destruction they cause. Weapons, war, and propaganda are all tied together. While scientists, corporations, and government agencies had worked to make weapons more efficient, the focus on the relationship between weapons and the human connection to the weapon was lost. Honeywell Corporation may no longer produce these weapons but the people of Vietnam and other areas in Southeast Asia are still suffering the consequences of their use.
Tags: Honeywell Project, Marv Davidov, Social Change