Strategic Hamlets

 

Strategic Hamlets

Peter Schultz

 

                  The strategic hamlet program in Vietnam “was by far the most ambitious of the Diemist land programs,” according to Frances Fitzgerald in her book Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.”  But it turned out that these strategic hamlets were mirages, little more than “fortified settlements that the armed forces could actually surround.” [155] “At least one American admitted that the NLF was not wrong in calling the settlements concentration camps” – without the ovens. “If the American and British officials really envisioned happy and prosperous peasants standing up to defend their villages … their wishful thinking was mighty indeed.” [157] Moreover, it was usually the case that “the circle of artillery and barbed wire enclosed a political void that waited for the NLF.”

 

                  So, on the one hand, the strategic hamlets were actually assisting the NLF, while being sold as the means of defeating them. The Americans and Diem had become allies, as it were, of the insurgents, the NLF and the communists. If this doesn’t qualify as madness, it is difficult to know what would. One of the most ambitious anti-communist programs, supported by the Americans and the Diemists, was not anti-communist at all. In fact, it might be labeled pro-communist.

 

                  Moreover, the strategic hamlet program treated Vietnamese villages and villagers as if they were the enemy. As had happened with the French, when the Americans moved in the Vietnamese became the enemy, along with the communists. Hence, it was delusional to say that the Americans were there to help the Vietnamese. They were there to defeat, which they called “modernization,” traditional Vietnamese, defeating via “modernization” or “Americanization” traditional Vietnam. Which is to say that the strategic hamlets were created in order to get some Vietnamese who were willing to kill other Vietnamese, those labeled “communists.” Talk about “wishful thinking.” The Americans in Vietnam wanted to “train” the Vietnamese; that is, to get some Vietnamese to kill or oppress other Vietnamese, by making some Vietnamese enemies of other Vietnamese. The Americans in Vietnam were facilitating civil war in Vietnam, under the guise of “helping“ the Vietnamese.  

 

                  Such civil wars lie at the roots of imperialism, which is why imperialism always involves inhuman cruelty. The Americans, just like the French, being forced to create or fortify or continue such a civil war in Vietnam needed cover stories to hide what they were in fact doing, and so embraced anti-communism and such fantasies as “the domino theory.” The strategic hamlet program could never succeed in creating “happy and prosperous peasants” but it could succeed in turning Vietnamese against Vietnamese and, thereby, serve the cause of those like the NLF who sought to unify Vietnam. So, not only did the Americans lose in Vietnam, they deserved to lose.