Tuesday 3rd November 2009
From Adam Curtis’ BBC blog. He’s researching the history of Afghanistan and the West. You should all read it (part one is here). Discussing American efforts to modernize Afghanistan in the 60s, Curtis notes the parallels with similar efforts in Vietnam. Unfortunately I suspect those outside the UK might not be able to watch the video.
4 notes:By 1965 the Americans were fighting a bitter guerilla war against an unseen enemy, the Vietcong. The Vietcong hid among the thousands of villages in South Vietnam - from which they attacked the Americans. Rostow was convinced that you could use modernization theory to transform the country and defeat the communists.
He was a supporter of an idea called “Strategic Hamlets. The theory was simple - you took all the “good” Vietnamese out of the villages and resettled them in new planned villages which would be protected by the Americans. There the villagers would be educated by psychologists and special cadres to become new “modern” citizens devoted to democracy.
And here is part of a BBC film shot in 1966 which vividly shows the system the Americans had created in Vietnam in all its weirdness. By now it had become the central strategy in the counter-insurgency.
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