Collateral Damage and Counterinsurgency Doctrine

[Mike in Hilo]

I recall from Sir Robert Thompson's No Exit from Viet Nam, where the author, trying to make a counterintuitive point, cited interviews with Vietnamese villagers in refugee camps who had been displaced by US bombing: Those interviewed placed the blame for their displacement squarely on the shoulders of the enemy. (There were two editions of the book, by the way. Close after the trauma of Tet, the March 1969 edition was highly pessimistic. The 1970 version, reflecting the much improved situation on the ground, expressed guarded optimism. Cynics would note that in the interim between the two editions, Sir Robert had taken the King's shilling, i.e., he became Nixon's special COIN adviser.)

Similarly, in an anecdotal but not unique incident, when several villages in the southern panhandle of Tay Ninh Province were overrun by PAVN in the 1972 offensive, the expressions I got in Tay Ninh were along the lines of, "My God, those poor people. Now the communists will get them all killed when the bombs come!" By then the pattern was well established and well known--the enemy would overrun a populated area and, if they decided to stay for a while, the inevitable bombing would occur--although I don't recall whether it did in this instance.

I look forward to this paper.

Cheers,
Mike.