The U.S. Pivot To Asia: Cold War Lessons From Vietnam For Today
By Cynthia Chung – Rising Tide Foundation
Col. Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy and was a former Col. in the U.S. Air Force, goes over in his book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy how the CIA was used to instigate psy-ops and paramilitary activities in Vietnam to create the pretext required for an open declaration of war and for the entry of the U.S. military into a twenty-year-long meat grinder.
This was a strategy reserved not just for Vietnam but had become the general U.S. foreign policy in all regions that were considered threats to American foreign interests within the Cold War Grand Strategy, as seen under the directorship of the Dulles brothers. Any country that held views that were not aligned with U.S. foreign policy could not simply be invaded in most scenarios, but rather, the ground would need to be prepared to create the justification for a direct military invasion. In other words, ‘fake it till you make it.,’ and quite literally so.
Don’t have an actual ‘enemy’ to fight and justify your meddling into another country’s affairs? Not a problem. Just split your paramilitary team into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ and have them pretend fight. Go village to village repeating this action-drama and you will see how quickly the word will spread that there are ‘dangerous extremists’ in the area that exist in ‘great numbers.’
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