36/ Vickery vs. Morris, 1981.
The Editor, Harvard International Review
20 May 1981
Dear Sir,
The Harvard International Review ? Editor? Ah, yes,
"a sophomore majoring in government." Stephen Morris?
Plainly another sophomore. There must be some mistake I thought
after I had opened the plain brown envelope in which I had expected
to find a discreet shipment from the Venus Adult Entertainment
Shop in King's Cross Sydney.
Then I examined the envelope again. An MIT address in one corner.
Oh yes, I mused, Chomsky is up to one of his little jokes again.
He is always sending me quaint little papers of which no one has
ever heard, like Vietnam Southeast Asia Journal, New England
Peacework, The Disciple, and now HIR, and sometimes even clippings
from the Boston Globe, which in Canberra is very nearly
as exotic as HIR.
Disappointed in not having received the expected hard-core, and
with no further mail delivery until the next day, I had to make
do with second best, and I started to peruse Stephen Morris' review
(HIR Dec - Jan 1981).
It couldn't be very serious, I thought, and HIR must be more careless
than most journalism, even sophomoric, since in spite of the dozens,
if not hundreds, of photos published since 1975, a photo of Ieng
Sary (p.5) was mislabelled "Pol Pot."
I nevertheless experienced a brief first impression that the piece
was going to be relatively positive, since in his treatment of
the three-fifths of Chomsky's and Herman's book devoted to countries
other than Vietnam and Cambodia, virtually the entire content
of Morris' critique is terminological quibbling (the accuracy
of 'fascist', 'sub - fascist', etc.) indicating failure to turn
up serious flaws in the content.
A closer look, however, confirmed that it really was a publication
which belonged in the traditional plain brown unmarked envelope.
Morris' prattle of Hanoi's "racist pogrom against its ethnic
Chinese citizens" (27), which goes far beyond the facts;
the slanderous inference of his "final solution" to
Vietnam's ethnic Chinese problem (3), and the dolchstoss quality
of his assignment of blame for what happened in Indochina ("If
and when American radicalism is called to account for the historical
consequences of its political stands ..... the historical consequences
of the left foreign policy advocacy were quick to manifest themselves
in Indochina" ---- p. 3), are part of a 'big lie' technique
which smacks of the noxious miasma that oozed out of the east
bank of the Rhine in the 1930's.
Beneath contempt, of course, and in the same 1930's tradition,
are Morris' personal attacks on writers of whom he disapproves
- suggesting that Ben Kiernan is a poor source because he is only
a graduate student (like Morris) whose first work appeared in
another student publication. At least Kiernan's work was
original, and he was not forced, in order to get his name into
print, to engage in a hatchet job in a field, say Soviet domestic
policy, in which he might be unqualified to judge either primary
sources or secondary accounts.
Morris' piece also shows just plain technical incompetence.
One of the first requirements of an honest book review is that
it discuss the book written, not some other book which the reviewer
would have preferred to see produced. He may state his preference,
and indicate a belief that the alternative book would have been
better, but he may not criticize the author's alleged treatment
of a subject he never intended to treat.
I realize, however, that such practices are common in the academic
world, and I was very nearly the victim once myself when a reader
of my first published article (in Journal of Asian Studies,
1970, not an undergraduate practice sheet) tried to have it suppressed
because I had not written something else.
Thus, contrary to what Morris would have the reader believe, the
book does not, and was not intended to, compare "the two
categories .... ' free world' and 'the Soviet sphere of influence"
(Morris, 5). This is specific in the Preface, xi, where "the
Soviet empire and the characteristics and effects of that lesser
system of Sun and Planets," (surely ironic enough to indicate
that the authors' views of that sphere are less than enthusiastic)
is specifically excluded from subjects covered. And to the extent
that some direct comparison nevertheless comes up in the course
of the argument, the authors' attitude is specific. On p. 39 we
find mention of "victims of oppression in Russia, Uganda,
or Cambodia"; on p. 72 a sarcastic comment on Soviet indignation
over U.S. action in Chile and Vietnam while the Soviet press "find
that Russian intervention in Hungary or Czechoslovakia is an expression
of the solidarity of the Russian", etc. with those people;
and on p. 96 there is a direct comparison in which both ''spheres'
are put on an equal (negative) footing: "concern over violence
and bloodbaths in Washington (in Moscow and Peking as well) is
highly selective".
Nor would the coverage Morris desires be embarrassing for Chomsky
and Herman. Of the unpleasant regimes which Morris thinks should
be included in the Soviet sphere, the authors, p. 72, also note
that violence and terror by Ethiopia, when a Soviet client,
would not rate "an indignant factual account in Pravda";
and the Soviet Union itself, along with Uganda and Guinea, are
mentioned as "countries outside the U.S. sphere ... that
practice torture on an administrative basis" (inside front
cover).
If those countries, and others, which Chomsky and Herman also
consider oppressive (Rhodesia, South Africa), are not treated
in detail, it is because "our primary concern is the United
States: its global policies, etc " (xi). What precise grouping
of nations would correspond to a Soviet sphere equivalent to the
one imputed to the U.S. is an interesting and legitimate question,
but out of place as a criticism of their book; and all of Morris'
arguments which involve Chomsky's and Herman's supposed neglect
of the Soviet Union or its bloc, nearly a quarter of the review,
are irrelevant.
Another dishonest and irrelevant point is the assertion that one
of Chomsky's main concerns is "the destruction of the state
of Israel" (3). I do not know whether that is true or not,
but after reading three book-length collections of Chomsky's political
writings (besides Political Economy) plus assorted other
articles, I do not recall material which would permit such an
inference. Critical remarks about Israel, yes, including three
brief ones in Political Economy, but surely Morris does
not imagine Israel to be such a perfect society as to be beyond
criticism.
Like most such treatments of Political Economy, Morris
devotes most of his attention to Chomsky's and Herman's discussion
of Cambodia, although the section on that country takes up less
than one-fifth of the two volumes.
My own area of special interest is also Cambodia, and I will therefore
direct the bulk of my remaining remarks to the discussion of that
country, merely noting en passant Morris' idiotic convolutions
over Indonesia, where use of Soviet arms to massacre alleged communists
would apparently make the crime less heinous, and where deaths
in Timor may be ignored because it was once a colony of Portugal.
Morris' treatment in fact illustrates very well Chomsky's and
Herman's point about benign and constructive bloodbaths. The 1965
massacres were approved and those in Timor ignored because it
suited American policy. I would also note, with respect to Vietnam,
that it is not true that all of the available favorable reports
are by foreigners "screened by the Hanoi authorities,"
etc. (p. 27) We also have numerous accounts by Vietnamese who
have returned for visits since 1975 and who are in regular communication
with their families.
Getting into the question of sources, Morris objects to Chomsky's
and Herman's use of obscure journals and newsletters for the more
favorable accounts of Cambodia and Vietnam, and he again unwittingly
emphasizes one of the authors' central themes: that objective
reporting was not available in mainstream journalism, and information
contrary to establishment propaganda could not find publishers
except on the fringes.
The sources which Morris prefers for Cambodia are Barron and Paul
(B/P), Ponchaud, and the CIA, whose efforts enabled "most
people in the Western world" to realize by 1978 that Cambodia
was "hell on earth", in contrast to Chomsky and Herman
with "their apologies for Pol Pot" (p.30)
Now I was one of those who doubted in 1975-78 that the picture
presented by B/P and Ponchaud represented the general situation
in Cambodia, and my doubt was based in part on interviews with
refugees who had had different experiences. And since, in contrast
to knee-jerk reactionaries, I had always seen the legitimacy of
the Vietnamese and Cambodian revolutions, I hoped the worst assessments
were not true.
Of course, I, and Chomsky, and Kiernan, and others know our hopes
were largely mistaken, and that, by 1978, the Khmer Rouge regime
had compiled a record for brutality, but that record is
not to be found in B/P and Ponchaud.
Contrary to what Morris believes, "the facts about post 1975
Indochina" (p.27) are far from well established, particularly
in the case of Cambodia, for which no adequate history of any
period has yet been written. Conflicting, apparently first-hand,
information still appears nearly every week, and the handful of
specialist scholars (not B/P or Ponchaud) are still working to
piece together a full descriptive and analytical account of the
years 1975-80.
Pace B/P, Ponchaud, Morris, and their ilk, we know that
for 1975-76, in particular, and in some large areas up to 1978,
the standard propaganda treatment of Cambodia was inaccurate as
a general description and that the writings of B/P and Ponchaud,
particularly the former, were propaganda pieces, designed to discredit
without regard for the truth. In my own case that knowledge is
based on five months of working with refugees in 1980.
We know, for example, that in 1975 and 1976, conditions in roughly
half the country were quite unlike the B/P - Ponchaud description,
and no worse than one would expect in a poor country after a war
such as that of 1970 - 75. we also know that Kiernan's 'hypothesis'
about the special character of the Northwest (Morris, p.31) was
largely true. In 1975 - 75 it was, because of its special historical
and economic background, the most oppressive zone for city evacuees,
and the zone from which most of the refugees came.
B/P and Ponchaud were particularly inaccurate for those first
two years. Moreover, B/P, we can now see, organized their work
in cooperation with the CIA as a deliberate disinformation effort
(see below), and together with the unavoidable bias of their sources,
some of their material, for example their description of the Saang
- Koh Thom area south of Phnom Penh (their chap 4), is quite untrue.
Ponchaud is another matter. I would not dispute the truth of any
of his specific stories, although there are elements of dishonesty
in his presentation. He was, however, in 1976, as obscure, and
no more nor less acceptable as a reliable conduit, than say New
England Peacework. Claiming peasant ancestry for himself and
sympathy for Cambodian peasants, he chose to write, not when Cambodian
peasant life was being torn apart by bombs, and shells directed
from the U.S. Embassy and Lon Nol Hq., but only when the peasants
had won and began to exact revenge.
Or, we might have expected Ponchaud to write about damage to peasant
life and agriculture by stupid or vicious communist policies,
but one looks almost in vain in his book for peasant testimony.
All his witnesses, like those of B/P, are elite or near - elite
city people complaining about the rigors of peasant life under
emergency conditions and control by a vengeful peasantry.
Moreover, Ponchaud's present activities show even more clearly
his fundamental intellectual dishonesty and make one wish to take
an even closer look at his earlier work. Working in Aranyaprathet,
Thailand, on the Cambodian border in 1979 - 80, he has been collecting
and purveying horror stories about Heng Samrin Cambodia which
are demonstrably either exceptional rather than typical, or outright
lies (for example, those in William Shawcross' "The End of
Cambodia ?", New York Review of Books, 24/1/80). The
true picture now is much easier to come by than in the Pol Pot
years, through access to the country and comparison of stories
of more numerous refugees from various backgrounds.
The CIA report which I mentioned above, and my analysis of which
is attached, reveals both the collusion between them and B/P and
the interesting circumstance that by 1978, when "most people
in the Western world," including Kiernan and myself, had
come to realize that something was wrong in Cambodia, the CIA
had come to realize the potential utility of Pol Pot and colluded
in a cover - up of his worst atrocities, prefiguring the moral
and international diplomatic support given that regime by the
U.S. since 1979.[Footnote 1 (Not in the original): The CIA report
was "Kampuchea: A Democratic Catastrophe", National
foreign Assessment Center, CIA, Washington, D.C., May 1980; and
my critique was published as, Vickery "Democratic Kampuchea:
CIA to the Rescue", Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,
Vol. 14, No. 4, 1982, pp. 45-54. End of footnote] The utility
of Pol Pot and the benignity of his worst bloodbath arise from
his anti - Vietnamese hyper - chauvinism; and that prejudice is
also reflected in the CIA's distortion of the figures to show
a worse loss in the first Heng Samrin year than in any Pol Pot
year but the first. Thus the Vietnamese, who stopped the massacres,
returned virtual complete freedom to the Cambodian populace, restored
normal civil life, and pumped in considerable aid from their own
poor country are made to appear worse than Pol Pot. To paraphrase
Morris, how is material like this possible ? And how can a prestigious
research institute of a top university turn out students who prefer
propaganda hack work to honest research ? One of my friends asked
if I wouldn't take action over Morris' characterization of me
as a "Melbourne taxi driver". My response was that nothing
libellous had been written since taxidriving is an honest occupation;
but after reading Morris I might very well take action if I were
ever mistaken for a member of the Harvard Russian Research Center.
Finally, writing as one of the three or four most experienced
students of recent Cambodian history who have carried out extensive
interviewing of Cambodians who lived through the Pol Pot years,
I find that Chomsky and Herman were fully justified in their scepticism
of mainline propaganda, and that little in the Cambodia section
of their book requires revision in the light of more recent information
- on the contrary, their approach is for the most part validated
by careful analysis of the much larger body of material available
today.
[This letter was not published. Ed.]
END