The Second Division commander was from Hue. A young general in the Rangers, he won a field promotion to general when the ARVN First Army was reorganized following the ousting of General Nguyen Chanh Thi in 1966. He had no knowledge whatsoever about pacification techniques on the civilian level. Thumbing through the project plan that had been typed up and distributed, he spoke falteringly:
“To be honest with you, I know almost nothing about the strategic hamlets project. But within the limits of my knowledge, I’d like to mention a few things I think could be helpful for such a pacification project. Adjutant Pham just mentioned that as a project pursuing peace and stability, military operations should be subordinated to the project. However, we are not facing, as our main resistance line, the seventeenth parallel, which looks like the neck of a sack tightened from the sides, Laos and the ocean. There is no front line — the enemy is at our flank, in the rear, beneath us, everywhere. So, just because phoenix hamlets are being established, we cannot stop other operations and devote our forces only to protecting and securing the hamlets.
“Rather, it seems to me that the phoenix hamlets project brings various setbacks for our operations. In my view, the rural areas must be subdivided and communities drastically broken down according to the use of the land. Then, a small number of cultivators and teams of agricultural technicians should create large-scale production complexes, and the military can demarcate operations units for each such complex. And many people who are moved back onto the rural land, after going through a camp-like assembly process, can be set to work on industrial projects, with a good number of factories set up in the environs outside the cities. We have to correct and control the misdistribution of population and efficiently utilize the workforce, then military operations will be able to function better. Unless it is preceded by such a reorganization of settlement patterns, the concentration of the rural community in its present positions will bring no good practical results. Unless more effective control as well as improved security systems are introduced, it will be hard for us to expect victory.”
On the surface, the division commander’s remarks sounded quite reasonable. Pham Quyen felt this honest presentation of a rather extreme functionalism was not very far from what the Americans actually had in mind. A kind of domino theory in which, if one falls down the rest will tumble one by one; each individual domino is not likely to be seen as a distinct entity alive with its own thoughts and dreams, but just as a cube assigned a simple material value.
As though he were moving pieces and jumping squares on a black-and-white checkerboard, the division commander was talking of the land as the flat plane he was used to seeing whenever he looked down at his maps. That square frame, containing streams drawn in ballpoint pen, with the elevations of mountain ridges appearing as connecting ovals, could not show the forests, the birds or the fish, nor could it show the hearts of men stooping over in the rice paddies or their rejoicing at night in the embraces of their wives and children.
The chief of the agricultural was to the left of the commander and this position earned him the opportunity to speak next. He was slightly outraged by the general’s remarks and had been looking at him with contempt. He spoke:
“A mechanistic mentality, to be sure. Of course, I have no doubt about the division commander’s remarkable ability as a combat commander. But it was precisely such thinking that guaranteed the failure of the strategic hamlets project. As Adjutant Pham aptly explained, the establishment of free-fire zones by the US military command in the course of setting up the phoenix hamlet project has been a fundamental impediment to our enterprise. To rectify these problems is why we are meeting here today.
“We have in our possession accurate information on the startling changes that have accompanied the social revolution that has unfolded in North Vietnam since the 1950s. What is startling is how effective were the strategies and techniques they employed to acquire and hold the hearts of Vietnamese farmers. Americans must realize, first and foremost, that they have entered into a cultural sphere that has nothing in common with their own. Material support cannot be the key for solutions. As the Developmental Revolution Committee is now recognizing, the most urgent thing is the realization of social justice.
“People should be paid for their labor, and a land reform of sweeping breadth must be accomplished in the pacification zones. However, based on our experience, once the government forces move into a new pacification zone, the pattern has been that the farmers see their land seized by new landlords, vile opportunists with relatives or friends in the military or other speculators with military connections. The Vietnamese are people who follow the teachings of Confucius. Unlike Western people, we attach more importance to seeing rightness put into practice than to the fulfillment of material desires. The Liberation Front focuses its concern on the corruption endemic on our society. . ”
“Chief, couldn’t you use some other expression?”
Pham Quyen interrupted in the nick of time, for he was conscious of the first lieutenant who was busily taking down all of the remarks of the proceedings. The contents of the conference would be reported later, and Pham Quyen did not relish being questioned by the Da Nang internal security agency later. Of course, as Liam’s right-hand man, and with Liam having a direct family line to the president, they would not dare do anything to Pham, but all the same he wanted to avoid any mutual unpleasantness.
Sitting next to the Americans was an interpreter they had hired who was translating for them every word spoken. The chief of the agricultural section mopped his brow with a handkerchief and continued. As far as Pham Quyen knew, he had been a sincere and outstanding student in his younger days. He was from Quang Ngai. Though he had graduated from the officer candidate school, he was scarcely cut out for the military. He had once worked for USOM, where he impressed his superiors, so they had sent him to the Philippines for further education. There was no doubt he had superior knowledge and skills in agriculture, but to Pham Quyen he was a stubborn idealist. He did not fit the reality in Vietnam, and now it seemed he had almost gone crazy over this phoenix hamlet project. For some time Pham Quyen had been thinking that the man was showing signs of becoming dangerous.
“I suppose I could speak more circumspectly, but I believe we must be ready even to quote the expressions of the enemy, if necessary to accomplish our mission successfully. The Way of Ho Chi Minh includes plenty of ethical and ascetic elements. These are the features that make it possible for them to approach the traditional Vietnamese manner of thinking, as I said before. The North Vietnamese leaders made no wild promises, nor did they allow bribes to distort their plans. They only showed the blood, sweat, and pain of toil, and implanted an image of leadership with a bold and spartan manner.
“In the first place, through the phase of political struggle, they consolidated their foundations for the so-called internal class struggle. And before they launched the land reform, they had orchestrated a movement for reducing farm rents. Through the rural party cells, their cadres got acquainted with the poor peasants who farmed land they did not own, asking their permission to live with them. Next, they practiced what they called the ‘three cooperations’: they worked without pay with the farmers, they ate together and slept in the same beds, and when the men got married, often a female agent came in and slept with the farmer’s wife.