Fateful Triangle

Peace for Galilee5308.2.3 “The Biggest Hijacking in History”Perhaps the most elegant device designed to deal with the hasbaraproblem was the image of the PLO holding Beirut “hostage” and hidingbehind its civilian population, a popular one among American commentatorson the war, as we have seen. New York Times columnist FloraLewis even went so far as to allege that “Yasser Arafat, never quitedirect, almost admits he is holding the people of West Beirut hostage towin points for his cause; the P.L.O’s familiar tactics but on anunimaginable scale.” 289This intriguing notion illustrates a familiar technique of the manufactureof consent, employed in a rather clumsy way by Goebbels andStalin and refined to a more subtle art in the democratic societies: whenyou have absolutely no case at all, accuse your enemies of the crimesyou carry out or support; to put it a shade more crudely, if you arecaught with your hand in someone’s pocket, cry “Thief!, Thief!” Thismay at least shift the terms of the debate. Thus when the U.S. attacksthe peasant society of South Vietnam, debate rages over the profoundquestion of whether it is wise and proper to defend South Vietnam fromNorth Vietnamese aggression; and we solemnly debate the question ofwhether the American defense of South Vietnam is justified under theright of collective self-defense against armed attack, established byinternational law. It is a matter of minor consequence of concern only to“emotional extremists,” those who indulge in “moral preference” ratherthan “hard political analysis” in Robert Tucker’s contemptuous words,that there were no North Vietnamese troops engaged in this aggressionwhen the U.S. air force began extensive bombardment and defoliation inSouth Vietnam in 1962, or, so far as was known, when the U.S.initiated the bombardment of North Vietnam and (at three times theClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky