Gloss for Operation Baby Lift covers up Amerikan atrocities, 
Vietnamese achievements

National Public Radio marked the 25th anniversary of the 
liberation of south Vietnam ("the Fall of Saigon" in imperialist-
speak) by airing an interview with Sister Mary Nelle Gage. Gage 
planned Operation Baby Lift, which flew more than 2,000 orphans 
out of Vietnam for adoption by Amerikan families. At the time, the 
government of north Vietnam correctly denounced Operation Baby 
Lift as "mass kidnapping." In a sickening display of crocodile 
tears, Gage now organizes tours of Vietnam for the orphans who 
have no memories of the land where they were born, because she 
stole them away from it.

Gage's only justification for Operation Baby Lift was that the 
orphans would have died otherwise. This was just a bold assertion 
(which NPR's host let her get away with). She presented no 
statistics on the thousands of orphans who remained in Vietnam, 
for example. Instead she argued that the Vietnamese staff were 
worried about losing their jobs because of their ties to the 
Amerikans, and that these children were malnourished and ill.

Gage inadvertently refuted the first argument herself, as she 
mentioned that many former staffers worked at the same orphanages 
where they worked 25 years ago. As for the second argument -- the 
vast majority of the children in south Vietnam (especially in 
Saigon) were malnourished and ill. You can blame the Amerikans for 
that. The Amerikan (and south Vietnamese) strategy was to "drain 
the sea to drown the fish" -- that is, forcibly remove or kill the 
civilian population in order to deprive the guerrillas of support. 
Village burnings, saturation bombing, and defoliation, which were 
designed to drive peasants into the city and starve the 
guerrillas, also caused massive food shortages in a country which 
used to export rice. The ten-fold increase in urban population 
during the 60s also led to increases in infant mortality, 
tuberculosis, and bubonic plague. Infant mortality in south 
Vietnam was 30%, while in the north it was 3%.(1)

Let's not forget that the Amerikans and their "free fire zones" 
are the reason so many orphans existed in south Vietnam in the 
first place

Of course, what Gage is trying to do is resurrect images of 
bloodthirsty, baby-eating Communists. Back in 1975 these images 
had little credibility, because people in Amerika had seen the 
napalmed villages, heard of the massacres by the Amerikan 
military, and witnessed the persistence of the Communist-led 
National Liberation Front (NLF) in the face of the strongest 
military in history. But after 25 years of many setbacks for the 
Communist movement, the collapse of Soviet social-imperialism, and 
a temporary resurgence of the Amerikan economy, reactionaries are 
trying to reverse old verdicts and dig up old anti-Communist 
shibboleths. People who care about the future of humynity can't 
let these killers prettify themselves -- that's why independent 
newspapers like MIM Notes are so important. So we remind our 
readers of the social-political context of orphans in Vietnam. And 
while we're at it, here are two details (out of thousands) which 
expose who the real barbarians were in Vietnam:

* While foreign observers noted the discipline of the NLF and 
north Vietnamese foot soldiers, the defeated south Vietnamese 
troops ran amok. According to a CIA officer in Vietnam at the 
time: "South Vietnamese troops sprawled, lounging, fighting among 
themselves... and practicing their ITAL aim END at the hapless 
Vietnamese civilians in their midst. Less than 30 yards away an 
ARVN [south Vietnamese] trooper was in the process of raping a 
Vietnamese woman while another soldier held her male companion at 
gunpoint."(2)

* Ten days before the final surrender of the puppet south 
Vietnamese government (and long after the Amerikans had officially 
withdrawn from war), an Amerikan transport plane (perhaps one of 
the planes "rescuing" orphans?) dropped a CBU-55, "among the most 
lethal of all non-nuclear weapons," on advancing north Vietnamese 
troops. "The casualties were enormous."(3)

Notes:

1. Jean Mayer, "Starvation as a Weapon," in : Barry Weisberg, ed., 
ITAL Ecocide in Indochina, END San Francisco: Canfield Press, 
1970, pp. 79-78.
2. Marilyn Young, ITAL The Vietnam Wars, END New York: Harper 
Perennial, 1991, p. 295.
3. Young, p. 296.