<<I always toyed with the idea that we fought in Vietnam because we had so little at stake. If we were willing to fight so hard there, just imagine what would happen to someone where we had strategic investments.
In the film, Burn, mentioned a few days ago, the British destroyed their "own" island to prove a point. In the same sense, Vietnam may have been a "demonstration project" to prove our resolve to fight communism.>>
This is precisely what Sartre argued in his essay, "On Genocide." (It was published in *Ramparts* and I may have a copy of it buried in the basement.) He rejected all the "practical" reasons for the U.S. invasion, and suggested that it was actually waged against the core of the U.S. empire, Latin America, to teach the people of that continent what would happen to them if they dared to resist.
He further argued that *just because* no significant economic goals were involved, the U.S. need not attempt to preserve anything and could consciously launch a genocidal attack. If I remember correctly, he contrasted Vietnam and Algeria. In the latter case, economic motives were central, hence a certain limitation imposed on French strategy there which the U.S. did not feel in Vietnam.
I only give a few highlights of his argument from memory, but it seems to me to be an argument at the very least to keep in mind, not only to thought about the Vietnam invasion but also in all analysis ofimperialist policy.
For example: To what extent is the Israeli economy dependent upon the exploitation of Palestinian labor? To the extent that it is so dependent, the Palestinians have some protection against the Israelis "going all the way" in their emulation of the U.S. "conquest of the west" and genocide of the previous inhabitants. Insofar as there is no such dependency, we should at least keep in mind the possibility of a more or less full scale "final solution" developing in Palestine.
Carrol