TIED TIGHTLY AROUND TUBE DIRT PILED ON EDGE OF PONCHO TO INSURE A GOOD SEAL Figure 21. Use of poncho with M 106 riot control agent disperser.
The appearance of an extremely documented U.S. army manual entitled "Employment of Riot Control Agents, Flame, Smoke, Anti-Plant Agents and Personnel Detectors in Counter Guerrilla Operations could possibly be of more than esoteric interest at a time when mass struggles against the ruling classes in advanced capitalist countries was an objective possibility. At this stage, however, its only value is to connem aurcady estabusaco racis and to expose for the nth time the reactionary nature of imperialism the world over.
Of especial interest to this latter point are the limits the U.S. military impose upon the application of the manual: the introduction states, "The manual is oriented to the environment and combat conditions of S.E. Asia", but is applicable to "internal defence", and "without modification to both nuclear and non-nuclear warfare." To paraphrase this: wemer we crcumstances are ngunng communist "subversion" in S.E. Asia, cleaningup operanons aner a nuclear war or stemmaug internal dissent, the practices outlined in the manual can and will be applied without modification. This lack of discrimination, or could one call it discrimination par excellence on the part of the U.S. authorities, is inseparable from that which produced the massacres at My Lai and elsewhere in Vietnam, and is reinforced as official policy by the following quotation from the manual dealing with gas warfare: CS munitions may be employed as a most effective weapon directed against a target area containing mixed friendly, hostile or neutral populations where casualties are to be minimised.
Experience of the use of an inferior kind of CS gas in Ulster confirms that serious effects have been suffered by those exposed to the gas for long periods and that those most affected are the young and physically weak. Bearing in mind the action of anti-plant agents that have effectively introduced malnutrition as an environmental condition, the employment of gas among mixed populations and in the quantities proposed, far from minimising casualties, hits hardest those least likely to be TUNNEL ENTRANC UNDER PONCHO involved in the actual struggle.
As an example of quantity, the E158R2 cluster of CS canisters "provides an incapacitating concentration of CS over an area of approx. 6,500 sq. metres and it is stated that with a little ingenuity the use of smoke and gas agents in flushing out tunnels "may cause asphyxiation to personnel in the tunnel.
We are told that flame-throwers, some with ranges of 200 metres, should be employed "principally to counter mass enemy attacks". that their employment "costs very little in time and labour" and as if a further inducement were required, that their application is "only limited by the imagination and need of the individual employing them.
Clearly the danger in reading a manual of this kind is getting lost in the welter of detail and reacting empirically as each new horror is unveiled. It is well-known that U.S. soldiers are put through a training routine that breaks down their individuality and injects them with the Ideology of the master race. Recruits are beaten to test their resistance to interrogation, and are made to subscribe to the idea that killing in the name of the U.S. is the greatest privilege afforded them under the system. This manual goes a long way towards substantiating the above initiation to barbarism.
The use of euphemy and jargon often hides a variety of ills, and calling poison gases riot control agents" flame-throwers "flame field expedients " and crop-destroyers "antiplant agents is hardly likely to awaken an already dulled conscience.
It is as impossible to separate the message that goes with this manual from the society that generates it as it is impossible to separate the brutalisation of marines and the individuals "responsible" for the recent massacres from the U.S. military machine.
The barbarity exhibited by imperialism in its open war agamst une worla revorgon is only a more blatant expression of the ideology that the ruling class is at great pains to ram down our throats at this time of capitalist crisis. J0R3000U