Talk:Strategic Hamlet Program

Claim that relocation ended with this program
The intro states, "Future counterinsurgency programs focused on accessing peasants in their existing communities rather than through forced relocation."

I'm no expert on the subject, but from what I've read, relocation was a very central part of the American strategy well into the 1970's, and was intertwined with "pacification", free-fire zones, crop destruction, etc. If anything, it seems the effort was escalated after 1963. Perhaps the primary difference is that people started getting relocated to camps (or made their way to shantytowns outside the major cities), with any attempt to create new artificial "hamlets" being abandoned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.172.63.27 (talk) 13:39, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Origins of Strategic Hamlet Program
This article suggests that Robert Thompson was the creater of the program. This is in fact untrue, according to National Archives (London)files. His plan was the 'Delta Plan'. He influenced the creation of it, but I think the article is misleading.

Strategic Hamlet Program
I thought this article sugar coated the american air campaign aspect of the strategic hamlet program. Maybe it did. But either way I felt "operation ranch hand" was more relevant than the related "see also" links. Of course there is a correlation between destroying crops in 1962 with aircraft herbicides and encouraging relocation in 1962. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.185.129.121 (talk) 08:08, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the connection between the Strategic Hamlet Program and the underpinning of modernisation theory in US Foreign Policy (in relation to Walt Rostow) should be highlighted in the article to further explain US policy towards Vietnam.

It is also important to highlight the influence of American Exceptionalism in US Foreign Policy and approaches towards Vietnam. The US held a patronising attitude to 'Third World' nations, regarding them as backwards and in need of democracy - brought to them by the US. Whilst also attempting to deter communism, the imperialist attitude as of the US, and its exceptionalist self-perception must also be highlighted to attain a more rounded and more neutral point of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ben3578 (talk • contribs) 13:04, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

on the citing of definitions, "concentration camp" in particular
For decency's sake--why not cite the ENTIRE OED definition of "concentration camp"? As opposed to your exceedingly biased--i.e., via selective focus--because truncated quote, of a SEGMENT of the COMPLETE definiton. And, do look up "bias," amd "selective" while you're there...

Look:

The Random House Dictionary defines the term as: "a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.", and, the American Heritage Dictionary defines it thus: "A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions." Finally, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as : "a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined."

Through any of those THREE definitions, the Strategic Hamlets were, in fact, concentration camps.

Is it hard to swallow the fact that the Good 'Ol U.S. of A is guilty of war crimes?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/concentration+camp

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concentration+camp

Stonewhite 01:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Cuba
Is this similar to the reconcentración used by Weyler in Cuba? If so, isn't it ironic that the American army did not learn the lesson from a war they finally won? --Error 01:31, 7 August 2005 (UTC

on referring to the Strategic Hamlets as a "fortified village," or "Club Med," or any other revisionist claptrap, I wrote:

As with most of the dissembling necessary to "successfully" promote a military debacle like the US incursion into South Vietnam, euphemism serves to blind the general public to the military/industrial complex agenda, in this case in the service of Empire and US business interests. To that end, calling a concentration camp a "fortified village" is doing a disservice to those readers--particularly younger readers not well acquainted with the atrocities perpetrated by the US and its client regime in South Vietnam--who turn to Wikipedia for factual insights. Stonewhite 00:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

countered by:

1) for⋅ti⋅fy   /ˈfɔrtəˌfaɪ/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [fawr-tuh-fahy] Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -fied, -fy⋅ing. –verb (used with object) 1. to protect or strengthen against attack; surround or provide with defensive military works.

2) concentration camp  –noun a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., esp. any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners.

To begin with, The Strategic Hamlet Program re-located all inhabitants of a village, regardless of their race, religion, or political association. Therefore it does not fit the definition of a concentration camp. Instead, the various hamlets could more appropriately be classified as fortified villages, since there purpose was to protect and strengthen communities against guerilla infiltration.

Furthermore, Any person looking for attrocities commited by the US or its ALLY South Vietnam can. But in this particular issue it is irrelevant, as the Strategic Hamlet Program was not in any way inhumane or attrocious. If during its execution there were individual and/or isolated cases of inhumane behavior, that in no way reflects or is attributable to the actual program.

In Conclusion, If you personally disagree with the context and execution of the Vietnam War then that should be kept as your personal opinion and NOT be infused into articles portraying historical events, as those are to be kept as neutral as possible.

my rebuttal:

`"To begin with, The Strategic Hamlet Program re-located all inhabitants of a village, regardless of their race, religion, or political association."`

Really? To begin with: the Strategic Hamlet Program KNOWINGLY and DECIDEDLY relocated ONLY Buddhist, Communist Vietnamese. How to your alleged mind does that obviate the term Concentration Camp?

"All inhabitants of a village..." Meaning, Presbyterians, Daughters 0f the American Revolution, members of the John Birch Society, Henry Luce...?

Try the facts for once---ALL the facts:

Random House Dictionary, darling:

concentration camp: a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.

and...

American heritage Dictionary, dear:

concentration camp: a camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions. 2. A place or situation characterized by extremely harsh conditions.

"In Conclusion, If you personally disagree with the context and execution of the Vietnam War then that should be kept as your personal opinion and NOT be infused into articles portraying historical events, as those are to be kept as neutral as possible."

Dear boy: It is NOT my PERSONAL OPINION that has decided that the Strategic Hamlet program was an atrocity of immense proportions.

Try every single scholar of note (as only one example, Noam Chomsky) that has examined the literature. Further, to add YOUR obvious silliness to the discussion, IS, IN FACT, to depart from "neutrality."

Conclusion: try looking up the words "hypocrite," "yokel," "denial," "rusticated," etc.

And, check your spelling while you're at it...

Stonewhite 23:54, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That's only the tip of the iceberg. This article plainly underplays the US role in forcibly relocating civilians, most notably by air campaign. Some cracker re-wrote this article and I suspect it used to be better —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.185.129.121 (talk) 05:39, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Major Rewrite (3/3/08)
Today I thoroughly rewrote about half of the article. The previous edition wasn't bad, but it lacked some details, and much more importantly, it totally lacked references of any kind. It featured some good direct quotes, but from where? I've even left some, in the early sections, but I've added the appropriate "citation needed" tags after each quote. I don't have the necessary knowledge and sources to rewrite those sections, but they clearly need some work. If the author of those sections could fill in the necessary citations, it would be good to go.

I also removed some of the "See Also" links, notably the Phoenix Program and Free Fire Zones. These relate to the Vietnam War, but not to the Strategic Hamlet Program. If someone thinks there's a legitimate connection, they need to write it up and use some references. Otherwise we might as well also link to Operation Rolling Thunder or the Siege of Khe San, which are equally irrelevant.

I'm sure there's more good work to be done. Ivytoarmy (talk) 03:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I added the citations. Please let me know if there is anything from the original that you want to put back in but didn't have a reference for, and I can provide you with it 188.131.17.23 (talk) 10:53, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Intro edited (3/2/08)
I just removed a slightly off-topic paragraph in the intro that described various insurgent tactics and techniques. Not that it wasn't accurate, but it didn't relate in any direct way to the Strategic Hamlet Program. I think the newly-edited intro is punchier and sticks to the subject at hand. Hopefully I can add some much-needed footnotes in the future. Ivytoarmy (talk) 15:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

- 1/25/05 removed Chomsky name dropping. Just becuase he agrees with the Pentagon Papers, doesn't mean he's qualified as a reference for this article. My local librarian probably agrees with the P. Papers as well, but no one has added her. Don't misunderstand this as romving hiim for political reasons (I personally agreee with him) but he is not the must NPOV of academics, so why have that as a liability in the article.

The edits are not sufficient there are dozens of scholars that have wrote masterful accounts of the complex realities of the Strategic Hamlet Program. This article employs a journalist, Neil Sheehan, as its main source of information, which is perhaps the most biased and politicized account of this period available.

Pham Ngoc Thao
According to this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pham_Ngoc_Thao (which is the article of the day, as I write this, so I hope it's authentic), Pham Ngoc Thao helped sabotage the Strategic Hamlet Program by intentionally over-extending it. Should this information be incorporated into this article's analysis of the failure? This article is linked in the Pham Ngoc Thao article, so a complementary link would also be advisable. I don't want to do it myself because I have NO level of expertise on the topic, which is complex. Gms3591 (talk) 10:02, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed it should be mentioned here. Parsecboy (talk) 12:06, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Serious flaws with this article
This article basically needs to be rewritten from scratch, mainly because it relies primarily on contemporary sources that, you know, had no clue that Phạm Ngọc Thảo was sabotaging the program. Which is kind of an important fact. Gems like "the GVN's execution of program constituted a "total misunderstanding of what the [Strategic Hamlet] program should try to do" and "the inability of the committee to choose safe and agriculturally sound locations" are completely absurd to perpetuate, especially since Thảo's role has been known for decades. Parsecboy (talk) 12:20, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Also in Laos
The Strategic Hamlet Program was established in Military Region 3 of Laos as the Wapi Project. It was begun by the local Lao general, and ran from 1963 to 1967.Georgejdorner (talk) 21:39, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Edit 20/05/2021
Just to explain my edits:

I firstly re-arranged the section of 'modernisation' and moved it to its own section of 'ideological origins'. I felt that having the 'modernisation theory' just randomly placed at the end of the 'implementation' section just looked really out of place. I also added a bit about Kennedy's 'flexible response', which is closely tied to modernisation theory, but more specific to the strategic hamlet program (see reference of Stromseth). The ideological factors such as modernisation are really important to the hamlet program, and whilst the current wiki page does discuss the importance of protecting the Vietnamese citizens from Viet Cong infiltration, the stages of the program like building schools and public infrastructure to move the 'third world' countries into modernity have been overlooked on this page.

Therefore, I have also added a section of the stages of the program (from Thompson's memoirs as discussed by Michael Latham). Whilst the implementation of the program is widely discussed relatively well so far, there is absolutely no description on the steps of the program, or what the eventually hoped to achieve, most notably again creating schools, roads, dams. I also also included a 'life in the hamlet' as whilst the social control like surveillance and identity cards is mentioned earlier in the article, the 'self-help' projects in the hamlets which were run by NGO's like the Peace Corps have been overlooked. This is a key strategy to integrate hamlet residents into democracy and modernity, as well as linking to the final stage of the program; 'winning', which again the page currently overlooks. It gives more of a NPOV perspective too, by presenting life in the Hamlet from a Vietnamese perspective, rather than just an Americanised one. Having non-state actor perspectives makes the page a lot more valuable in my opinion and abides more to the NPOV regulations, so I hope that everyone can agree with that.

I packed out the section on 'problems' of the hamlets. Although, someone has previously mentioned the Viet Cong propaganda tactics, it was only a sentence and I felt that the tactic was important to cover in more depth given the scope and effectiveness of such propaganda. Most notably, the use of portraying America as 'imperialist', which I felt also linked really well to the first section on the 'background' of the hamlets, to give the page more coherence and consistency.

Finally, I included the Women's Solidarity Movement and the general use of women as a propaganda tactic. I think that the role of non-state actors like women are too overlooked on this page. Women were important in the hamlets as unsuspecting insurgents, and the WSM was discussed by Thompson as a potential tactic for the U.S. to use in the hamlets to ensure that order was maintained, although this eventually failed due to Madame Nhu (the WSM founder) eventually steering her organisation away from the U.S. forces.

As you can see, I have also been careful to footnote and cite all of the information that I found too.

Overall, I feel like the edits really help to maintain the consistency and depth of the page. I hope that everything is okay and if anything else needs explaining then let me know?

LaurenHeather (talk) 09:02, 20 May 2021 (UTC)