Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading linguists, began devoting his time to opposing the Vietnam War in 1965. Since then he has written American Power and the New Mandarins and At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina, two books which provide a powerful critique of American imperialism in the Pacific. On Friday, November 20, Chomsky was interviewed in his office at M.I.T. by CRIMSON reporters David N. Hollander and Garrett Epps.

While the interview progressed, B52 bombers were secretly taxiing on runways in Thailand and Okinawa, and on carriers in the South China Sea, in preparation for a massive bombing raid on the Democratic Republic of Vietnam the first such bombing since last May.

And, at an undisclosed location, a classified number of U.S. troops took off by helicopter for Sontay, an area deep inside the DRV, purportedly to rescue American prisoners of war.

Do you think the U.S. will escalate the war soon?

Well, it depends how you define escalation. There's one component of the war that has been reduced, that is the number of ground combat troops in South Vietnam. But if you consider the areas of Indochina that are under saturation bombing, that has already been escalated under Nixon. Just take the bombing statistics alone, the plain cold statistics the Pentagon gives out. Up to August, 1970, 40 per cent of the ordnance expended in the entire war is under Nixon. In fact, the peak months of bombing were early 1969, after Nixon got in, when it reached the level of 130,000 tons a month- which is just something beyond belief.

From what we understand, that kind of bombing does very little to stop supplies from coming down. Does the White House realize that the main effect of this bombing is genocide?

I suppose. They more or less say so. Did you look at the report of the Kennedy subcommittee on refugees that came out on September 28? The report is written by two young guys who didn't sign their names. They have long sections with this material incorporated in it, and it's very accurate. They point out that the purpose of the bombing in Laos is twofold: first, to destroy the socioeconomic structure of the Pathet Lao, and second, to stop the North Vietnamese infiltration. It has some marginal effect on the second but on the first is extremely effective. In most of the country it's true that the socioeconomic structure- everything in other words- has been destroyed. They don't call it genocide, but it's another word for the same sort of thing.

In fact, they estimate that in Cambodia alone there are about a million refugees already. That means refugees from the American bombardment, since there's nothing else for people to flee from. That's in addition to half a million Vietnamese refugees in Cambodia, so a million and a half in six months of war in a population of six and a half million.

Robert Anson from Time magazine, who was captured in Cambodia- Time hasn't printed any of his stuff on his captivity- stays that where he was there were B-52 bombings regularly. He doesn't want to identify the place, but it was central Cambodia not far from Phnom Penh.

Most of that bombing now comes from Thailand, doesn't it?

For years the bombing of Laos has been almost all from Thailand.

How close do you think the U.S. is to winning in Vietnam and Indochina- in other words, reducing the NLF and other groups to a level where they'd just have to be quiescent for a long time?

Well, as I understand it, for the last couple of years the main American policy has been to try to destroy the rural structures that were the basis for Vietnamese revolution. And the same in Laos and I suppose the same in Thailand and Cambodia. And they have succeeded in that to a significant extent- the destruction of rural society is very extensive and you can see it just in the refugee figures. The fact that Saigon has three and a half million people instead of the 500,000 that it had 10 years ago is an indication of the success of this policy. But this is a kind of tricky thing. They may very well destroy the social base of the Viet Cong in Vietnam, or the Pather Lao in Laos, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they win the ground war.

In Laos, the long run effect is that the Communists are stronger on the ground than ever. The CIA mercenary army in Laos, which is the main fighting force for the Americans there, is virtually destroyed. It's mainly the Meo army, and the Kennedy report estimates that the total population of the Meo is now down to about 200,000- from 400,000 a decade ago. The Dispatch News Service correspondent in Vientiane who has recently been investigating the Meo says that 12-year-old boys are drafted into their army immediately and he'd seen kids as young as eight in the Meo army.

That's the CIA mercenary army.

Yes, the CIA mercenary army. Everyone admits that the Meo are virtually decimated. There are two CIA bases in northern Laos. One called Long Cheng is probably the last in Laos that is still occupied, and most people there think that it may fall in the dry season offensive. If it does, then that's the end of the Meos as an organized community because then they'll have been entirely driven out of the mountain areas and they'll have to go to the other side as many of the Lao have done- which means to live under the constant bombardment. Nobody seems to think that they could survive in the lowland areas, as an organized community at least.

In Vietnam, I would tend to believe the American military reports that they have, in a sense, won a military success in the countryside as a result of the bombing, the sweeps, and the general destructive policy. But they're left with fantastic chaos on their hands in the cities. They've got millions of refugees in these teeming urban slums.

In the cities themselves there is a recognition on the part of a rather substantial part of the urban population- even the urban elite, for the first time- that unless they get the Americans out of there pretty quickly they're going to bomb the country into the South China Sea. And for that reason everyone says that there's a tremendous upsurge of anti-Americanism in the cities. Don Luce, for example, has written that it's unlike anything before- really deep-seated anti-Americanism.