Phoenix Program Essay

The Phoenix Program lasted from 1968-1971 during the Vietnam War. It was a pacification and rural security program that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Lao Dong Party. It sounds like a genuinely positive mission along with it's euphemistic title that suggests rebirth and the creation of something exceptional. However, it was one of the most misunderstood and controversial programs ran by the CIA during the Vietnam War, due to the fact that it was seen as “assassination campaigns” by the public. This investigation will argue whether or not the Phoenix Program was successful disregarding the controversy and focusing more on it's effectiveness. The National Liberation Front, also known as the Viet Cong, operated

The Provincial Reconnaissance Units had “served as one of the most brutal and corrupt colonial proxies of the United States”. Setting aside the fact that they were notably ineffective in obtaining overseas control for the United states, they participated in torturing and killing thousands of innocent civilians. “Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock.... beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners". Apart from taking part in brutality, the PRUs even failed to infiltrate the higher ranks of the Vietcong as they were being fed with inaccurate reports or as we now call it, “fake news”. The Phoenix Program was also used by the South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu to eliminate political rivals whether or not they belonged to the communist party or were non-communist opposition. The Program was not also filled with bribery but PRU members abused their positions for revenge, threatening people of killing them or counting them as VCI as blackmail in order to get large sums of money. “Regional reports claimed that 1 percent or less of enemy neutralizations held key leadership posts in the VCI”. It is clear that the Phoenix Program did damage to some degree but it did not do heavy damage to the higher-end of the Viet Cong