US Military in Thailand 1952 - 2010

August 2, 2010 at 2:09 AM

The Beginning

In late 1952 , the CIA and the U.S. Information Service put out handbills and booklets in Thai declaring how Communism opposed [Thailand's] nation, religion and king. They exaggerated the threat by manufacturing fake communist tracts in Thai that attacked the monarchy. Over time, the United States expanded the effort into pictures, books and movies. In 1956 the U.S. had eight mobile teams putting on film and music shows contrasting the beloved king and queen with the evil spectre of communism.

Bhumibol also presided over the investiture of [General] Phao's personal brigade of aswan or knights, actually the thugs who ran Phao's drugs and protection rackets. [This group was the BPP.]

As the CIA client for anticommunist operations, the BPP was better trained and armed than the regular army. Its training center was next to the king's Hua Hin palace. As he [the king] used the BPP airfield, and they served as his local escort, a special relationship blossomed...

This special relationship was encouraged by both Phao and the CIA...

excerpt from The King Never Smiles, by Paul Handley
p 124-125

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1960s

Bangkok reacted [to Lao communist activities] by forming a counterinsurgency task force, the Communist Suppression Operations Command, or CSOC, run by Deputy Prime Minister Praphas along with U.S. advisers. Behind them was the massive force the United States had built up in Thailand, consuming the country like an occupation. In the early 1960s the Americans, together with Thai soldiers, were already conducting guerrilla raids into Laos and launching air strikes on Laos and Vietnam from Thai bases. By 1965 there were roughly 14,000 U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Thailand. A year later the total topped 34,000 accompanied by 400 aircraft. The American force was there ... to prevent the rise of a domestic Thai insurgency...and legitimized the Thai military's control of the country.

...Washington threw huge resources at winning the people's hearts and minds through development, hoping to avoid the problems of Vietnam. U.S. directed projects built roads, dug fish ponds and established social services in rural villages. Within a few years U.S. annual spending in Thailand equaled the total economic product of the entire northeast where the lion's share of it was deployed, all accompanied by anit-communist and pro-monarchy propaganda.

Arguably, the extensive U.S. presence and aid worsened the problems. Much of Washington's hundreds of millions of dollars dropped into the pockets of the traditional elite, the landowning aristocrats, Sino-Thai traders, and powerful bureaucrats and generals. Bangkok spent up to three times as much on arms as it did on education, and health services got much less. Strong economic growth came with high inflation near military bases, GIs on holiday carousing drunkenly throughout the kingdom, and  a very visible explosion of the sex industry

excerpt from The King Never Smiles, by Paul Handley
p. 184

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1966

... Thailand had agreed to Washington's request for a large Thai combat deployment to Vietnam

Increasingly Thailand's generals were being accused of Dictatorship, by anitwar activists in the United States. Bhumibol told "Look" [magazine] that the American student protesters were ignorant and victims of communist manipulation. Thailand had to be wary of such communist trickery, he argued.

excerpt from The King Never Smiles, by Paul Handley
p. 188

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1967

In an interview with reporters, the king stressed the global communist threat and repeated that American opponents of the Vietnam war were victims of brainwashing. (New York Times June 14, 1967)

The regular [Thai] police were meanwhile being funded by another U.S. government arm, the State Department's secretive Office of Public Safety...The office offered the police 100 new aircraft and fuel.

[Eventually these were seized from the police by the BPP (king's personal guard) with the blessing of the king]
excerpt from The King Never Smiles, by Paul Handley
p. 191-193

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And more recently:

Thailand has served as an outsourced CIA sponsored Torture center. This started with Bush's War of Terror and allows the US military/government to avoid public relations problems in the US and further allows sticky legal issues to be avoided in 'der USA homeland'

March 2002: First Secret CIA Prison Built in Thailand

ABC News : the first CIA secret prison is established in Thailand at this time to house Abu Zubaida, the first important al-Qaeda target who is captured at this time (March 28, 2002). President Bush had recently authorized the creation of CIA prisons (see After February 7, 2002). After being captured in Pakistan and treated for gunshot wounds, Zubaida is flown to Thailand around the middle of April 2002 and housed in a small warehouse inside a US military base. He is waterboarded and interrogated (Mid-May 2002 and After)...Some reports place the secret prison at the Voice of America relay station near the north-eastern Thai city of Udon Thani close to the border of Laos, but this is unconfirmed. [Sydney Morning Herald, 11/5/2005]

http://tinyurl.com/27brk6y

Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, termed the detention policies used by the U.S. “Crimes against Humanity”:

“These instances of the enforced disappearances of human beings and their consequent torture, because they are both widespread and systematic, constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, which have been ordered by the highest level officials of the United States government…”

Referring to President Bush and his principal advisers, Boyle continued, “Since these criminal activities took part in several states that are parties to the ICC Rome Statute, that renders these U.S. government officials [AND I MIGHT ADD - THAI OFFICIALS - THAKSIN's boys or ABBY's] subject to prosecution by the International Criminal Court on the grounds of territoriality of the offense, even though the United States [OR THAILAND] is not a party to the Rome Statute.”

And there is no expiration date on these charges.

http://pubrecord.org/torture/7326/two-dozen-countries-complicit-torture/

**Thailand is at least 'looking into' buying a used submarine from the US Navy - which, if they do it, will involve ongoing purchases of spare parts, etc...

Thailand still conducts regular Military "exercises" with the US military - including naval and land war games.

http://www.thaiphotoblogs.com/index.php?blog=5&title=cobra-gold-2009&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Thailand as American Indian Reservation

"Let him always think he is master while you are really master. There is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the forms of freedom; it is thus that the will itself is taken captive."-Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile Book II
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Thailand is a market oriented, export driven, low-wage, "developing" economy and has been for decades. Thailand's biggest customers of cheap Thai-produced products are the US and Japan. Which countries do you think benefit most from this arrangement?

Thailand has been "developing" as an economy for 3 generations, while during the same period, countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have reached the status of "developed" countries - even approaching First World status. Why does Thailand remain a developing economy, while other similar Asian countries - with fewer resources - have reached the status of First World, developed countries?

Thailand hosts many foreign companies who use Thailand as a low-wage center of production. Foreign capital is brought to Thailand and used to build factories and labor centers where Thai workers - even highly educated Thai workers like engineers, and scientists - are paid wages much lower than workers from the countries (like Japan and the US) where the capital originated. Once the factory is in place in Thailand, products produced by Thai labor are sent abroad, marked up in price, and sold in foreign markets (like Japan and the US).

The difference in the cost to produce and the cost at which goods are sold almost always goes into the pockets of international (non-Thai) companies and corporations - almost never into the pockets of ordinary Thais. The actual profit produced by Thai workers is in this way removed (stolen?) from them. This is called "The Free-market economy" or "doing business in Thailand."

At no point in the past 60 years, under the tutelage of American occupiers and colonizers, has Thailand taken up protectionist measures, such as tariffs, taxes, or trade barriers to preserve the real capital that is produced in Thailand. It has been shipped off happily and without complaint to foreign companies, individuals, and investors for almost 3 generations, under the watchful eyes of the Thai monarchy and their enforcers, the Thai military. In fact, members of these two sacred institutions have often been the only Thai people to see any real profit from this business model and state of affairs.

Thus Thailand has served as a faithful off-shore low-wage, low tariff, no hassle plantation for foreign investors for a long time. Long enough that most people do not know any difference or cannot see a realistic way out of this situation.

Is Thailand colonized?

A. Thailand is a brutally capitalist country.

B. Thailand follows a regime of fractional reserve banking, and un-backed fiat currency (unbacked by gold).

C. Thailand controls monetary policy through a Central Bank, based on the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve.

D. Thailand is a low-wage, market economy, easy to exploit for foreign investors.

E. Thailand is a free-trade economy.

F. Thailand has high inflation - at 5% - and refuses to raise interest rates to bring it down, which might benefit average Thai people.

G. Thailand begs foreign companies to build factories and entices them to do so with low taxes, low pollution controls and low environmental oversight.

H. There is little or no employee welfare, protection or occupational safety oversight. Thailand has a traditionally brutal military force that has for decades, remorselessly and without complaint, butchered members its own population in the streets. If Thai workers dare to demand better working conditions, this will ultimately been their fate.

I. Thailand hosted up to 40,000 American military personnel during the 1960s, allowing the US to use Thai airfields to bomb Vietnam and allowing US marines to make incursions into the sovereign territory of Laos during the Vietnam war.

J. Thailand still offers the most disadvantaged of its young people as objects of affordable "Rest and Relaxation" for American soldiers on leave or in war games; or as human commodities for international sex tourism.

K. Furthermore, The Thai king underwrites (and benefits) from this state of affairs by:

•  having his own bank - Siam Commercial Bank, and
•  operating under the sacrosanct veil of the Buddhist Dharmaraja (Dharma King), thereby  demanding complete and total unquestioning, uncomplaining loyalty and submission on the part of Thai subjects - punishable at the very least by jail, witch hunting, harassment, and defamation.

If this doesn't look like an occupation, I think you are either a beneficiary of the current system, a willing supplicant to it, or living on another planet.

Thailand follows perfectly the model outlined in John Perkins' book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," where traditional modes of colonialism are rejected in favor of total economic subjugation and exploitation. Why should the USA crush Thailand militarily when Thai capital, ingenuity, sweat and labor have been perfectly co-opted and are willingly transferred to the US through bank interest payments, purchase of US bonds, direct transfer of capital through American companies or exploited by proxy allies like Korea, Japan and the EU?

Thailand like many similar countries, is owned lock stock and barrel as an economic colony of the United States. You can call it "Modern life," "The Development Process," "Free Trade" or a "Market Economy" ...(As Israeli zionists said:) you can even call it "Fried Chicken" but the results are always the same.

This colonial process might have begun in the 1950s with the encroachment of the US military and CIA into Thai society - with the willing encouragement and collaboration of the The Thai monarchy and military - and continues to this day with American military war games and shore leaves, exploitation of low-wage Thai labor and daily unrestrained capital flight from Thailand - to the benefit of foreign investors (with Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore also working as
proxies and regional vassals for American sovereign interest.)

This occupation is backed up by a relentless onslaught of consumerist, materialist, pro-freemarket based advertising - not to mention unending pro-monarchy, pro-military propaganda which begins in Thai childhood. And adult Thais - especially High Society Thais, the Military, the political, legal and academic elite, plus the middle class want-to-be's - they are the ones who benefit under the current regime and unquestioningly follow their proscribed roles as "Good Indians" who seek to preserve the status-quo at any cost in their hopes of following "The American Dream."

This dream is under assault today - even within the United States itself - as a financial based oligarchy is ascendant while what used to be the American middle class descends into debt slavery. I think many middle to upper class Thais who think that if they are well-behaved and play by the American rules will someday have a house, a car, 2 kids, a fine job, money in the bank and a secure future will be sorely surprised when they wake up in the not too distant future next to their impoverished countrymen - the ones whom they have exploited and denigrated for years as untouchables and stupid unworthy indentured economic servants and slaves.

The United States has a long history of occupying and exploiting foreign lands - beginning with the American Indians on the North American continent. It is not a far stretch to see the Thailand of today as a model of the traditional American Indian Reservation with Yellow-minded monarchists and militarists serving as the "Good Indians" and Red Shirted troublemakers as "Bad Indians." Dichotomies like this only serve to benefit the behind the scenes expropriators - like the United States and its designated proxies.

Please read the following account from an American Indian woman writer named Waziyatawin - regarding the state of colonization - both physical and mental - on American Indian Reservations in the United States today. See if the concepts herein do not transfer perfectly to contemporary Thailand as well as many other countries throughout the world:
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Soldiers and military forts came...with the purpose of establishing American supremacy in a region...This was important for initially securing economic preeminence. The U.S...then [launched] systematic and profound attacks on [our] bodies and ways of being, dividing us and crushing us into submission.

Divide and conquer techniques are the hallmark of colonial manipulation. Those...individuals considered the friendliest to colonizer interests (that is, who offered the least amount of resistance) were singled out for special favors and rewards until they were firmly co-opted to do the colonizer’s bidding. Those who resisted colonizer interests most vehemently were targeted for particularly oppressive punishments. The collaborators are often distinguished in written records as the “friendly” or “good” Indians, while those who continued to resist co-optation were quickly identified as the “savage” or “hostile” Indians. The leaders, thinkers, peacemakers, warriors, spiritual leaders, healers and teachers who did not fall in line with the emerging order were isolated, dehumanized and diminished. Thus, colonizers ably and superbly fostered resentments between the two groups, pitting them against one another and always calling on the favorite “friendlies” to monitor their colonized cohort and enforce the colonial system. These divisions severely eroded the unity in Indigenous societies...

Even today, those who attempt to restore Indigenous ways of being in the modern world are dismissed by colonizers and their colonized puppets as angry, unrealistic, naive, less sophisticated, or even less intelligent than those mimicking the values and ideals of the dominant society. The "friendly" Indians invested in whatever small perks they gain from the colonial system are deeply devoted to maintaining the existing system and they defend its justness at every turn. Or, they have individually reaped substantial prestige and power from toting the colonizer's party line and as a consequence turn their back on the suffering of their [own]communities

... [Good Indians] see no need to seriously challenge the existing system because having bought into the American dream they are well on their way to achieving it. They actively participate in the blind march toward "progress," regardless of how that march continues to devastate the People, their homelands, or their relationship with the rest of the universe. Some of them talk about tweaking the existing system, maybe passing better legislation on this issue over here, or developing a more strategic economic plan over there, and they have abandoned the struggle for liberation. They, in fact, do not want liberation because it might affect their comfortable status.

And, because these "friendlies" offer no threat to the existing power structure, they become the favored pets, routinely lauded by the colonizers for their superior intelligence, insight, and commitment to the well-being of their People.

Still others live in daily fear. They [say] "we must simply try to negotiate the best scraps we can while we numb ourselves with chemicals, feed our addictions, and entertain ourselves with material goods and Hollywood entertainment. For if we challenge colonialism, even those small privileges might be taken away."[They are] afraid to even imagine a different reality...We have accepted trauma as a way of life and we continue to harm ourselves and others. All of this occurs in the context of a brutal and ongoing colonization.

A growing awareness of colonialism inexorably leads to a simultaneous dissatisfaction with the situation and a growing unrest...Recognition of this colonial reality is the first step toward our liberation. We cannot resist what we cannot identify and name.

An analysis of colonialism allows us to make sense of our current condition, strategically develop more effective means of resistance, recover the pre-colonial traditions that strengthen us ...and connect with the struggles of colonized peoples throughout the world to transform the world. When colonialism is removed from the analysis, we have little alternative other than to simply blame ourselves for the current social ills. This blaming the victim strategy only increases violence against our own people...Instead, we put our faith and actions toward making [great] change, looking to the highest potential of human agency.

Today...we have reached an era in which the existing system is on the verge of collapse, with colonizer and colonized alike resting near a precipitous edge. We can either succumb to the ongoing discourse of complacency propagated by the colonizing government, or we can mobilize for revolutionary change.

The original essay Colonialism on the Ground is available here:http://waziyatawin.net/commentary/?page_id=20

May the Spirit of Crazy Horse be with you always. Thank you for your support.

"Free your mind and your ass will follow." - George Clinton

written in Sihanoukville, Cambodia 2010