Gareth Porter (born June 18, 1942) is an American historian, investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in U.S. national security issues. He was an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and has written about the potential for peaceful conflict resolution in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In the early 1970s, Porter wrote critically about US involvement in the Vietnam War. In the late 1970s, he denied charges against the Khmer Rouge that it was pursuing genocidal policies against the Cambodian people, but later acknowledged his error in doing so. In the 2010s, he questioned allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its citizens. Porter's books include Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (2005), his explanation of the United States involvement in the Vietnam War.Porter, Gareth. "Perils of Dominance", University of California Press.
Education and early career Porter was raised as a member of the Church of the Brethren and attended Manchester College in Indiana (a Brethren School) for three years before transferring to the University of Illinois, where he graduated in 1964. He received his master's degree in International Politics from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in Southeast Asian Studies from Cornell University.Biographical profile ; George Mason University; October, 2005 He has taught international studies at the City College of New York and American University in Washington D.C., and he was the first Academic Director for Peace and Conflict Resolution in the Semester program at the university.
Porter was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, and was a chairman of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars at Cornell.800 Attend Indochina Teach-In; The Cornell Daily Sun; Monica Reiss; April 14, 1972; pp.. 1, 9 From 1970–1971, he served as the Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service International, and later, he was the co-director of the Indochina Resource Center, a research and education organization opposed to the Vietnam War which was based in Washington, D.C.
Writing Porter’s analysis and reporting appeared from the 1970s to 1990s in Foreign Policy,Time to Talk with North Korea; Foreign Policy; No. 34 (Spring, 1979), pp. 52–73 Foreign Affairs,Cambodia: Sihanouk's Initiative; Foreign Affairs; Spring, 1988 and The Journal of Environment & Development,Trade Competition and Pollution Standards: “Race to the Bottom” or “Stuck at the Bottom”; The Journal of Environment & Development; June 1999; Vol. 8 no. 2 133-151 and later for Al-Jazeera English, The Nation, Salon,Arming our own enemies in Iraq; Salon; June 6, 2008 The Huffington Post,"Huffington Post – Gareth Porter articles" CounterPunch, Antiwar.com, The American Conservative and Truthout. He reported on political, diplomatic and military developments in the Middle East for Inter Press Service between 2005 and 2014."IPS.org – Gareth Porter articles " He is a director of Consortium News.
Vietnam In a series of articles and academic papers, Porter challenged President Richard Nixon's statement that there would be a communist "bloodbath" in South Vietnam if the U.S. withdrew its forces. In his 1973 monograph The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered,Porter, Gareth. "The Myth of the Bloodbath", Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. September 1973. he questioned the assertion by Indochina expert Bernard Fall that 50,000 may have died in North Vietnam's land reform program and the estimates of others alleging the mass execution of hundreds of thousands of people. His analysis estimated that the real number of casualties was between 800 and 2,500. These conclusions have been challenged by several writers, including Daniel Teoduru, Robert Turner, and Hoang Van Chi.; "Newly released documents on the land reform", Vietnam Studies Group, , accessed 3 Oct 2015 Scholar Edwin Moise later estimated a death toll probably on the rough order of 5,000, and almost certainly between 3,000 and 15,000.Land Reform in China and North Vietnam (1983), p. 222.
In 1974, Porter wrote a detailed criticism of U.S. Information Agency official Douglas Pike's account of the "Massacre at Huế during the Tet Offensive."The 1968 'Hue Massacre', Indochina Chronicle 33 (June 24, 1974), 2–13 A 1970 report by Stephen T. Hosmer utilizing Viet Cong documents suggested that at least 2,800 persons were killed.Stephen T. Hosmer, Viet Cong Repression and its Implications for the Future (Rand Corporation, 1970), pp. 72–8. Porter stated that Pike manipulated official figures to make it appear that over 4,700 civilians were murdered by the Viet Cong, and the numbers and causes of death were different.
Porter is the author of many books about the Vietnam war, including Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, Vietnam: History in Documents, Vietnam: The Politics of Bureaucratic Socialism (Politics & International Relations of Southeast Asia), Global Environmental Politics (Dilemmas in World Politics), Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, and A Peace Denied: the United States, Vietnam, and the Paris Agreement. His book, Perils of Dominance, analyzes the role of the military in the origins of the Vietnam War.
Cambodia
In 1976, George C. Hildebrand and Porter, then directors of the antiwar Indochina Resource Center, published a study in September 1975 challenging claims that the evacuation of Phnom Penh had been an “atrocity” causing famine. Instead they said it was a response to Cambodians’ “urgent and fundamental needs” and “it was carried out only after careful planning for provision of food, water, rest and medical care.”
In 1976, Hildebrand and Porter authored a book titled Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, which compared the ways of the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic and the administration of the Chinese-backed Communist Party of Kampuchea. Pol Pot was then secretary general and prime minister by Fall 1977, the party's cadres were colloquially known as the Khmer Rouge. The authors denied the media accounts of ideological fanaticism and cruelty by the latter, and argued instead that the Democratic Kampuchea program constituted a rational response to the serious problems confronting the Cambodian nation: disease, starvation, economic devastation, and cities swollen with millions of refugees after years of American bombing.
Testifying before Congress in May 1977, Porter read a prepared statement which began: He criticized the work of other writers with different views of the character of the Khmer Rouge, stating: "Both [François Ponchaud's and [John] Barron and [Anthony] Paul's books fail to measure up to even the minimum standards of journalism or scholarship, and their overall conclusions and general tone must be regarded as the product of overheated emotions and lack of caution. Moreover, there is enough evidence available from various sources, including material published by Ponchaud himself, to discredit the extreme thesis propounded by both books."Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Human Rights in Cambodia ; The Vietnam Center and Archive
When Congressman Stephen J. Solarz asked if any of the experts could "explain why what happened in Cambodia actually happened", Porter responded, "I cannot accept the premise of your question, which is that...1 million people have been murdered systematically or that the Government of Cambodia is systematically slaughtering its people." In response, Solarz characterized the scholars defending the Khmer Rouge, including Porter, as "cowardly and contemptible." Solarz called the actions of the Khmer Rouge government "monstrous.""Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, Ninety-fifth Congress, First Session, on: Human Rights in Cambodia, 03 May 1977, Folder 02, Box 12, Douglas Pike Collection: Unit 11 – Monographs, The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University, pp. 32-35 Accessed 6 May. 2014. <http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=2391202002>, http://www.virtual.vietnam.ttu.edu/cgi-bin/starfetch.exe?y5YIHw.Ap9jQF7zpHs@CdSZQd2YPGf1bR.xqGOxP5YTnDP45riAiTktrK1t3nHMYKZRiGN@pVhOvFweX3jfFUJHualVu0Mr0po@xezRxjKY/2391202002D.pdf
Hildebrand and Porter were criticized in April 1978 by British author William Shawcross in The New York Review of Books, who wrote that their "use of evidence can be seriously questioned". He accused them of writing "an extremely sympathetic, indeed approving, account". Shawcross commented that "their apparent faith in Khmer Rouge assertions and statistics is surprising in two men who have spent so long analyzing the lies that governments tell". In response to Shawcross, Porter responded in the NYRB in July 1978: "As anyone who has seen the book will know, nothing could be further from the truth. We document the conditions under which the evacuation took place from Khmer refugee reports, as well as European and American eyewitness accounts." Porter further commented: "It is true, as Shawcross notes from my May 1977 Congressional testimony, that I have changed my view on a number of aspects of the Cambodian situation. I have no interest in defending everything the Khmer government does, and I believe that the policy of self-reliance has been carried so far that it has imposed unnecessary costs on the population of Cambodia. Shawcross, however, clearly does have an interest in rejecting our conclusions. It is time, I suggest, for him to examine it carefully, because it does not make for intellectual honesty." Shawcross responded: "it is a tribute to his own integrity that he now agrees that the Khmer Rouge have imposed 'unnecessary costs' on the Cambodian people. He should, however, be a little more careful before he accuses others of deliberately falsifying evidence and of intellectual dishonesty."
In her 2002 book on genocide and its reporting, A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power wrote thatWithout ever having visited the country, [Porter and Hildebrand] rejected atrocity reports. The city evacuations, they argued, would improve the welfare of Cambodians, whose livelihoods had been devastated by the Nixon years. They were convinced that American and European media, governments, and anti-Communists were colluding to exaggerate KR sins for Cold War propaganda purposes. This account was read widely at the State Department and received backing from Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.
In 2010, Porter said he had been waiting many years for someone to ask him about his earlier views of the Khmer Rouge. He described how the climate of distrust of the government generated during the Vietnam war carried over to Cambodia. "I uncovered a series of instances when government officials were propagandizing [about the Vietnam war]. They were lying," he explained. "I've been well aware for many years that I was guilty of intellectual arrogance. I was right about the bloodbath in Vietnam, so I assumed I would be right about Cambodia".
Syria