quote:

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Originally posted by Belle Ringer:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Komensky:
The Billy Graham apologists really take some beating. Sure he was a bigoted anti-semite and used his missionaries in Vietnam to supply information for a plan of mass murder he flogged to Nixon—he did some good stuff too!

K.

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Without wanting to turn into a Billy Graham apologist here can you think of a better plan that could have been achieved for defeating the communist aggression in Vietnam?

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My response would be too far off the topic of this thread and apparently disagree with you. If you want to discuss it, start a thread on the topic of USA's habit of brutal aggression and see if anyone shows up.

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quote:

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You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia"

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
What business had Christ in defeating communist aggression with worse aggression in Vietnam?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
What business had Christ in defeating communist aggression with worse aggression in Vietnam?

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So what do you think would have been an appropriate response to the North Vietnamese aggression?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
The argument that it's ok to kill millions of people if you're [claiming to be] defending their freedom does not cut a lot of ice with me.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Tell me again how the Viet Cong's battle plans involved a large-scale invasion of California.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Martin60, do you not think that there is such a thing as a just war?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Martin60, do you not think that there is such a thing as a just war?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Tell me again how the Viet Cong's battle plans involved a large-scale invasion of California.

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None of them. The North Vietnamese government and allied communist parties did however launch wars of aggression against South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. What do you think would have been an appropriate response to that aggression?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tortuf:
For an interesting assessment of how Vietnam is doing under those dreaded Commies you might even read an evaluation from an ex enemy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Thank you for those awesome links Belle. The final nails in the coffin of my shameful admiration of Nixon that I didn't know that I still had. And emotionally still do! Dear God I STILL regard him as a tragic figure!! Closer to Hitler and Stalin and Mao with my fallen yet-hero Churchill.

We LOVE war. Those of us who stand at the apex of that pyramid whose base is the bloody Earth of meaningless suffering. Dear GOD who needs Satan?!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
The argument that it's ok to kill millions of people if you're [claiming to be] defending their freedom does not cut a lot of ice with me.

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Millions died in World War II as well. Were Britain and America wrong to get involved in that war?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:


I wish Blair had done the same with Bush over Iraq. I am not anti-American nor disrespectful of US sacrifice in two World Wars but there are times when Presidential child-killers like Johnson and twisted crooks like Nixon ought to be told where to get off.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Tortuf:
If Aggressor + Just War = Just Outcome you might have a starting point for a just war argument. Assuming that your just outcome is saving the notoriously corrupt government of South Vietnam.

The fact that we already know the outcome was in fact Aggressor + Just War ≠ Just Outcome seems to undermine the just war argument here

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A just outcome would have been the reunification of Vietnam under the government of South Vietnam. The problem wasn't the justness of the cause but the way that the war was run. In World War II the US had successfully defeated, occupied and instigated regime on bigger and more powerful countries than North Vietnam. The problem was not the justness of the cause it was the lack of competence and political will in achieving it.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I'm aware of all of that, Kelly Alves and my post wasn't meant to suggest that there was universal compliance within the US with what LBJ and Nixon were up to - far from it.

The point I was making was concerned with UK neutrality - ie. Wilson told LBJ to bog off. I'm rather pleased about that.

That point in no wise undermines or detracts from the massive anti-war feeling that existed in the US at that time and I'm surprised you took my post that way.

FWIW my youngest aunt - only 6 years older than me - married a London-Welsh Australian after her first marriage broke up. He'd emigrated to Australia at the age of 18 and found himself being drafted to fight alongside the Americans in Vietnam. He still suffers flash-backs and a degree of post-traumatic stress.

Whilst he can be very critical of the left and the anti-war activists who gave him and his fellow returing, traumatised veterans a hard time -- he has nothing but criticism for the way the US military conducted the campaigns over there and the politicians who dragged so many brave men - from the US, Australia and South Vietnam - into a war that could not be won.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
Yeah, the US should have taken off the kid gloves and fought a REAL total war, none of that Dee Emm Zee crap, occupied Hanoi, bombed the dykes, executed Jane Fonda.

Cuz it wuz just. Un right makes might.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
What political will and competence in achieving victory are you talking about, Bibliophile?

The political will to 'bomb Cambodia into the Stone Age' thereby creating the conditions for Pol Pot to take over and massacre a considerable proportion of the Cambodian population?

The political will to commit war-crimes and contraventions of human rights and Geneva Convention stipulations in order to propagate a 'just cause'?


 

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Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
In World War II the US had successfully defeated, occupied and instigated regime on bigger and more powerful countries than North Vietnam.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Porridge:
Moreover, let's not ignore the fact that the US is the world's arms dealer. We created the arms race that has led to the spread of weapons whose use we dare not even contemplate -- yet there those weapons are, poised and aimed and ready.

Our government encourages development by private enterprise of SuperWeapon A. Private Enterprise then sells SuperWeapon A to our alleged "allies." Somehow (?!), this weapon finds its way into the hands of our alleged "enemies," so we go back to the drawing board to develop SuperWeapon B, and so it goes, with ordinary taxpayers footing most of the bill, plus sacrificing the limbs and lives of our own youth, along with the horrors we visit on others.

What a con game.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
What political will and competence in achieving victory are you talking about, Bibliophile?

The political will to 'bomb Cambodia into the Stone Age' thereby creating the conditions for Pol Pot to take over and massacre a considerable proportion of the Cambodian population?

The political will to commit war-crimes and contraventions of human rights and Geneva Convention stipulations in order to propagate a 'just cause'?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
In World War II the US - alongside its allies - maintained the moral high ground -- although that was compromised to some extent by the carpet bombing of German cities -- and the RAF were probably more guilty of attacking unjustified civilian targets, by and large - than the USAF were ...

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I feel sorry for the Vietnam Vets, I really do ... it can't be easy for them having fought in an unpopular war.

It's not their fault. The blame lies with LBJ and Nixon --

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, that's certainly true - no matter how 'just' or otherwise the cause.

It's a tricky area - because one could use this argument to justify the Vietnam War and the associated atrocities ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Tell me again how the Viet Cong's battle plans involved a large-scale invasion of California.

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None of them. The North Vietnamese government and allied communist parties did however launch wars of aggression against South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. What do you think would have been an appropriate response to that aggression?

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Apologise for turning independent people into colonial subjects? Vow never to use them as cannon fodder in a proxy war? Decide beforehand that the use of chemical weapons on a civilian population was a war crime? Broker international peace talks under the auspices of the UN?

All those would probably come under 'appropriate responses'. What did you have in mind?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
The McCarthy era

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Is it part of human nature to secretly envy people who can get away with despotic cruelty?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, that's certainly true - no matter how 'just' or otherwise the cause.

It's a tricky area - because one could use this argument to justify the Vietnam War and the associated atrocities ...

---

Something I've pondered before-- some of political America's post WW2 behavior seemed to be like children playacting stuff they saw their older siblings doing. The McCarthy era was us play acting early Nazi roundups of "communists and intellectuals" (Read: Jews) and the Vietnam atrocities were us playacting the excesses of the IJA. Never understood that-- we hadn't had time to take a breath after condemning our enemies before we started acting like them.

Is it part of human nature to secretly envy people who can get away with despotic cruelty? Or did the ugliness of WW2 shake our collective faith in humanity to the point that we stopped having that faith for a while, even as applied to ourselves? Or did our collective vision of ourselves as The Good Guys give us some sort of pass to stop examining our own behavior?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Nobody's defending 'political correctness' either.

Your argument really is morally bankrupt.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
In justifying the use of agent orange against civilian populations and the completely illegal bombing of Cambodia you are effectively complicit with war crimes.

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quote:

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Originally posted by rolyn:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Is it part of human nature to secretly envy people who can get away with despotic cruelty?

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I would say yes. The Psalmist certainly picked up on that trait when referring to envy of the ungodly

The best example are the Romans who were a very cruel society.
Is it because their cruelty was so highly ordered, and even glamorized with the Games that they have been revered consistently by following generations? Not withstanding the fact that Christianity had a big hand in sanitising what was essentially a brutal Empire.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
To answer your questions.

---

I'm wondering why you're bothering, since you seem to know zip about the Vietnam war.

In order, it was the occupying Japanese who first installed the Vietnamese emperor as a puppet leader. Most material assistance for the Viet Minh came from the Chinese, not the Soviets. The Geneva Conference concluded that Vietnam-wide elections should be held by 1956 (to bring about a unified Vietnam) - and rejected by both the State of Vietnam and the US.

Dien Bien Phu, the battle that was being fought at the time of the conference was a deliberate ploy by the French to engage the Viet Minh in open warfare. And then they lost.

So, to conclude. Communists fight against invaders. Win. Country illegally divided. International conference mandates elections. Reneged on by one party.

At no point, of course, could any of the following 20 years of conflict have been avoided.
 

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Posted by Bibliophile (# 18418) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Nobody's defending 'political correctness' either.

Your argument really is morally bankrupt.

---

It was always funny to hear "the new left-wing McCarthyism" denounced by right-wingers who had either been cheerleaders for the original McCarthyism, or at least cheered it retroactively.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Now exactly the same thing happens except now its accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia rather than accusations of communism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
With McCarthyism people were denounced, lost their jobs, their careers and on occasions were even prosecuted and sometimes even imprisoned because of accusations of communism.

Now exactly the same thing happens except now its accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia rather than accusations of communism.

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Let's have a few examples of people jailed for racism, sexism, and homophobia, please,
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Sorry - I missed your previous post Bibliophile -- and yes, whilst I can see the point you're making and will retract a certain amount of my moral disgust ... I still think you're skating on thin ice.

Why?

Because what you are saying is that instead of using agent orange and - presumably - resorting to shady tactics such as the bombing of a neutral country (Cambodia) -- a point you haven't addressed from what I can see - you are suggesting that the US should have unleashed hell on North Vietnam to sever the head of the Communist regime there.



What kind of mandate would the US have had for that? Would it have had UN support?

The US - rightly in my view - protested against the joint UK/French attack on Egypt during the Suez Crisis of 1956 - which resulted from morally reprehensible behind-the-scenes collusion with Israel. Part of the US reasoning for that was that it would not provide a moral basis to protest at the Soviet invasion of Hungary whilst its allies were playing fast and loose with international protocol by bombing Egypt and seizing Port Said.

So, the US is perfectly capable of occupying the moral high-ground when it wants to.

What I'm saying is that it didn't occupy that moral high-ground in the case of Vietnam. If anything, it demonstrated the opposite tendencies.

Of course, you can argue that the US was 'forced' to act in an underhand way because of liberal opposition yadda yadda yadda but that doesn't take away from the fact that:

- Successive US administrations lied.

- The USAF embarked on illegal bombing missions over the territory of a neutral country.

- US forces committed atrocities against civilian populations on a large scale. Ok - in fairness, some of these incidents were investigated and instigators put on trial ... but even so.

Why do you think that the US has some kind of inalienable right to act as some kind of global policeman?

Heck, even Maggie Thatcher, Reagan's closest friend and ally tore him off a strip when the US invaded Grenada - a former British colony and a member of the Commonwealth. Why? Partly because she wasn't consulted ... and partly because it was such bad form.

No-one's saying that the regime there wasn't dodgy and that the people of Grenada weren't pleased to see it ousted - but there are protocols. What gives the US the right to over-ride these?

On a smaller scale - for all the gung-ho reaction it elicited in the US, the US invasion of Grenada saw, on a smaller scale, similar cack-handed 'friendly fire' and operational cock-ups that my aunt's second husband saw first hand in Vietnam.

If you're going to act like an international policeman, at least learn to do it more efficiently.
 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
Basically agree with all that you've written here, Gamaliel, but...

quote:

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Heck, even Maggie Thatcher, Reagan's closest friend and ally tore him off a strip when the US invaded Grenada - a former British colony and a member of the Commonwealth. Why? Partly because she wasn't consulted ... and partly because it was such bad form.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Sorry - I missed your previous post Bibliophile -- and yes, whilst I can see the point you're making and will retract a certain amount of my moral disgust ... I still think you're skating on thin ice.

Why?

Because what you are saying is that instead of using agent orange and - presumably - resorting to shady tactics such as the bombing of a neutral country (Cambodia) -- a point you haven't addressed from what I can see - you are suggesting that the US should have unleashed hell on North Vietnam to sever the head of the Communist regime there.



What kind of mandate would the US have had for that?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
On a smaller scale - for all the gung-ho reaction it elicited in the US, the US invasion of Grenada saw, on a smaller scale, similar cack-handed 'friendly fire' and operational cock-ups that my aunt's second husband saw first hand in Vietnam.

If you're going to act like an international policeman, at least learn to do it more efficiently.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The mandate would have been from the government of South Vietnam. It may have been unpleasant and corrupt but it was the lawful government of South Vietnam and it was an ally of the United States.

---

Bzzt. See above. The State of Vietnam was unilaterally created by France to stop Ho Chi Minh taking the whole of Vietnam after Dien Bien Phu. There was no 'mandate', except that which the Geneva conference of 1954 created, which was for Vietnam-wide elections in 1956, which were blocked by the State of Vietnam.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
So, we should have killed more than a million of ourselves than we did (well 95% of those were Slopes, so they don't count) for the sake of the
corrupt fascist drug baron bastards in the US puppet half-state? Because they were more 'legitimate' than communists?

Cuz that's what Jesus wooda dun?

Or because that's the truly just thing to do regardless? The utilitarian thing to do? By not doing it we'd be evil?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
So, Bibliophile, you are telling us that the US has some kind of unilateral mandate to be the world's policeman?

Because if that's the case, it's not what I was saying.

Of course, the US has a role - as do the other nations of the world - but only within the bounds and limits of international law -- and conventions that the US flouted during the Vietnam War.

The US was right to 'call' the UK and France over their aggression in Suez -- even though it could have been - and was - argued that both powers were acting in defence of their own interests.

What are you saying should have happened?

That Britain and other countries in the West should have backed and supported the US in some kind of action against North Vietnam?

That Britain and other Commonwealth countries didn't have the right to express disapproval when the US invaded Grenada in 1983?

That might is right?

Because that's what it sounds like to me.

You'll be telling us that you believe in Manifest Destiny next ... that the US has some kind of God-given right and mandate that no other nation has.

Give us a break ...


 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
- Heck, you'll be telling us next that the US colonists had some kind of God-given right to rise up against the legitimate Government that ruled them at the time ...



More seriously, 'No taxation without representation' was a good call and on balance I'd be sympathetic with the Colonists - even though they exaggerated the 'tyranny' of King George III and even though they were taxed a lot lower than anyone else in his Britannic Majesty's dominions at that time and also paid less for their tea, come to that ...

The point is, neither the UK, the USA, Russia, China, Ecuador, Bolivia or any other country we care to name has the right to flout international conventions and the basic principles of law and justice.

The USA flouted those conventions in Vietnam. Big time. Admit it. Accept it. Repent of it.
 

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Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The point is, neither the UK, the USA, Russia, China, Ecuador, Bolivia or any other country we care to name has the right to flout international conventions and the basic principles of law and justice.

The USA flouted those conventions in Vietnam. Big time. Admit it. Accept it. Repent of it.

---

Repent? USA is always right, because it says so, and if you don't agree it gets to shoot you to prove it is a peace-loving country. I was hoping Bush the supposed Christian President would call the country to repent of it's materialism and warmongering efforts to dominate world trade after 9/11, but instead he told people to go shopping and started an unrelated war. You want a Christian (or any Godly) response, look elswhere than USA.
 

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Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stetson:
Basically agree with all that you've written here, Gamaliel, but...

quote:

---

Heck, even Maggie Thatcher, Reagan's closest friend and ally tore him off a strip when the US invaded Grenada - a former British colony and a member of the Commonwealth. Why? Partly because she wasn't consulted ... and partly because it was such bad form.

---

I think there were probably less honourable sentiments on Thatcher's part there, ie. the idea that the UK needed to be consulted because they had some sort of "moral ownership" of Grenada, as a result of being the former colonial power.

Which, they really didn't, at least not in any way that would give the UK Prime Minister a right to be consulted, since the Grenadian Governor-General doesn't represent the British PM.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The mandate would have been from the government of South Vietnam. It may have been unpleasant and corrupt but it was the lawful government of South Vietnam and it was an ally of the United States. When the government of South Vietnam was subject to persistent aggression from North Vietnam the US had the right to respond in defence of its ally

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Belle Ringer:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The point is, neither the UK, the USA, Russia, China, Ecuador, Bolivia or any other country we care to name has the right to flout international conventions and the basic principles of law and justice.

The USA flouted those conventions in Vietnam. Big time. Admit it. Accept it. Repent of it.

---

Repent? USA is always right, because it says so, and if you don't agree it gets to shoot you to prove it is a peace-loving country. I was hoping Bush the supposed Christian President would call the country to repent of it's materialism and warmongering efforts to dominate world trade after 9/11, but instead he told people to go shopping and started an unrelated war. You want a Christian (or any Godly) response, look elswhere than USA.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Is it still illegal to be communist in the USA?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
To answer your questions.

---

I'm wondering why you're bothering, since you seem to know zip about the Vietnam war.

In order, it was the occupying Japanese who first installed the Vietnamese emperor as a puppet leader. Most material assistance for the Viet Minh came from the Chinese, not the Soviets. The Geneva Conference concluded that Vietnam-wide elections should be held by 1956 (to bring about a unified Vietnam) - and rejected by both the State of Vietnam and the US.

Dien Bien Phu, the battle that was being fought at the time of the conference was a deliberate ploy by the French to engage the Viet Minh in open warfare. And then they lost.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The mandate would have been from the government of South Vietnam. It may have been unpleasant and corrupt but it was the lawful government of South Vietnam and it was an ally of the United States.

---

Bzzt. See above. The State of Vietnam was unilaterally created by France to stop Ho Chi Minh taking the whole of Vietnam after Dien Bien Phu. There was no 'mandate', except that which the Geneva conference of 1954 created, which was for Vietnam-wide elections in 1956, which were blocked by the State of Vietnam.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
To answer those points in order. True but irrelevant. After WWII it was the French who set up and supported the Vietnamese monarchy.

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quote:

---

I'll take your point about China but given that Communist China and the Soviet Union were closely allied at the start of the war I don't think that's a hugely important point.

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quote:

---

Suggesting the failure of South Vietnam to agree to elections as an excuse for North Vietnamese aggression is a bit rich as the communist government in Vietnam has never held free elections to this day.

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quote:

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The State of Vietnam had been set up as a French protectorate five years earlier. You say that this was done 'unilaterally' but given that the French colonial authority was the lawful government of Vietnam at the time they had the right to do this. It was the Geneva Conference that establish that the communist government was the lawful government of North Vietnam.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
To answer those points in order. True but irrelevant. After WWII it was the French who set up and supported the Vietnamese monarchy.

---

The quisling Vietnamese monarchy. That was always going to be popular.

quote:

---

I'll take your point about China but given that Communist China and the Soviet Union were closely allied at the start of the war I don't think that's a hugely important point.

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Probably important to the 20,000 Chinese nationals who died. And yes, of course it's important geopolitically.

quote:

---

Suggesting the failure of South Vietnam to agree to elections as an excuse for North Vietnamese aggression is a bit rich as the communist government in Vietnam has never held free elections to this day.

---

'A bit rich' it might be. But they agreed to them, and the State of Vietnam didn't. So much for democracy. I wonder if the Viet Minh learnt any lessons from that?

quote:

---

The State of Vietnam had been set up as a French protectorate five years earlier. You say that this was done 'unilaterally' but given that the French colonial authority was the lawful government of Vietnam at the time they had the right to do this. It was the Geneva Conference that establish that the communist government was the lawful government of North Vietnam.

---

Bzzt. Temporary partition was in 1954. Before that 'State of Vietnam' was all of Vietnam. And colonial authorities can stuff their lawful governments where the sun doesn't shine. They can do what they like (and did): makes very little of it right.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Repent? USA is always right, because it says so, and if you don't agree it gets to shoot you to prove it is a peace-loving country. I was hoping Bush the supposed Christian President would call the country to repent of it's materialism and warmongering efforts to dominate world trade after 9/11, but instead he told people to go shopping and started an unrelated war. You want a Christian (or any Godly) response, look elswhere than USA.

---

Do you not live there? I do.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
When I point out that the State of Vietnam government had been lawful for some time and that it was the communist government that had been made lawful by the Geneva conference you declare that you don't care about lawfulness.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Is it still illegal to be communist in the USA?

---

God, no. In fact, there is an American Communist Party.

---

quote:

---

Some demonstrators even carried icons of Mao, history’s worst mass-murderer.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
When I point out that the State of Vietnam government had been lawful for some time and that it was the communist government that had been made lawful by the Geneva conference you declare that you don't care about lawfulness.

---

Reading for comprehension would be nice. The French didn't care about lawfulness any more than British or Spanish colonisers did. They did what was expedient.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
So you're not sure either?

---

quote:

---

America might or might not have been right to get involved in Indo-China, and the war might or might not have been winnable, and American tactics might or might not have been wise or moral

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
I'm getting the impression that you are one of those people that Kaplan Corday describes who thinks its a good thing that the communists won the Vietnam war rather than the Americans or the French. If you do think this what is your justification for doing so?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
a Communist government is intrinsically evil,

---

quote:

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Would a Communist government for a united Vietnamese nation from 1954 have been so bad that all the death and suffering from the war was a justified cost to prevent this?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
It is as irrational, immoral and unhistorical a question to be asked as whether a fascist government is intrinsically evil.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
It is as irrational, immoral and unhistorical a question to be asked as whether a fascist government is intrinsically evil.

---

Wait, are you saying here that there is something to be praised about fascism? Reactionary authoritarian nationalism is coming back into fashion?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Different in how Jesus would, should, could, will respond to them how?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
So if you think that fascist government is intrinsically evil do you also think that communist government is intrinsically evil? If not why not?

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
It is as irrational, immoral and unhistorical a question to be asked as whether a fascist government is intrinsically evil.

---

Wait, are you saying here that there is something to be praised about fascism? Reactionary authoritarian nationalism is coming back into fashion?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Different in how Jesus would, should, could, will respond to them how?

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Not sure what you mean, perhaps you could be a little clearer?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
(Sigh) Both communism and fascism are equally intrinsically evil.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
So if you think that fascist government is intrinsically evil do you also think that communist government is intrinsically evil? If not why not?

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Fascism as an idea is about strength, so people who do not agree are simply swept aside. Might is Right writ large.

Communism in and of itself is not authoritarian in the same way, although most forms of nationalist communinism have been of the form of Maoism and Stalinism with little obvious difference to fascism.

So I'd say fascism in and of itself is evil, Communism just often is.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
There might be some small fringe utopian groups who call might be called 'communist' by some people who are not authoritarian, that is possible. When I'm using the word 'communist' I'm referring to marxist-leninism i.e. the ideology of every actual communist government in history. That ideology is authoritarian at its very core.

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The idea that its any less about strength and sweeping aside opponents is absurd. Communists often seem to focus on little else and it was a communist who talked about sweeping opponents "into the dustbin of history"

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
There might be some small fringe utopian groups who call might be called 'communist' by some people who are not authoritarian, that is possible. When I'm using the word 'communist' I'm referring to marxist-leninism i.e. the ideology of every actual communist government in history. That ideology is authoritarian at its very core.

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Authoritarian forms of nationalist Communism are authoritarian. Obviously.

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The idea that its any less about strength and sweeping aside opponents is absurd. Communists often seem to focus on little else and it was a communist who talked about sweeping opponents "into the dustbin of history"

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Equating all Communists with the worst forms of authoritarian communism is absurd, unlike fascism which is by very nature authoritarian.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Perhaps you could give an example of a communist government that isn't or wasn't authoritarian and which didn't or doesn't focus on sweeping aside opposition

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Nevertheless the French were the lawful government of Vietnam at the time

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Nevertheless the French were the lawful government of Vietnam at the time

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Executive authority derives from a popular mandate.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:


Cuba may not have horns sticking out of its head compared with the way some Communist regimes panned out - but there's always been a darker side to it. There's more to Cuba than cool music and old style US cars pootling about in Havana.

That's not to justify the Bay of Pigs - another example of a botched US military operation (although, to be fair, they haven't always botched things up militarily of course) ... but neither is it to exonerate the Castro regime. Dissidents weren't dealt with pleasantly there and there were plenty of people risking their lives to try to sail to Florida and escape.

None of these things are clear-cut.

<snip>

All that said, I believe it is possible to denounce aspects of US foreign policy and its often misguided attempts to police the world (in its own interests) without making out that all those it has opposed have been squeaky clean ... nor that all those it has supported have always been out and out villains.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Hmmm ... so who was the lawful government of the 13 Colonies in 1776, Doc Tor?

Was it the British?

Or was it the various Native American tribes who'd occupied the area previously and been robbed of their lands, subjected to genocidal attacks and ethnic cleansing?

Point is, it's tricky when we get into discussions as to who or what is the 'lawful government' the further back we go.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Indeed if what you say here were true then Vietnam would have never had any lawful government as there has never been a free election in the history of that country.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Indeed if what you say here were true then Vietnam would have never had any lawful government as there has never been a free election in the history of that country.

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By jove, I think he's got it!

And, given that, stymieing the first and only chance for those elections, what did the South Vietnamese and their US backers do?

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Thank you for articulating something I keep thinking as we discuss American imperiaiism. ...when some folk discuss the first couple hundred years of American wars, they neglect to recognize that early American ideas of territorial expansion and political dominance and cultural domination were based on very European ideas of same...

it is really more efficient to focus on the specific problem than to indulge in competative finger- pointing. End of tangental musing.

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Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
What would Jesus advise us to do?

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Not directing this at any current thread participants

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

Meanwhile, would you agree that Cuba is hardly a good example of a benign Communist regime?

Can you cite any other examples?

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
do you agree with me that it would have been legitimate for the Americans to invade and occupy North Vietnam in order to remove the communist government

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

Meanwhile, would you agree that Cuba is hardly a good example of a benign Communist regime?

Can you cite any other examples?

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Genuinely seeking more info-- I mentioned Biafra. My understanding is that is was a genuine attempt at a democratic form of communism that was destroyed by Cold War politics and active anti-communist aggression supported by the West. My sources are limited to one Kurt Vonnegut essay and The Poisonwood Bible.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

But Pinochet, Galtieri, the vicious Nicaraguan 'Contras', the Saudis - and heck, even Saddam Hussein when it suited them ... not a pleasant set of bed-fellows.

One could argue, of course, that some of the alternatives were as bad or even worse. Which would be fair enough to a certain extent.

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There is some relevance to the fact that a lot of the countries mentioned (as extreme examples of both) have been part of the developing world.

Often dealing with the legacy of post-colonialism and/or suffering the meddling of third parties who have a vested interest in pushing factionalism in the service of one cause or another.

The difference between Pinochet and the Viet Cong, is that you still get people in power defending the former.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
I think there is little evidence that Communism can work on a large scale without leaving the door open to a "strong-man" who usually tends towards oppressive.

But my main point is that this is just my opinion. Others are free to hold an optimistic view of the potential of Communism - and the uplifting message that they believe it offers. Such people are not, necessarily, believers in Stalinism.

In the same way, some think pure forms of religion would bring in utopia, whereas others think there is something oppressive about any religion. I'm not sure there is anything particularly different about Communism as a political philosophy which means it is inevitably worse than anything else.

Also I'd say that there are plenty of examples of oppressive, corrupt regimes based on forms of capitalism. Communism is not really much worse that most other systems. If it is unholy, then surely everything else is too.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Yes indeed, you can tell a lot about people by the kind of company they keep ...


 

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Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think there is little evidence that Communism can work on a large scale without leaving the door open to a "strong-man" who usually tends towards oppressive.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
See the thing is that you're just mixing so many different complicated things into one messy moral barrel.

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Communism is an ideology which says it is possible for people to create a better world if they work together. That, in and of itself, is not evil.

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the authoritarian states that the Western countries routinely support - notably Saudi Arabia - for their own ends.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:

The difference between Pinochet and the Viet Cong, is that you still get people in power defending the former.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

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Originally posted by chris stiles:

The difference between Pinochet and the Viet Cong, is that you still get people in power defending the former.

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Bullshit.

When it comes to Latin American military dictators, Castro enjoys far more support in the West than Pinochet, and the Viet Cong remain well and truly romanticised.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Perhaps you could give an example of a communist government that isn't or wasn't authoritarian and which didn't or doesn't focus on sweeping aside opposition

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Cuba.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
when Castro is free to travel to the West and enjoy the hospitality of former heads of state.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
do you agree with me that it would have been legitimate for the Americans to invade and occupy North Vietnam in order to remove the communist government

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No. I do not agree with you.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
when Castro is free to travel to the West and enjoy the hospitality of former heads of state.

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If Castro ever travels to the West he deserves to be arrested, just as Pinochet was, over human rights violations.

Pinochet was an arsehole who deserved all he got, but he was responsible for fewer innocent deaths than is Castro.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Perhaps you could give an example of a communist government that isn't or wasn't authoritarian and which didn't or doesn't focus on sweeping aside opposition

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Cuba.

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What a pity that all those thousands of idiotic Cubans who drowned fleeing their country

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
No. I do not agree with you.

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Why not?

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
No. I do not agree with you.

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Why not?

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Firstly, because the DRV had a great deal of popular support in the north. (And in the south, but that's a different point.)

Secondly, because the USA had absolutely none.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Given that there have never been free elections in Vietnam how do you know much 'popular support' the communists had?

Also how much 'popular support' exactly do you think is needed for a 'lawful' mandate to form a government? I mean Franco had 'a great deal of popular support' in Spain in the 1930s, do you think that made his government 'lawful'?

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
how many are simply seeking a better life?

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
democracy is going to be flawed.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
No, it's going to be non-existent, and will remain so until Vietnam's communist government disappears into the dustbin of history.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

We couldn't have won WW2 without the Russians

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It wasn't just Waugh and Orwell who denounced Stalin.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Are the Cubans taking desperate measures to get to the US that different from the people taking desperate measures to cross the Med to get to Europe? Do we really believe that Cubans do it to escape political oppression, whereas those from various parts of northern Africa do so to escape war and abject poverty? Communism is not the only thing people seek to escape from, nor is it the only reason why people consider their lives so bad that they're willing to risk their lives for the remote chance of something better.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Given that there have never been free elections in Vietnam how do you know much 'popular support' the communists had?

Also how much 'popular support' exactly do you think is needed for a 'lawful' mandate to form a government? I mean Franco had 'a great deal of popular support' in Spain in the 1930s, do you think that made his government 'lawful'?

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It's reasonably safe to assume that Ho had more support than a US-led invasion.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Well actual invasions are rarely popular. The question is would a government put in place by the Americans have been less popular than the communist government. Is there any evidence that its reasonable to assume that?

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Who's counting?

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But Bush-2 wins over him.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Well actual invasions are rarely popular. The question is would a government put in place by the Americans have been less popular than the communist government. Is there any evidence that its reasonable to assume that?

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Well actual invasions are rarely popular. The question is would a government put in place by the Americans have been less popular than the communist government. Is there any evidence that its reasonable to assume that?

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No, the question is the actual invasion. Considering that Vietnam had been under Chinese occupation, French occupation, Japanese occupation and French occupation again, what makes you believe that an American puppet government would have been any more welcome? Apart from wishful thinking, that is.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
What makes you think a communist block puppet government was more genuinely popular then an American one would have been?

Of course invasions are unpopular, the invasion of Iraq was unpopular there but that doesn't mean that if Saddam Hussain were alive today and free to run in Iraqi elections that he would win.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
What makes you think a communist block puppet government was more genuinely popular then an American one would have been?

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
What makes you think a communist block puppet government was more genuinely popular then an American one would have been?

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Please note, this is not, and never has been a justification for an invasion, which is what you're portraying it as. So change the record.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The justification for invading North Vietnam was its aggression against South Vietnam, a country whose government had, if anything, more legal legitimacy than the government of North Vietnam.

You were the one trying to claim that the Northern Government was somehow more legitimate due to being more popular but you've given no evidence of that supposed popularity.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
You were the one trying to claim that the Northern Government was somehow more legitimate due to being more popular but you've given no evidence of that supposed popularity.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Certainly not the stooges who treat Castro as some sort of cool cultural icon, because it would expose him as the mere thug that he is.

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Originally posted by Gee D:

Alan Cresswell, I'm not sure why you raise Biafra. The attempted secession there was due to many factors, probably the chief of which was the artificial nature of Nigeria. Also supposedly playing a part was the wish of BP-Shell Mex to have a secure supply of oil from the extensive fields there. There was much criticism of BP for interference. Strange that in more recent times, BP/Shell has been criticised for not intervening in local affairs.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Are the Cubans taking desperate measures to get to the US that different from the people taking desperate measures to cross the Med to get to Europe? Do we really believe that Cubans do it to escape political oppression, whereas those from various parts of northern Africa do so to escape war and abject poverty? Communism is not the only thing people seek to escape from, nor is it the only reason why people consider their lives so bad that they're willing to risk their lives for the remote chance of something better.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I am happy to call Castro on human rights abuses just as much as Pinochet. And add LBJ, Nixon and Bush 1 and 2 to the list. Clinton too, come to that for some of his bombing raids.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The justification for invading North Vietnam was its aggression against South Vietnam, a country whose government had, if anything, more legal legitimacy than the government of North Vietnam.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
when Castro is free to travel to the West and enjoy the hospitality of former heads of state.

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If Castro ever travels to the West he deserves to be arrested, just as Pinochet was, over human rights violations.

Pinochet was an arsehole who deserved all he got, but he was responsible for fewer innocent deaths than is Castro.

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Did you even read my post? People in power continued to support Pinochet.
 

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Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
It's hard to say what Salavdor Allende's Chile would have looked like. Marxist, democratically elected, but offended American investors who helped the aforementioned in this thread, Pinochet.

I also consider the USA-engineered coup in favour of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, which the Americans lied and labelled as over-throwing communistic governance, but wasn't. Wiki summary.

Both of these examples do let us know that it didn't matter if you were a commie or not, if it challenged the foreign investment from the USA, you were sold as a commie to the American public and thus worthy of overthrown. The Americans didn't ever export democracy, that was what they were over-throwing. Has not America preferred authoritarian regimes in the decades of the cold war and after?
 

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Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :
 

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Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Isn't there a huge leap from "something going on in another country is wrong" to "USA needs to jump in and impose it's own solution"?

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Originally posted by rolyn:
I'm guessing China has the right kind of Communism?

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Originally posted by Belle Ringer:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The justification for invading North Vietnam was its aggression against South Vietnam, a country whose government had, if anything, more legal legitimacy than the government of North Vietnam.

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Even if your argument were wholly true, if no South Vietnamese person supported the reunification of the country under Northern rule (when schoolgirls drew a map of their country for me, they did not stop it at the DMZ!), if the South had a wholly legitimate government supported by the citizens, if North were pursuing a War of Aggression and not a Civil War -

I still don't see why USA had any right (much less any duty) to intrude and drop bombs all over the place and kill 2 to 3 million people maiming millions more (not even all the Americans killed by the war are on the wall, only the ones on active duty military).

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Please speak for yourself and your community when talking about Americans loving war. In my region, every peacenick within a 250 mile radius has been driving around with a "bring back our troops" bumper sticker since 2002. And every town in between Point Reyes and Monterey has a corner in which the Women in Black stand, to the appreciative waves and honks of the community, for just as long.

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Belle Ringer:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The justification for invading North Vietnam was its aggression against South Vietnam, a country whose government had, if anything, more legal legitimacy than the government of North Vietnam.

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Even if your argument were wholly true, if no South Vietnamese person supported the reunification of the country under Northern rule (when schoolgirls drew a map of their country for me, they did not stop it at the DMZ!), if the South had a wholly legitimate government supported by the citizens, if North were pursuing a War of Aggression and not a Civil War -

I still don't see why USA had any right (much less any duty) to intrude and drop bombs all over the place and kill 2 to 3 million people maiming millions more (not even all the Americans killed by the war are on the wall, only the ones on active duty military).

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The US had the right to be there because it was an ally of the government of South Vietnam which was the lawful government of South Vietnam. As for reunification the government of South Vietnam had a much stronger claim to be the legitimate government of the whole country than the government of North Vietnam, being the legal successor of the previous legal government of the entire country, the French colonial authorities.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
- Heck, you'll be telling us next that the US colonists had some kind of God-given right to rise up against the legitimate Government that ruled them at the time ...

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I think this question might get repeated in response to my last answer so I will answer it now. The US colonists had no such right. The lawful government of the colonies in 1776 was the British crown. Not only did the colonists have no God given right to rebel but Christian colonists were, in my view, morally obliged to be 'Tories' Romans 13 1-7.

The founding fathers for the most part were rich hypocritical slaveholders who used the rhetoric of 'liberty' to avoid paying their taxes and respecting their lawful government. The US government did not become the lawful government of the States until the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Well - some agreement at last ... although I'm not sure about the 'Tories' bit based on the passage in Romans you cite ...



I don't have an issue with the US gaining its independence, of course - although I'd rather it had come about by negotiated means rather than through violent rebellion. Not that I can do anything about that after the event, of course! Nor would any of us have been in a position to alter things at the time.

I'm not sure I see how the treaty of 1783 made the US Government any more legitimate - other than in a de facto way - seeing as it came as the result of armed rebellion which only ended when the British Parliament decided not to pursue the war any more.

It was an expensive business, fighting those uppity Colonists ...

Mind you, the same principle applies to any number of coups and usurpations throughout history - be it Henry Bolingbroke toppling Richard II or William and Mary ousting James II or ...

The only real issue I have with the Founding Fathers thing is the way they are venerated and promoted as somehow saintly Christian patriots when many of them, as you say, were slave-owning landowners with an eye for the main chance and a largely Deistic philsophy to boot ...
 

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Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
Revolutions: never listen to a snake with a marketing plan, you'll end up killing your brother.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I think my main point of disagreement with you on the Vietnam topic, Bibliophile, is that you seem to assume that an earlier aggressive push by the USA against North Vietnam would have settled the matter without recourse to the dirty-tricks and reprehensible tactics later employed by US forces and successive Presidential administrations.

I don't see how this follows.

Correct me if you think I've got the wrong end of the stick.

The implication seems to be that had the US acted strongly and with the full weight of its military power in the first instance then thousands of lives would have been saved - regrettable though those lives that would have been lost would have been.

Is that a fair summation of your position?

If so, I don't see how it follows. Given the stiffness of Viet Cong resistance to US and South Vietnamese forces - their use of underground tunnels, guerilla tactics and so on -- it's highly likely in my view that had the US taken and occupied North Vietnam they would have been forced to use weapons of mass destruction, dragonian clampdowns on civilian populations and much else besides.

They weren't fighting a conventional army that would sign an Armistice as the Germans did in 1918.

Of course, we can get into discussions about the morality of the nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of WW2 -- or counter-historical scenarios such as whether the kind of push on Berlin recommended by General Pershing in 1918 would have prevented the rise of the Third Reich - or simply sparked some kind of Bolshevik revolution within a defeated Germany ...

Or whether 'Stormin' Norman' Schwarzkopf was right to call for an advance on Baghdad and 'regime change' in the First Gulf War.

All these things, to borrow a T S Eliot phrase, remain a perpetual possibility, only in a world of speculation.

Of course, there's no way of determining whether my objection would be 'right' either - but I suspect that had the US gone into North Vietnam in the way you advocate there would have still been the use of chemical weapons, there would have still been mass carpet bombings and thousands of civilian casualties, there would still have been My Lai style massacres - and successive US administrations would still have lied both to the US people who elected them and to the international community.

Of course, that remains a surmise. But given the track record, I suspect a reasonable one.

Quite apart from the issue of the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese regime - or the desirability of a Communist one (and no, I don't think Communist regimes are desirable either) - this to me is an issue you have signally failed to address.
 

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Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
(sigh)

Just listening to NPR. A new book has come out that references a bunch of recently declassified information that (among many, many other things) reveals that Nixon snuffed out a peace accord between North and South Vietnam while he was still Vice President. Wait till I take office, he said, and I will offer you a sweeter deal.


It didn't get any better from there.
 

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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
If the guerilla fighters of Vietnam could win against the strongest army in the world, what makes you think that individual fighters could not have organised against the Vietnamese government if they had wanted to?

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Plenty of countries have descended into civil and tribal war after the US Army left, why didn't Vietnam?

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
No, it's going to be non-existent, and will remain so until Vietnam's communist government disappears into the dustbin of history.

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Funny, though, that Vietnam's economy is growing at a very rapid rate. Maybe the Vietnamese do not want to consign it to the dustbin of history, perhaps they think it has been very successful.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
People from Vietnam and Cuba have left their countries for economic reasons, not for political reasons. I thought everyone knew that.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
This perpetuates the romantic myth that the Viet Cong were heroic, freedom-loving "village Hampdens", forced to fight with whatever lay to hand.

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They were in fact communist ideologues out to forcibly impose neo-Stalinism on their fellow-Vietnamese; they intimidated and conscripted civilians to help them,; they were assisted by North Vietnamee regulars; and they were equipped by both China and the Soviet Union.

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Because an authoritarian regime with an intelligence and vengeance organisation which infiltrates down to the grass-roots village level (very similar to the Mafia) can quite easily intimidate a society and deter any semblance of dissent.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
What you really mean is, “I thought everyone realized that only middle-class Westerners of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon lineage appreciate higher values such as democracy and freedom, and that the duty of hoi Third World polloi such as Cubans and Vietnamese is to be content in their socialist paradise theme parks which we visit on our slumming holidays. If they try to escape, they must be motivated by shameful greed and materialism – no other motive is conceivable”.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
they beat the strongest, best armed, best organised army the world has ever seen

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
This is nothing about letting anyone off the hook. Some like to pretend that Communist states are the worst thing that have ever happened - even when examples such as Vietnam and Cuba clearly are many times better than many many worse non-communist states.

Human right abuses in Vietnam and Cuba should be highlighted and discussed, but we should also note that these are not the worst currently existing on the planet either. Our "friends" are frequently far worse than our communist "enemies".

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
so Kaplan with his somewhat right-wing leaning position is bound to take a different line to those of a more leftward or liberal persuasion.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

My unavoidable point is that the Western intelligentsia have cut them more slack than other abusers by ignoring, rationalising or, in rare cases, supporting the abuse, not out of communist sympathies, but out of a desperate fear of appearing unfashionably anti-communist.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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They were in fact communist ideologues out to forcibly impose neo-Stalinism on their fellow-Vietnamese; they intimidated and conscripted civilians to help them,; they were assisted by North Vietnamee regulars; and they were equipped by both China and the Soviet Union.

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If you were talking about North Korea, I would agree with you. But not much evidence of this in Vietnam.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
My unavoidable point is that the Western intelligentsia have cut them more slack than other abusers by ignoring, rationalising or, in rare cases, supporting the abuse, not out of communist sympathies, but out of a desperate fear of appearing unfashionably anti-communist.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It is like Left has nothing better to do than remind everyone how evil Communism is, even whilst the evidence is against them.

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

Communism doesn't have to be as bad as the Kim dynasty's North Korea or Hoxha's Albania to be neo-Stalinist.

It just has to deny democracy, along with rights such as information, expression, assembly and independent judiciary, along with arbitrary arrest, detention and mistreatment of dissenters, all of which are true of Vietnam.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
People from Vietnam and Cuba have left their countries for economic reasons, not for political reasons. I thought everyone knew that.

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What you really mean is, “I thought everyone realized that only middle-class Westerners of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon lineage appreciate higher values such as democracy and freedom, and that the duty of hoi Third World polloi such as Cubans and Vietnamese is to be content in their socialist paradise theme parks which we visit on our slumming holidays. If they try to escape, they must be motivated by shameful greed and materialism – no other motive is conceivable”.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
My unavoidable point is that the Western intelligentsia have cut them more slack than other abusers by ignoring, rationalising or, in rare cases, supporting the abuse, not out of communist sympathies, but out of a desperate fear of appearing unfashionably anti-communist.

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In a few perhaps. Alternatively, we know that despotic, authoritarian one-party states are supposed to behave like despotic, authoritarian one-party states. That's not cutting them slack. The slack-cutting comes when we turn a blind eye to our liberal democratic selves behaving like despotic, authoritarian one-party states, because we're the good guys, right?

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quote:

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According to the International Labour Organization's 2015 report, around 120 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are involved in child labour around the world - boys and girls in this age group are almost equally affected.

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quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
It's hard to say what Salavdor Allende's Chile would have looked like. Marxist, democratically elected, but offended American investors who helped the aforementioned in this thread, Pinochet.

I also consider the USA-engineered coup in favour of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, which the Americans lied and labelled as over-throwing communistic governance, but wasn't. Wiki summary.

Both of these examples do let us know that it didn't matter if you were a commie or not, if it challenged the foreign investment from the USA, you were sold as a commie to the American public and thus worthy of overthrown. The Americans didn't ever export democracy, that was what they were over-throwing. Has not America preferred authoritarian regimes in the decades of the cold war and after?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ikkyu:

A lot of the repression in Cuba has been in direct response to American aggression. If Cuba had been more "democratic" they would have gone the way of Allende or Arbenz quite fast.

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quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
They don't even bother to put ideology out there as an excuse any more, it's not needed. the need for resources and cheap labour is right on the table.

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quote:

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"... the Persian Gulf, the critical oil and natural gas-producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protect our economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices." -John Bolton, George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations

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quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It is far from unusual for normal democratic processes to be suspended in times of war. Was it a sign of a dictatorship that Churchill was chosen to be PM in 1939, and that the 1940 general election was cancelled?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

What seems to be happening here is that Bibliophile is accepting that the US acted reprehensibly in Vietnam but is putting the blame for that fairly and squarely on the US's enemies - the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Vietnam.

'Sure, we sucked, but they made us suck - we had no alternative ...'

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quote:

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Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves, only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.

We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary.

In recent months, attacks on South Vietnam were stepped up. Thus is became necessary to increase our response and to make attacks by air. This is not a change of purpose. It is a change in what we believe that purpose requires.

We do this in order to slow down aggression.

We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely borne this brutal battle for so many years and with so many casualties.

And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam, and all who seek to share their conquest, of a very simple fact:
We will not be defeated.
We will not grow tired.
We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.

The first step is for the countries of Southeast Asia to associate themselves in a greatly expanded cooperative effort for development. We would hope that North Vietnam will take its place in the common effort just as soon as peaceful cooperation is possible.

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Well there's your problem right there. These are purely defensive war aims. This is purely about defending South Vietnam. Nothing about defeating North Vietnam just about 'convincing' its leaders to "take their place in the common effort" for 'peaceful co-operation'. This kind of defensive position left the US on the back foot from the start because you are trying to defeat an enemy whilst telling them you want them to stay in place. Wars are not won by 'Slowing down aggression' they are won by defeating it.

Notice as well the betrayal of the South Vietnam government in the middle of pretending to support it "Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam" The government in the South had a good case for being considered the legitimate government of the whole of Vietnam (the Northern government's only claim to being the lawful government of North Vietnam being the Geneva Conference). By talking about 'independence' for the South Johnson is already indicating his lack of support for this aim.

By adopting this purely defensive posture the US helped turn it to a war of attrition which may well have made the suffering worse not better (e.g. see my earlier comments about Agent Orange).
 

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Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :
 


Operations Rolling Thunder, Linebacker and Linebacker II?

Besides, Johnson LIED about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The first "incident" was real, but staged, in that the USS Maddox was set up on a deliberately provocative patrol in order to incur an incident for political purposes. The second report incident in fact never occurred, as admitted by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

That the Maddox was deliberately sent in to act provocatively has been substantiated by both US Navy officials and Maddox crew who were on the scene.

Vietnam claimed a 12-nautical mile territorial limit, identical to what French Indochina had claimed under France since. The incident occurred 8 nautical miles offshore.

Please, bibliophile, read some history.
 

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Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
Nope, your actual problem is that by the time Johnson said those fine words, the war had been going on for 10 years, and the American-approved military coup (the first of many) had executed the Vietnamese president.
 

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Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on :
 
My family and I lived in Ireland for a year and one of the quirks of the year was the fact that people talked a great deal about the Vietnam war. My children were in primary school and even kids that age would comment and want to debate about the war. My kids, to be honest, had never heard much about the war really except that we didn't mention it in front of certain uncles who had served. They also took field trips to Kilmainham Gaol and so the whole year was filled with very deep conversations.
 

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Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
they beat the strongest, best armed, best organised army the world has ever seen with better tactics in a war of attrition.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

Communism doesn't have to be as bad as the Kim dynasty's North Korea or Hoxha's Albania to be neo-Stalinist.

It just has to deny democracy, along with rights such as information, expression, assembly and independent judiciary, along with arbitrary arrest, detention and mistreatment of dissenters, all of which are true of Vietnam.

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There's a fair number of non-Communist states, including many Western allies, that tick those boxes.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The slack-cutting comes when we turn a blind eye to our liberal democratic selves behaving like despotic, authoritarian one-party states, because we're the good guys, right?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:


The point is not that we are "the good guys", ie infallible, but that our systems allow for open criticism of our governments, and the opportunity to bring them to book at the next election.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:


Operations Rolling Thunder, Linebacker and Linebacker II?

Besides, Johnson LIED about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The first "incident" was real, but staged, in that the USS Maddox was set up on a deliberately provocative patrol in order to incur an incident for political purposes. The second report incident in fact never occurred, as admitted by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

That the Maddox was deliberately sent in to act provocatively has been substantiated by both US Navy officials and Maddox crew who were on the scene.

Vietnam claimed a 12-nautical mile territorial limit, identical to what French Indochina had claimed under France since. The incident occurred 8 nautical miles offshore.

Please, bibliophile, read some history.

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quote:

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Writing after the war, Robert McNamara stated that by spring 1967 he and other civilians in the administration had become convinced that both Rolling Thunder and the ground war in South Vietnam were not working.[88] McNamara claimed that he and others within the administration continuously opposed the Joint Chief's recommendations for an increased tempo of bombing and the loosening of target restrictions.[89] The generals found themselves on the horns of a dilemma of their own making. They continuously claimed that the campaign was working, yet they also had to continuously demand greater latitude in order to make the campaign succeed.[90] The limited goals entailed in American foreign policy and the military's goal of total victory were simply not reconcilable. The great conundrum had then become how to defeat North Vietnam without defeating North Vietnam.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Nope, your actual problem is that by the time Johnson said those fine words, the war had been going on for 10 years, and the American-approved military coup (the first of many) had executed the Vietnamese president.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The slack-cutting comes when we turn a blind eye to our liberal democratic selves behaving like despotic, authoritarian one-party states, because we're the good guys, right?

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You don't get it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Nope, your actual problem is that by the time Johnson said those fine words, the war had been going on for 10 years, and the American-approved military coup (the first of many) had executed the Vietnamese president.

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In other words the North Vietnamese aggression against South Vietnam had been going on for ten years and the South Vietnamese government was no more democratic than the Northern one. Your point being?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The slack-cutting comes when we turn a blind eye to our liberal democratic selves behaving like despotic, authoritarian one-party states, because we're the good guys, right?

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You don't get it.

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No, of course I get it. I (and many others here, it seems) just don't agree with you.

However you want to frame it, civic duty, enlightened self-interest, holy imperative, my job is to hold my government to account in every way possible. You marched against the Vietnam war, and that went on for 20 years. Maybe you should have broken stuff and burned shit down instead,

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
I believe that there were people who tried that. Not in North Vietnam or any of the Communist countries backing the North obviously, anyone trying that there would have been shot.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
My point being that you quote a proven liar in mid-lie to support your argument.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Nope, your actual problem is that by the time Johnson said those fine words, the war had been going on for 10 years, and the American-approved military coup (the first of many) had executed the Vietnamese president.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
My point being that you quote a proven liar in mid-lie to support your argument.

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No you said

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Nope, your actual problem is that by the time Johnson said those fine words, the war had been going on for 10 years, and the American-approved military coup (the first of many) had executed the Vietnamese president.

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In other words the North Vietnamese aggression against South Vietnam had been going on for ten years and the South Vietnamese government was no more democratic than the Northern one. So once again your point being

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I've just realised that the university term's finished...

Okay. So - despotic North Vietnam vs despotic South Vietnam. Which side do you support? Explain your reasoning using no more than one side of A4, and remember that quoting known liars mid-lie will lose you marks.
 

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Posted by Komensky (# 8675) on :
 
I'm still returning marks and attending meetings. The term is not quite over yet.

K.
 

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Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
]I believe that there were people who tried that. Not in North Vietnam or any of the Communist countries backing the North obviously, anyone trying that there would have been shot.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
my job is to hold my government to account in every way possible.

Maybe you should have broken stuff and burned shit down instead,

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quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Because being shot whilst innocently protesting (and/or just walking down the street) never ever happens in free countries.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
How would Jesus have defeated North Vietnam?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
How would Jesus have defeated North Vietnam?

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He didn't attempt to overthrow the Roman Empire, so I doubt He would have tried to defeat North Vietnam either. Not this side of the Second Coming.

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One of the radical things about Jesus, he didn't seem interested in who governs or how. Just like he didn't seem interested in accumulation of wealth. His value system seems to consider the political aim of governments irrelevant.

I don't know if this can be pushed as far as Pot Pol or Hitler. Honestly don't know. Don't fear those who can take your life, fear those who can take life and soul.

It's about one on one relationships. About how we regard and treat those we encounter in daily life, including those who seek to impose some government's will and those who seek to do us harm.

I expect Jesus reaction to the NVA, the VC, the puppet South Vietnam government, Ho Chi Minh, the USA's lies to support escalating and prolonging the war, would be to point to the peace that passes understanding. Jesus view of the nature of reality and the values and goals worth pursuing doesn't seem to include overthrowing governments, as if that's irrelevant.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Unless I'm missing something, as radical as Doc Tor tries to be - advocating civil disobedience, violent protest etc - I don't detect a great deal of support there for the kind of oppression carried out by Communist regimes in the USSR, China, Cambodia etc.



There's seems some kind of out-of-kilter moral equivalence thing going on here.

What's worse? Lying to the American electorate and the international community in order to prolong the war and scupper peace initiatives? Or wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and going to Cuba or Vietnam for your holidays?

Nobody is saying that because LBJ and Nixon were serial and compulsive liars that this justifies Stalin's treatment of the Kulaks or the Chinese clampdown on protests in Tianamen Square or Pol Pot's genocidal policies.

Heck, it's already been pointed out that it was Communist North Vietnam that put paid to Pol Pot's reign of terror - not the liberal democratic West.

Acknowledging that doesn't mean that North Vietnam was squeaky clean nor does it mean that the liberal democratic West is some kind of monster.

It seems to me at times reading this thread that some regimes are deemed incapable of any good or milk of human kindness at all - simply because they are Communist ... and that others are deemed equally incapable of goodness and light simply because they are Capitalist ...

There's polarisation on both sides.

I can't see why we have to whitewash North Vietnam in order to express moral repugnance at US actions - any more than the latter means that we are demonising the US in every respect.

How does accusing LBJ and Nixon of being scheming, lying and devious in any way exonerate Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Mao or Stalin of being scheming, lying and murderous?



Yes, Communist regimes can be repressive - and the problem Communist apologists have is to find an example of a Communist regime that hasn't been. All they can come up with are potentialities -- Such and Such a Place 'could' have become some kind of socialist democracy, Such and Such a Place could have broken the mould ... if it hadn't been for those pesky kids ... if it hadn't have been for the US/The World Bank/Western democracy ... delete as appropriate.

So, on that score there's a case to answer.

But at the same time the onus is on Bibliophile and Kaplan to demonstrate how initial, early action by the US against North Vietnam could in any way have prevented - rather than initiated - a blood-bath. It would simply have brought the grinding bloodletting forward in time.

I'm still waiting for an answer to that one.
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
Excuse me, who exactly are you accusing of being a Communist apologist?
 

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Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Every lost war seems to leave a trail of people arguing that it could have been won. Old generals are supposed to lament, that with X thousand good men, and the right strategy, I could have cut off the head of the snake.

I do think that N. Vietnam would have been a meatgrinder for the US, and the political recoil/blowback would have been something else, and hugely unpredictable.

Iraq shows the issue of unintended consequences, e.g. the rise of the militants across the region. But I suppose there are still generals and politicians who swear that Iraq 'could have been won', whatever that means.

I wonder if any Brits still lament, we should never have left India!

It's quite scary to look into the fantasies of the fantasist.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I didn't say you were a Communist apologist, Mr Cheesy, I was thinking aloud and in more general terms. I know an ageing Communist back home in South Wales - old school 'British Communist Party' type -- he was always 'in denial' about Communist regimes in various parts of the world.

Interestingly, he went cycling in Poland in 1980 when the Solidarity thing was at its height. At the same time, a lad I knew from university - also on the far left but from a more 'modern' form than the old style BCP types - was also there at the same time. They both observed the same events, saw the same issues and spoke to people involved on both sides.

Needless to say, their conclusions and perspectives on exactly the same issues were -- ha ha unintended pun warning -- poles apart.

They didn't know each other and I knew each of them in a different context. Talking to them you could have been forgiven that they'd both been visiting separate countries, not the same one.

All that said, I do think there's some unnecessary polarisation going on on this thread - some white-washing on both sides.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for Bibliophile to explain how a US invasion of North Vietnam couldn't or wouldn't have ended in a bloody quagmire in the same way that subsequent large-scale US invasions of anywhere else have done.

The triumph of hope over experience?

Or ignoring the historical evidence?
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
Well, sorry, I'm not whitewashing anything. Vietnam and Cuba are not the world's worst states even though they're Communist. Not by a long chalk.

That isn't whitewashing, that is just a fact.

I don't like being tarred by the brush you seem to be waving in my vicinity.
 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
Minor correction. Gamaliel wrote:

quote:

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Heck, it's already been pointed out that it was Communist North Vietnam that put paid to Pol Pot's reign of terror - not the liberal democratic West.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Because being shot whilst innocently protesting (and/or just walking down the street) never ever happens in free countries.

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Yes, it does occasionally, after which there is an enormous outcry and investigation, because in a liberal democracy it is regarded as aberrant and outrageous.

Sorry, but I simply do not believe that you are incapable of drawing any distinction between an episode such as Kent State, and the systematic, government-sanctioned killing of tens of millions of victims by communist regimes in China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Kampuchea and elsewhere.

And under fascist and quasi-fascist regimes, too, but here we are talking about communism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Okay. So - despotic North Vietnam vs despotic South Vietnam. Which side do you support? Explain your reasoning using no more than one side of A4, and remember that quoting known liars mid-lie will lose you marks.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The last legal government of the whole of Vietnam was the French colonial authorities. The government of South Vietnam was the legal successor to that government whilst the Northern government could make no such claim and only became legal as a result of the Geneva conference.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
South Vietnam was allied to the West and North Vietnam was allied to the communist block.

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quote:

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this ally of the west was under attack from communist aggression and western countries had every right to respond in its defence.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The Viet Cong wouldn't have lain down and taken US occupation. They would have resorted to vicious terrorist tactics and that would have elicited a vicious response from the US military and their allies.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Don't assume that's true. The Nazis didn't resort to vicious terrorist tactics after Germany was occupied by the Allies because they knew they had been beaten. he republicans didn't resort to vicious terrorist tactics in 1940s Spain because they knew they'd been beaten. The Viet Cong did resort to them because they were being directed from North Vietnam, which the Americans had made clear they didn't want to defeat, only have a truce with. A thorough defeat of communism in Vietnam would have put a stop to most terrorism.

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quote:

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Anyway I can't prove that different tactics would have resulted in fewer deaths but then to argue that war should never be fought in the face of aggression if it might result in extra deaths is to argue in favour of either pacifism appeasement, which I don't.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The last legal government of the whole of Vietnam was the French colonial authorities. The government of South Vietnam was the legal successor to that government whilst the Northern government could make no such claim and only became legal as a result of the Geneva conference.

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(my italics) It wasn't. I've told you before that the original South Vietnamese government came to power in a fraudulent election. That government was in turn overthrown in a coup d'état.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
South Vietnam was allied to the West and North Vietnam was allied to the communist block.

---

OK, just working on that assumption (though, having details of the relevant treaties that formalised these alliances would be nice) ...

quote:

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this ally of the west was under attack from communist aggression and western countries had every right to respond in its defence.

---

Assuming there was a formal treaty, there would still have been valid reasons why the US government didn't need to respond with military force to aggression from the north. But, if they did have an obligation to assist in the defence of the south that still doesn't necessarily mean a right to invade the north.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Iraq shows the issue of unintended consequences, e.g. the rise of the militants across the region. But I suppose there are still generals and politicians who swear that Iraq 'could have been won', whatever that means.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Do you think the Allies had the right to invade Germany in 1945? If so why?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Iraq shows the issue of unintended consequences, e.g. the rise of the militants across the region. But I suppose there are still generals and politicians who swear that Iraq 'could have been won', whatever that means.

---

But the Americans did win the war in Iraq. The Iraq war does have something in common with Vietnam but its not what you think. What it has in common is that in both countries the aggressor won. It overthrew the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussain and replaced it with a government much more useful to its interests

Sure there has been a rise of militants there, sectarian and ethnic militias fighting to carve up power for themselves keeps Iraq weak and divided. What makes you think that doesn't suit American interests just fine?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
So are you saying that it has all been planned? It sounds to me as if you are raising the ad hoc to a towering principle. Hindsight is an exact science.

Well, it keeps Iraq weak, and destroys the lives of thousands of people; still, I guess you can see some benefit in that.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
So are you saying that it has all been planned? It sounds to me as if you are raising the ad hoc to a towering principle. Hindsight is an exact science.

Well, it keeps Iraq weak, and destroys the lives of thousands of people; still, I guess you can see some benefit in that.

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Not necessarily planned but it doesn't harm their interests. Keeping Iraq weak helps America to dominate the middle east, divide and rule. What was definitely planned was the defeat of the Ba'athists and that was fully achieved.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Komensky:
In fact, declassified US gov't documents reveal that one of the major concerns regarding the draft was that they might not have enough of a domestic army to quell the dissent against the Vietnam War. As DocTor has shown, the National Guard certainly gave it a go.

K.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
In a similar way, Communist countries like China and the USSR would undoubtedly have funded and supported Viet Cong insurgency against the US occupation or any other US-backed administration from then on.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
So are you saying that it has all been planned? It sounds to me as if you are raising the ad hoc to a towering principle. Hindsight is an exact science.

Well, it keeps Iraq weak, and destroys the lives of thousands of people; still, I guess you can see some benefit in that.

---

Not necessarily planned but it doesn't harm their interests. Keeping Iraq weak helps America to dominate the middle east, divide and rule. What was definitely planned was the defeat of the Ba'athists and that was fully achieved.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
You write as if the defeat of Saddam Hussein's degraded Ba'athist forces were some kind if major military achievement rather a push-over by better equipped forces.

Defeating Saddam Hussein was the easy bit. Dealing with the fall-out was always going to be a lot harder. That's the aspect that was not properly thought through.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
You were the one trying to claim that the Northern Government was somehow more legitimate due to being more popular but you've given no evidence of that supposed popularity.

---

Popular liberation front led by charismatic freedom fighter, vs venal corrupt puppet state installed by fiat.

Not accepting the evidence isn't the same as not being supplied with it. Move on.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
What on earth is your justification for calling the Vietnamese Communist party a 'liberation movement' (it wasn't)? What is your evidence for calling it 'popular', begging the question? What on earth is your justification for calling Ho Chi Minh a 'freedom fighter' when he devoted his life to setting up and maintaining a one party police state in Vietnam?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
What on earth is your justification for calling the Vietnamese Communist party a 'liberation movement' (it wasn't)? What is your evidence for calling it 'popular', begging the question? What on earth is your justification for calling Ho Chi Minh a 'freedom fighter' when he devoted his life to setting up and maintaining a one party police state in Vietnam?

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You know all the answers to these questions. You just don't like them.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

The third question I don't know either. I know he pretended to be a 'freedom fighter' but given his hostile attitude to freedom once he actually got power it seems obvious to me that he was lying about that. I don't know why you think he actually was a 'freedom fighter' when the evidence suggests the opposite?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kelly Alves:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:

The third question I don't know either. I know he pretended to be a 'freedom fighter' but given his hostile attitude to freedom once he actually got power it seems obvious to me that he was lying about that. I don't know why you think he actually was a 'freedom fighter' when the evidence suggests the opposite?

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I think that goes back to what Alan said about freedom fighters world wide traditionally turning into dictators. They are fine doing the dirty work, and great at the rhetoric, but the minute power lands in their hands, it's all "WHY WON'T YOU DO IT MY WAY, YOU INGRATES??"

To suggest this is a strictly Vietnamese problem ignores Mexican history, Cuban history, Argentinian history, French history, and I am sure someone will be along to provide some American equivalent. I just can't think of one. Probably just dumb luck that we have avoided a one-state coup, but heck, we are not even 250 years old.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:

This also ignores the trend of US military (and others) to fight the next war like it was the last war. I'm not sure the US brass would have known how to fight protracted guerrilla war a North Vietname invasion would have offered as they didn't really go through one until they met up with the VC. Heck, the US military still doesn't do anti-insurgent warfare well and is really afraid of getting bogged down (which seems to be their major lesson from Vietnam).

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
What on earth is your justification for calling the Vietnamese Communist party a 'liberation movement' (it wasn't)? What is your evidence for calling it 'popular', begging the question? What on earth is your justification for calling Ho Chi Minh a 'freedom fighter' when he devoted his life to setting up and maintaining a one party police state in Vietnam?

---

You know all the answers to these questions. You just don't like them.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Calling a neo-Stalinist dictatorship a "liberation movement" and its myrmidons "freedom fighters" is the most Orwellian comment so far on this thread.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
But at the same time the onus is on Bibliophile and Kaplan to demonstrate how initial, early action by the US against North Vietnam could in any way have prevented - rather than initiated - a blood-bath.

---

Where on earth did that come from bro?

Have you read anything that I have posted?

Bibliiophile and I are united in comdemning the imposition of a neo-Stalinist dictatorship on the people of Vietnam, and its support by Western lefty-trendies who wouldn't dream of living under such a system themselves.

I disagree with Bibliophile, however, on the practicability and morality of the US intervention.
 

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Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :
 
History is mostly written by the victors, and it's interesting to see the populist revolutions (insurgent uprisings) of England (1640's), France (1789) and the USA a few years later - with other countries. I particularly appreciated seeing our own revolutionary's statue (Cromwell) standing outside the Houses of Parliament when I had just returned from Latin America.

Most other countries (there may be exceptions I don't know about) seem to have gravitated towards dictatorships of various kinds. Probably one reason is that most of these would have been impossible had they not been sponsored or supported in some way by an external power wanting to increase its sphere of influence. And of course, popular uprisings that might lead to a similar result as England, France, USA are not only helped - they are blocked if they might be inconvenient. Nicaragua attempted something similar and the USA crushed it because they feared an alignment in Central America with Communist Russia - which also more or less describes the situation with Cuba. India did well under Ghandi's non-violent insurgency, only because external intervention was fairly minimal.

Also, in the case of England, France, the US and India, all were characterised by a resident power that was blinded by its own illusions of infallibility and might, thus allowing the beginnings of a popular revolution to grow and spread through the general population - instead of being largely constrained to a small and necessarily secretive group who would almost inevitably end up unwilling to share power. If this is not allowed to happen because the state clamps down (violently) on its naysayers, then the only option is external military "help" and violence - again led by a small clique who will not wish to share power. The US seems to be incapable of recognising that its mere presence create the conditions that prevent most countries following its own example. And although power in the US is supposedly democratic, it's actually wielded by a relatively small number of people - if not, how could we see the Kennedy clan and the Bush clan be in the centre of power in a way not dissimilar to the Gandhi clan's dominance of Indian politics? And not unlike 16th century Venice.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Yes - I would agree that an over-romanticised view of the Viet Cong as fresh-faced peasant freedom-fighters is an over-reaction in a lop-sided direction.

And yes, it can segue into Orwellian territory.

However, I don't see it as any more nuanced as the counter-factual narrative that Bibliophile is asking us to swallow - that had US bombing laid waste to the Viet Cong's fighting capacity and US tanks had rolled in and occupied their territory that the outcome would have been hunky-dory.

His citations of Germany after its surrender in 1945 and the quelling of Communist insurgents in Malaysia during the 1950s fail to consider the wider picture.

- Germany was occupied by an allied coalition, for a kick-off ... not one or other of the allies (whether the US, Britain, the USSR or the Free French, Poles and others) ...

- The Germans had a regular conventional army. They didn't have a guerilla force embedded within their population with external support from other countries.

- The UK took many, many years to quell the insurgency in Malaysia and only succeeded when they were able to cut off the rebel supply-lines and undermine their support in the villages -- and some pretty draconian internment measures too.

In Vietnam, the support for the Viet Cong from the USSR and China wouldn't have suddenly dried up in the event of a successful US invasion and occupation of Communist held territory. If anything, it would have probably increased.

It's difficult to see how the US could have counter-acted that without escalating the conflict and drawing in China and possibly the USSR into a major land war in the Far East.

Perhaps Bibliophile would have liked that. 'You make a desert and you call it peace ...'

Now - I have a fair bit of sympathy with your position, Kaplan. I don't like the way, for instance, that Kenyan insurgents like the Mau Mau are sometimes portrayed as more sinned against than sinning on account of some truly reprehensible counter-insurgency methods used by British Crown forces.

I can't see why we can't accept and condemn some of those measures and incidents without having to let the Mau Mau off the hook for the tortures, mutilations and ritual wierdery they perpetrated on their victims - including many of their own people.

Same with the Vietnam thing. I'm fully prepared to acknowledge that the Viet Cong were brutal and repressive and also supported and manipulated by larger power-blocs - such as China and the USSR.

Acknowledging that doesn't mean I have to accept Bibliophile's rather less nuanced version of events - nor Doc Tor's for that matter ...



I think that Bibliophile is wrong. Wronger than a wrong thing can be.

He is wrong because his view of history is selective at best, because he doesn't take into account context and consequences and plucks completely unrelated incidents that bear little comparison to this particular campaign and uses them as templates for what he hopes might have happened.

It's an almost Panglossian view of the world and one that fails to take into account the messiness involved in any military action or invasion.

Or at least, acknowledges the messiness but seeks to elide it or brush it under the carpet.

That might be a caricatured view - and I am deliberately over-egging things to bring out those points. I don't believe that Bibliophile's world-view in real life can be anywhere near as unnuanced - good guys in white hats, bad guys in black hats - as I've made it out to be here.

As with most of these things - there's a middle position somewhere.

What Kelly Alves said about the family anecdote about hippies jeering returning veterans at airports is a case in point.

I don't doubt that happened. My uncle by marriage in Australia says the same thing.

What I think has happened there is that the stories conflate several incidents and 'impressions'. Kelly Alves's returning veteran uncles may not themselves have been jeered at airports - and they probably returned to military airports anyway - but they may very well have encountered scorn and contempt from the hippy-dippy lefty constituency in some form.

It's like my brother-in-law's late mother's 'folk memories' of the Tonypandy Riots in 1910 - in which her father was set upon and beaten up by fusiliers in parade uniforms. The details are fuzzy and the memories not strictly accurate (this happened before she was born and the stories were handed down in the family) -- but when his other brother researched the records and accounts he found a surprising amount of evidence to back up some of the details we'd previously doubted.

The point is, what Kelly Alves's mum will be remembering would be a 'mood' as much as specific incidents - although I am sure that incidents like that did take place.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Thanks Kaplan for your challenge and correction - I take that on board. Your position is different to that articulated by Bibliophile and I was wrong - and highly unnuanced - to lump you both together.

So I apologise for that and do accept that your agreement with Bibliophile that Stalinist-style communist insurgency had to be resisted - but that you don't share his overly optimistic view that this could have been achieved by initial US bombing and occupation of communist-held territory in Vietnam.

So, yes, a fair cop.

I'd rather you didn't call me 'bro' though.

You've called me in the past for saying, 'Fair dinkum, Cobber ...' so I'd also appreciate it if you desisted from calling me 'bro'.

Thanks
 

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Posted by Bibliophile (# 18418) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Calling a neo-Stalinist dictatorship a "liberation movement" and its myrmidons "freedom fighters" is the most Orwellian comment so far on this thread.

---

Why? Presumably you've no objection to Ho Chi Minh as leader of a resistance group fighting Japanese occupation, with support and training from the US between 1941-45. Is that not a fight for freedom?

---

quote:

---

When he stood up in 1945 as Chairman of the Provisional Government (of all Vietnam) to read the Declaration of Independence (based on the US Declaration) did he suddenly morph into a dictator, or was he still fighting for the freedom of his country from foreign government?

---

quote:

---

Yes, he ended his political career as a neo-Stalinist dictator. That doesn't mean that he didn't reach that position as a genuine fighter for the freedom of his country from foreign control - be that Japanese or French. I've said it before, it's a rare revolutionary leader who makes a good President after the revolution has been won. I guess the US got lucky with Washington (and, it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't do a lot of daft stuff as President).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Presumably Kaplan doesn't like the answers, either. History is just so inconvenient.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
And yes, trendy Western lefties wouldn't dream of living under a neo-Stalinist dictatorship themselves.

Granted.

But would US Republican 'righties' want to live under the kind of right-wing and despotic regimes that the US has so, so often imposed on other countries in a bid to protect them from the former.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
What I find reprehensible about Bibliophile's position - if I understand him correctly - is that he seems to have an almost Machiavellian might = right approach that will seek to blame reprehensible US actions on everyone else - 'we were forced to do it, we had one arm behind our backs' - rather than accept the intrinsic immorality of some of these actions.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Presumably you've no objection to Ho Chi Minh as leader of a resistance group fighting Japanese occupation, with support and training from the US between 1941-45. Is that not a fight for freedom?

---

No it isn't, its a fight against Japan.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Calling a neo-Stalinist dictatorship a "liberation movement" and its myrmidons "freedom fighters" is the most Orwellian comment so far on this thread.

---

Why? Presumably you've no objection to Ho Chi Minh as leader of a resistance group fighting Japanese occupation, with support and training from the US between 1941-45.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'd rather you didn't call me 'bro' though.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
So, to conclude: war started for bad reasons, sustained with lies, fought illegally, and then lost.

And because you get to choose which warmonger gets in, that's okay: your responsibilities are done.

Yep. I get it.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
That gives me an excuse to repost
this. See especially # 4

....

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

When he stood up in 1945 as Chairman of the Provisional Government (of all Vietnam) to read the Declaration of Independence (based on the US Declaration) did he suddenly morph into a dictator, or was he still fighting for the freedom of his country from foreign government?

---

He was never fighting for freedom of his country. He wanted to change his country from being a French colony to being a Communist block client state dictatorship.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by LeRoc:
I find the rule "only the movement that liberated the country from the colonising power is the legitimate government" very weird. In most African countries, the original liberation has been removed from powerby a coup d'état at some point (usually the first in a series). Does that mean that most African governments are illegitimate?

---

Haven't got too much to add to this (although I am reading it) but surely the answer to that is probably yes but with two clarifications:

1) except where the liberation movement handed over peacefully after a free election
2) with the caveat that most states, being rational actors, do deal with the regime of another state if it has the power and is therefore the de facto authority - it's been a long time since Taiwan held China's seat at the UN after all.

Having said that, is it the UN or the BBC (or both) that until really recently made a point of calling Myanmar "Burma" because they didn't accept the legitimacy of the regime and therefore didn't believe it had the right to change the country's name?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
And yes, Quetzalcoatl, the legitimate French government of Algeria was a lesser evil than the FLN insurgents, so this makes it acceptable for the French authorities to have used torture techniques against them that had been used against the French themselves during the Nazi occupation.



The Viet Cong were sponsored by Stalinist and Maoist regimes and weren't real freedom fighters but stooges who wanted to establish client Communist states.

This means that it was perfectly legitimate for the US to use dirty-tricks after the French withdrawal, first to prop up its own client-regime in the region and then, when that didn't work, to resort to increasing levels of lying, cover-ups and subterfuge to maintain a presence in the area.

Silly me, how foolish of me not to appreciate that ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3bVJAe8xVY
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
'You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about ...'

Adrian Mitchell, 1965
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 

quote:

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betjemaniac: Haven't got too much to add to this (although I am reading it) but surely the answer to that is probably yes but with two clarifications:

1) except where the liberation movement handed over peacefully after a free election
2) with the caveat that most states, being rational actors, do deal with the regime of another state if it has the power and is therefore the de facto authority - it's been a long time since Taiwan held China's seat at the UN after all.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
And yes, Quetzalcoatl, the legitimate French government of Algeria was a lesser evil than the FLN insurgents, so this makes it acceptable for the French authorities to have used torture techniques against them that had been used against the French themselves during the Nazi occupation.



The Viet Cong were sponsored by Stalinist and Maoist regimes and weren't real freedom fighters but stooges who wanted to establish client Communist states.

This means that it was perfectly legitimate for the US to use dirty-tricks after the French withdrawal, first to prop up its own client-regime in the region and then, when that didn't work, to resort to increasing levels of lying, cover-ups and subterfuge to maintain a presence in the area.

Silly me, how foolish of me not to appreciate that ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3bVJAe8xVY

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:

---

betjemaniac: Haven't got too much to add to this (although I am reading it) but surely the answer to that is probably yes but with two clarifications:

1) except where the liberation movement handed over peacefully after a free election
2) with the caveat that most states, being rational actors, do deal with the regime of another state if it has the power and is therefore the de facto authority - it's been a long time since Taiwan held China's seat at the UN after all.

---

I'm talking about a country like Ghana. Nkrumah (the liberation movement president) has been ousted from power in 1966. A lot of things have happened since then, and now John Mahama leads a reasonably democratic government. I've never been to Ghana, but can we realistically say that Mahama's government is illegitimate and that Nkrumah's CPP should still be in power?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Presumably you've no objection to Ho Chi Minh as leader of a resistance group fighting Japanese occupation, with support and training from the US between 1941-45. Is that not a fight for freedom?

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No it isn't, its a fight against Japan.

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And, so a fight against an occupying military force is not a fight for freedom?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
[QUOTE]Is it, then, just a matter of how long the occupying power had been present? Five years and it's resistance, 50 and it's fighting for freedom?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
If we haven't got that, all we're arguing about are degrees of illegitimacy - colonial rulers and their puppet governments being at the very bottom of the pile, and popular liberation movements a long way ahead of them.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
And yes, Quetzalcoatl, the legitimate French government of Algeria was a lesser evil than the FLN insurgents, so this makes it acceptable for the French authorities to have used torture techniques against them that had been used against the French themselves during the Nazi occupation.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
And please note, that 'actually fighting for freedom' will be defined by Bibliophile according to certain strict conditions, also defined by Bibliophile, all in the best possible taste.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:

quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
And please note, that 'actually fighting for freedom' will be defined by Bibliophile according to certain strict conditions, also defined by Bibliophile, all in the best possible taste.

---

Well you cold have a very broad definition. I still don't see how you could describe fighting against one dictatorship in favour of another 'fighting for freedom'

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Well you cold have a very broad definition. I still don't see how you could describe fighting against one dictatorship in favour of another 'fighting for freedom'

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
Stalin fought against Hitler and Hitler fought against Stalin, does that make either of them 'Freedom fighters'? Clearly not. Dictator Chiang Kai-shek and would be dictator Mao Tse Tung each fought to free their country from the other, does that make either of them 'freedom fighters'?

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1. War between states. One nation attacks another, the other defends, potentially at some point the roles are reversed and the original aggressor is on the defensive. Hitler v Stalin from your question. No freedom fighters, just soldiers (may include irregulars).
2. Civil war. Two factions within the same nation state battle things out for control of the nation. Chiang Kai-shek v Mao Tse Tung from your question. Again, no freedom fighters.
3. Rebellion against colonial control. Now, here we have the freedom fighters. Those who consider their freedoms curtailed by government from another country. Most rebels will not be in a regular army (they may be deserters from a regular army, but they're basically irregulars) Possibly could be a form of civil war if one region rebels against control from another. Could be part of a conventional (number 1 above) war if they are resistance fighters against an occupying military force

quote:

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Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The French were the lawful government of Algeria.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
On what basis? Did the Algerians vote for them?

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quote:

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itsarumdo: I particularly appreciated seeing our own revolutionary's statue (Cromwell) standing outside the Houses of Parliament when I had just returned from Latin America.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
So once again what is your reason for thinking that the Vietnamese communist party was popular?

---

quote:

---

Why do you think it merits the title 'liberation movement'?

---

quote:

---

Why do you consider them to have been 'freedom fighters'?

---

quote:

---

And I would be grateful if you didn't tell me I already know the answers because I genuinely don't.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
So once again what is your reason for thinking that the Vietnamese communist party was popular?

---

Because there were lots of Vietnamese people in it.

---

quote:

---

They collected taxes, often in the form of food supplies, intelligence on enemy movement, and service as laborers rather than in money. They formed local militias, which provided trained individuals, but they were certainly willing to use violence against reluctant villagers.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

---

Why do you think it merits the title 'liberation movement'?

---

Because Vietnam was a colony of successive empires and they didn't want live in a colony any more.

quote:

---

Why do you consider them to have been 'freedom fighters'?

---

See above.

quote:

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And I would be grateful if you didn't tell me I already know the answers because I genuinely don't.

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You're welcome.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by LeRoc:
If you gained independence during the Cold War, you had to choose a side. Third Way bravery (or posturing) aside, you needed the support of one of the superpowers.

Yes, this led to some communist dictatorships, but choosing the capitalist side wasn't a guarantee for democracy either. Mobutu Sese Seko is an example.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
They would have been better off if the Belgians had stayed in charge. Its no good just wanting to replace colonialism unless its going to be replaced with something better.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
They would have been better off if the Belgians had stayed in charge. Its no good just wanting to replace colonialism unless its going to be replaced with something better.

---

You are, of course, serious.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The Belgian Congo administration did more to develop the country than any other administration in that country before or since, building schools and hospitals, roads and factories where none existed before.

---

quote:

---

In 1908, after an international outcry, Leopold was forced to hand over his territory to the Belgian Government. They controlled the Congo until independence in 1959. The number of murders diminished but mutilations and exploitation continued.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
The Belgian Congo administration did more to develop the country than any other administration in that country before or since, building schools and hospitals, roads and factories where none existed before.

---

Joy.

quote:

---

In 1908, after an international outcry, Leopold was forced to hand over his territory to the Belgian Government. They controlled the Congo until independence in 1959. The number of murders diminished but mutilations and exploitation continued.

---

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
reaping the whirlwind of scorpions.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
You should have joy for schools and hospitals, roads and factories. As for 'violence and exploitation' I think you'll find it has been rather greater since the DRC got its 'independence'. The governments since 1960 have been worse than the Belgian Congo administration.

---

quote:

---

Anyway why should that matter to you? We've already established that for you anything that replaces a colonial authority or a colonial client state is a good thing and it doesn't matter if, as in Vietnam, the 'anti-colonialists' are more oppressive to their own people than the colonialists they are trying to replace.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bibliophile:
You should have joy for schools and hospitals, roads and factories. As for 'violence and exploitation' I think you'll find it has been rather greater since the DRC got its 'independence'. The governments since 1960 have been worse than the Belgian Congo administration.

---

I think you'll find that was 'mutilations and exploitation'. Mutilations. That was the word you edited out. Mutilations.

"Here's a lovely school, shame we had to cut your hand off and can't now write with it."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You have it firmly fixed in your mind that because I'm disagreeing with you regarding American involvement in Vietnam, and as an aside, the whole colonial era of invasion and exploitation, I'm somehow the enemy of all that is right and decent. That's the kind of unnuanced, sub-par, first-year politics student debating tactics I've grown very weary of lately.

Every people have the right, if not the duty, to overthrow colonial powers, and indeed, undraw the lines on the map imposed on them by people sitting in offices thousands of miles away. Because people also suck, these struggles are often doomed to failure, but that's just another aspect of colonialism's awful legacy.

To say that the DRC is in a worse state after the colonial power has left is a wilful, heartless denial of the fact that colonialism caused all those problems in the first place. It's as if the Belgians drowned the country in twelve feet of shit, and on leaving, gave everyone a three-foot stepstool.

And don't get me started on Sykes-Picot.

You started this thread on the premise that the North Vietnamese were aggressors against their neighbours, yet simply will not engage with the idea that 'North' Vietnam was a bastard aberration spawned by colonial powers determined to keep some of their spoils. Yet somehow everything that subsequently happened was the communists' fault. That is a particularly stupid and short-sighted thesis which collapses at the first examination.

Do better.

---

I'm certainly not suggesting that you are the 'enemy of all that is right an decent'. I'm am saying that what you seem to be saying throughout this thread is that any 'liberation movement' (such as the Vietnamese Communist Party) is preferable and more legitimate to any colonial power simply by virtue of being anti-colonialist.

You say that "Every people have the right, if not the duty, to overthrow colonial powers, and indeed, undraw the lines on the map imposed on them by people sitting in offices thousands of miles away." but you haven't argued for this proposition, just asserted it as if it were self evident.

As for the poor state of the DRC being the fault of the Belgians how did colonialism cause all on the problems? Roads schools and hospitals are in in a bad state after 55 years of independence but that infrastructure would not even be there in the first place without the colonial administration.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
That's not possible Doc. This IS his best. I've been him and worse, but it takes decades and a certain wiring whose weakness is its strength. I know you were being rhetorical and know all this. You can't do better either
 

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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 

quote:

---

Alan Cresswell: The biggest problems ISTM are:

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:

Every people have the right, if not the duty, to overthrow colonial powers, and indeed, undraw the lines on the map imposed on them by people sitting in offices thousands of miles away.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin60:
Hey Bibliophile. Everything you say is 110% correct and true and valid and ... everything. Everything you infer. Everything. What then do you lack?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by LeRoc:
When a country like Congo-Kinshasa became independent, the number of people with a university education was probably a handful.

---

quote:

---

Anglican't: 18. I remember watching a documentary about the Congo years ago and this was mentioned. The startlingly low figure has stuck with me ever since.

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