I’ll have to look that up my friend! I admit to not reading that many Ho-Chi-Min biographys. Still even if that was so, as history goes old Ho never pursued what he “envisioned” to any greater effect, than invading Kamputchea after, as you pointed, out being attacked.
The the pertinent fact remains: Vietnams intervention resulted in the end of a regime responsible for the death of 2 million of it’s people. The US effectivly supported that same regime, financialy and politically in the UN. American intervention killed 60 thousand americans and many more Vietnamese (a figure someone). All of Indochine still became communist, as pointed out by earlier posts.
Thailand, Indonesia and the Phillipines did not.
This is how the domino effect was proven wrong.
One example of the “sometimes ruthless support” you are refering to here would be that of Suharto in indonesia, whos coup-detat killed between 500 000 and a million. The 500 000 estimate is the official Indonesian one. He went on to, in 1975, invade and occupy East Timor, which resulted in an estimated 200,000 deaths in a population of only 700,000.
But still “Indonesia has remained a key US ally and the recipient of billions of dollars in American military and economic aid over several decades” as discussed here:
An account of US policy on how Suharto handles his internal affairs as recent as 1998 (during the Clinton administration), right before his fall from power because of domestic economic difficulties can be found here:
As to the Bush administration boycot of foreign aid to organizations who is associated with abortion; This was stated in the context of the US admitting that its economic contributions was unfortunatly finding their way to the Khmer Rouge, and that that was regretable, but necessary.
My point was that in other contexts there seem to be no problem in keeping money from ending up in “unsuitable” places, if the will exists. The organisations that are associated with abortion are often also the ones trying to provide condoms, for example in AIDS sticken nations. But i can aknowledge that my other example was more pertinent here.
Finally, West Berlin, and the rice theft. Actually I was somehow thinking of Western Germany, but i did write about West Berlin. My bad. What you have there is pretty well-founded speculation. But speculation it is.
And the rice theft: well again i’ll have to look that up. I simply haven’t heard anything about that incident. I still don’t get how an event a decade earlier can be more of a foundation for the rise of Pol Pot than the bombings carried out in the years before.
But……we lost Cambodia in 1975 as opposed to the early sixties or even the fifties (as a worst case scenario), the same with Vietnam and Laos. Also, by the time we lost them they were war torn nations which needed to concentrate on rebuilding their infrastructure rather than spreading revolution. And then, much to our delight (I’m sure) they turned on each other and we were able, by supporting Pol Pot (actually the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea which included the FUNCINPEC of Prince Sihanouk and the KPNLF of Son Sann) to keep Vietnam, and it’s puppets Kampuchea and Laos, busy until the Soviet Union began to collapse and the Cold War ended.
But as I say, take away the Vietnam War and assume a united communist Indochina at a much earlier date and you’ve got a whole different scenario. And if you’re not aware, Pol Pot staged a series of attacks on Thailand as well as on Vietnam and the attacks on Thailand were often carried out in cooperation with Thai communists. If Pol Pot had hated the Vietnamese just a little bit less things might have been very different.
I don’t know Indonesian history all that well, but I am under the impression that they got their arms from Britain and that both Britain and the US were, at the very least, “involved” in the coup which brought Suharto to power (at least Chomsky says we were). And I believe he got US cooperation in crushing the communist movement in Indonesia.
(On preview I see that RandySpears seems to have posted some material on Indonesia which supports my point, that it didn’t just turn out peachy keen for no reason but was, in fact, a bloody mess.)
Now it’s true that in the case of Indonesia and “supporting” Pol Pot after the Vietnamese invasion we did our “fighting” without the actual use of American troops. But it’s all part and parcel of the same package as Vietnam and Korea. Namely containment. And I certainly don’t believe that we could have gotten away with not using troops in Korea and I doubt that we could have delayed the Vietnamese for very long given the size of the communist infrastructure.
As for France and Italy going communist, you may have a hard time envisioning it but the post-war US government certainly didn’t. In Italy’s first election in 1946 the communists received the second most votes and if you combined their votes with those of the socialists they would have won. So when the communists and socialists combined to form one party in 1948 Washington was worried. I won’t go into a lot details but we basically held up a lot of foreign aid (which war torn Italy needed very badly) and launched a propaganda blitz making it clear that if Italy leaned to the left they were out of luck as far as we were concerned. Yet the communists/socialists still were able to come in second.
France adds a little irony. In the first post-war election in France the Communist Party was the single strongest party with 26% of the vote, but they were unable to form a coalition and so had to settle for the office of Vice Premier. The Irony lies in the fact that Truman had initially been pressuring France to act on Vietnamese independence. The French communists realized that the people were worried about losing the Empire and that this was a weak point for those parties which sided with the US, so they came out in favor of the Empire even though colonialism was generally anathema to communists. It was concern over strengthening the French communists that caused Truman to support French colonial claims in Indochina and that is really the beginning of our real involvement there. Sad, but ironic.
By the way, you’re correct about the French. The French communists probably had the weakest ties with Moscow of any communist party in Europe. If they had gone communist they would probably have been another Yugoslavia, but there are no guarentees.
I thought that Granada was about the fact that the Cubans were building an airport which could handle Soviet long range bombers there.
So should we percieve your general stance on the morals of US foreign policy “defending our freedom” as: any means used was justified, even if that at the time meant any means possible?
As a young man my father served two tours as a Recon Marine in Vietnam. In one tour he was a forward observer infiltrating enemy territory to direct artillery fire from ships a hundred miles away. Forward Observors tended not to live very long, but my father got lucky. He attributes his survival on this first tour to the ract that he was so sure he was going to die, that he was no longer panicked by the prospect. His second tour he served as a Sniper with a Recon unit, was briefly captured and had most of his teeth beaten out of his head with a rifle butt before he was rescued.
My father went because he was told that communism was a threat and that his country needed him. Back then, if you were my father and your country called on you, you did not question it. You answered the call for help and you served.
Whether or not you agree with Vietnam, Communism was a real threat, and my father trusted his country to use his life wisely when he put it in his country’s service.
So, if you ask what rights of yours my father fought for for you, I’ll tell you that it was all of them. Every one. If you feel our country did not use our men wisely that may or may not be a valid argument. I honestly don’t know. I do know that it’s a moot point. Whether or not our country failed or made a wrong decision or used our men unwisely reflects not at all on the quality of the men who answered the call.
I can respect people who protested the war. Men like Mohammed Ali protested openly and accepted the penalty for their convictions that led them to civil disobediance. I see honor in that.
For those that ran and hid, or partied, or enjoyed the age of Aquarius while others did their duty, I have nothing for contempt.
Oddly, my father does not share that contempt. Though he’s never said as much, my father does not words on the cowards, or the shirkers, or those who rationalized their way out of answering their country’s call, of doing their duty, and decided they’s rather have fun and let somebody else worry about it. I’ve always felt that my father’s absence of malice was pretty much akin to the same absence of malice he displayed when the dog ate some food off the kitchen table. He didn’t blame a dog for being a dog. In the same way, those who refused to serve and simply enjoyed the liberties my father fought for did not deserve contempt. Contempt was something you reserved for equals. For men.
I’ll answer your question again: My father fought for all of your rights and liberties, because when he was called upon to do so, he went.
Their is a huge gulf of athority and integrity between those who answered and those who ask what they were fighting for. The very fact that you should ask and not understand is all the proof that’s needed that they succeeded.
How ridiculous. Is this an example of what passes for critical thought on the left these days? You’re seriously suggesting that Reagan got ‘revenge’ for a bombing of American troops by a terrorist in the Middle East by attacking a small island country thousands of miles away, overthrown by Communists? Does that make ANY sense?
For the record, Grenada was subject to a bloody coup by a Marxist dictator, supported by Cuban troops. Not only were the 1000 students at risk, but if the coup had stood, the Soviet Union would have had yet another client state in the U.S.'s back yard. It was clearly an unacceptable situation, and allowing that coup to stand would have signalled the Soviets and Cuba that the U.S. would not oppose military intervention in the hemisphere. The result of THAT would have been a larger military action somewhere else, and the U.S. would have been forced to respond. When are people on your side going to learn that the way to peace is to oppose aggression, rather than to appease it?
Cuban ‘contractors’ with military training, each armed with an AK-47, and supported by 184 Cuban special forces armed with 12.7mm AA guns, heavy machine guns, and mortars.
Last time I drove past a construction site here in town, I noticed that the guys driving the asphalt machines weren’t armed with assault rifles. Funny that.
Well, in the case of 1000 students, how about the right to not be arrested and held hostage, or executed as spies, or… We have no idea what might have ultimately happened, because thank God Reagan didn’t let that aggression stand. As for whose freedom the U.S. was fighting for, how about the Grenadans who cheered in the streets when the American troops arrived?
Or do you seriously think that Grenada would be a better country today if the Communist dictator had remained in power?
If your father had been told that RTA was the threat what would your father have done?
I suppose only fighters and men deserve freedom. Because that is what your father was fighting for. Not the people of America, but for himself and his worldview.
Well, I’d say Scylla’s Dad made a good-faith response when he was called to serve.
Still, I was puzzled by one part of Scylla’s post.
---------“For those that ran and hid, or partied, or enjoyed the age of Aquarius while others did their duty, I have nothing for contempt.”
Ok, I understand the “ran and hid” argument. The other part is unclear to me. You’re saying I’m hypothetically suppose to volunteer for a war that looks nuts to me? Or if I don’t, I’m suppose to devote myself 24/7 to opposing it? I know you didn’t say the forgoing, but my problem is that I’m not sure what you are saying.
Really? Merriam-Webster defines aggression as:
1 : a forceful action or procedure (as an unprovoked attack) especially when intended to dominate or master
That being the case you right wingers. in order to keep the peace, had better start opposing that philistine in the White House for the aggresive action he is about to take on Iraq.
I’d ask the Vietnamese about that. Of course, the only ones free to speak are over here …
I must have missed that mathematical proof that the domino theory was wrong. So we learned the communists weren’t out to spread communism after all?
No one has a right to stifle your dissent.
OTOH, military might is, realpolitik, pretty much the assurance of our rights. If we didn’t have the military, we wouldn’t have rights.
It did occur to me Hubzilla that the majority of those in the military are rear echelon types who never see or do any “fighting” per se but I am open enough to charges of being anti-military and anti-veteran without referring directly to those who, to quote Patton, “shoveled shit in Louisiana” and asking how they can with a straight face claim that they “fought for my rights”.
People like Scylla’s father are to be commended for their valiant and good-faith service but if you don’t mind I will continue to profess that unquestioning obedience and the dewy-eyed reverence for same are not necessarily virtues. That is a Victorian mindset. Hair-raising details of service aside, there is a disconnect between talking about how the father went because he was called upon by his country to fight Communists and how the father was fighting for our freedoms because he went. As far as unmitigated contempt for those who partied their way through the Age of Aquarius, what of Mr. Bush himself? (I know I know, “He was a fighter pilot”; sure.)
Re: Grenada. I remember the time well. We had the bombing in Beirut, which provoked much anguish in the US and second-guessing about our role overseas. Just a few short days later, we pulled an overwhelming blitzkrieg on a little speck of an island nobody had ever heard of, and it was sold to the public as the biggest military triumph since D-Day and as a major wellspring of American pride.
I really don’t place a lot of stock in the alarmist intelligence reports that the Reagan White House released about why they had to jump in there so all of a sudden. I believe the indications that Reagan and his handlers were very angry and frustrated about Beirut and pulled the foreign-policy equivalent of kicking a small dog across the room.
DD Goose’s “Decatur Kiwanis Club” analogy is quite good and makes perfect sense though I still question how club membership grants full credit for past accomplishments, that is, how club members can honestly claim full credit for events they had no participation in. By honestly I mean self-honesty. (Take me for example. I served in the peacetime Army four years and you better believe I fought - I fought to stay warm and dry while in a hole in the ground out in the forest! No thanks for my service to my country are necessary.)
As far as the Supreme Court, again, there is never any fighting involved. The Supreme Court does not fight anyone. It is the nine-pound hammer that ends all fights and brooks no discussion.
Freedom, as we in the west know it, is far more fragile than most of us would think. We were born into it, assuming our sense of it to be the norm and entrenched.
It is a quirk of history that on a far flung island of humanity the seed of democracy and citizen right,the precurser to freedom, dormant for over a thousand years was reborn on the pages of Magna Carta. Through a series of unique historical events the concept bloomed and spread to this island’s progeny and close neighbours.
Most of the rest of the world’s countries however, it appears are ruled by dictators or oligarchies. That is the normal fallback condition of a country.
Whenever and wherever American soldiers fight under their flag, they are fighting for the freedoms within their own country by attacking the thugs who intend to subvert the path to freedom in the world. The security of an American’s freedom in the world is enhanced by opposing every small measure that challenges it. It is enhanced by every removal of dictatorship that enslaves people and thereby creating opportunities for freedom to spread. There is safety in numbers. America has never attacked a country/government during my lifetime that had democracy/freedoms comparable to its own.
I shudder to think what the world would be like if America never projected its power. I just can’t envision one plausible favourable scenario.
I’m afraid that isn’t quite the case. Though let’s forget about old Ho, cause he died in 1969. So let’s just talk about the Vietnamese, cause they went ahead with his plan without him.
Now, let me be blunt, international relations, even those between rather small nations, get very complicated, and they aren’t exactly my specialty. Which leads to two points, in order to really convince you of Vietnams intentions toward Cambodia and Laos I would have to write a book (or several books), and I’m not competent to write that book even if you had the patience to read it. But I’ll do what I can. Hopefully, if you really doubt my point, you’ll do some research on your own, which is all I could possibly ask.
So, Vietnam definitely received a set-back in Cambodia when Pol Pot came to power and he turned out to be anti-Vietnamese. But this definitely came as a surprise to the Vietnamese. In support of this I would point out that Pol Pot received a great deal of training and supplies from the Vietnamese and if the Vietnamese had realized Pol Pot’s true sympathies then they would have supported some other Cambodian faction. As a result of Pol Pot’s antipathy they made no progress in Cambodia until they finally invaded, regardless of their motives, and were able to set up what I believe even you will admit was a “puppet regime.”
But let’s look at Laos, where the Vietnamese had no such problems. And keep in mind what I have stated was the goal of the Vietnamese; to create a single Indochina united along the lines of the USSR. The importance of this is that the USSR always pretended to be a voluntary association of 16 separate and independent republics. So the plan was never to unify Indochina into a single country, but rather into an “association” of countries dominated by Vietnam.
Now Laos: I’ve already pointed out that as late as 1979 the Vietnamese had 30,000 troops stationed within Laotian borders. This alone raises questions about Laotian independence. But let’s see what Martin Stuart-Fox has to say in his A History of Laos. After Vietnam and Laos became communist, which happened at virtually the same time because the Pathet Lao were always dependant on the Vietnamese, a series of agreements were signed between the two countries which I won’t even try to detail; but here’s how Stuart-Fox describes the situation in 1978 after Vietnam invades Cambodia:
So the suggestion that the Vietnamese never pursued “Ho’s vision” doesn’t really hold water.
I think I covered this in my reply to RTA, but I’ll make the point again just to make sure………You’ve pointed out that my suggestion that, in the absence of a US willingness to fight, the Soviets would have taken West Berlin is just speculation. You are absolutely correct. We can’t know what “would” have happened. But, by the same token, you’re suggestion that Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines wouldn’t have fallen, and that is what you’re suggesting, is also speculation. We do not and can not know what would have happened in the absence of American fighting because America did fight.
And each of the above countries had rather ugly communist insurgencies on their hands in spite of American fighting. Do you actually believe that those insurgencies would have been lessened by America’s absence? I’ll admit it’s possible, but I have serious doubts.
No, my position is that that is an issue for another debate. In this debate I am only arguing that our actions served the purpose of maintaining a strong US “world presence” and that that “strength” did serve a purpose in preserving our “rights and freedoms.” Whether our actions were the “best possible actions” or even “justified given the circumstances” are irrelevant to this particular debate.
I think I’ve given a wrong impression here. You’re not looking for “an incident.” You’re looking for an ongoing problem which began in 1966. I hope that by now we can all agree that, despite lots of denials at the time, by the mid-60s Eastern Cambodia was pretty much overrun by the Vietnamese. And those Vietnamese needed rice. And they didn’t particularly feel like paying taxes on it. And the Cambodian government pretty much depended on those taxes. But this was a problem that extended from 1966 until the fall of Cambodia.
You can find it mentioned in the second paragraph here. Here they mention “over a quarter” of the rice crop vs my “two thirds.” I’ll anticipate your objection by pointing out that the amount varied from year to year and is based on “estimates,” so we’re both correct, give or take a little.
That’s some nasty shit. I can respect your father’s decision, even though I think it was a terrible, morally flawed decision, because he’s an equal. He’s a person trying to make ethical decisions in an ethically murky world.
My own father avoided going to Vietnam by claiming a skin disease. I consider this a much more ethical decision than choosing to go to war in Vietnam.
Less brave? Whatever. Bravery and ethics are kissing cousins, nothing more, and I respect an ethical coward more than an unethical bravado.
Duty? Whatever. From where I stand, it was the duty of every American citizen to work against the war effort, to impede it, to prevent its success. Your father, who saw things differently, believed it his duty to go to war.
Maybe you should check in with your father, learn why he respected people who didn’t cooperate with the war effort, rather than making smug assumptions about them and your father both. I suspect he may be wiser than you’re giving him credit for.
Lying is hardly an ethical act (Just ask Kant!) Your father should have imitated Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, and Thoreau by openly defying the draft law and taking the penalty.
First, Gobear, I deliberately left it vague as to whether he’d claimed the disease falsely. That’s because he wasn’t sure: he developed a rash, went to a doctor and told the doctor he thought it was psoriasis, and took the doctor’s prescription for psoriasis medication to the draft board.
Second, I see no dishonor in lying to an unethical bully. If person A intends threatens to harm person B if person B doesn’t commit an evil act, person B is under no obligation to accept person A’s threatened harm.
If you tell me, “You better go shoot Frank over there, or I’m gonna lock you up in my basement for two years,” and I say, “Gee, sorry, love to go shoot Frank, but I’m late for an important date,” I’ve done no evil by lying to you about an important date. I certainly don’t need to limit myself to your two arbitrary choices.
You only have a moral duty to accept the consequences of your actions if the person creating those consequences is also behaving morally. If they’re using unethical coercion, then they’ve forfeited a right to your honesty.
That’s my take, anyway. Of course, Thoreau and Gandhi decided to go an extra step: they decided to use martyrdom as a political tool. But nobody is obligated to act the martyr.