'Another Vietnam' may turn out to be compliment

[ieoeja]

Okay, I disagree with his final analysis. But I feel this article helps validate my opinion in an unrelated matter. Specifically, my suggestion that Vietnam was merely one front in the Cold War and that it succeeded in establishing freedom for other countries throughout the region has met with almost universal disdain. Vietnam vets get extremely angry when I make this assertion. Well, it turns out I am in good company with this opinion. From a Chicago Sun-Times column today:

"What of the significance of Vietnam as a local skirmish in the Cold War? Here we have the testimony of Asia's principal elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, first minister of Singapore. He has pointed out that the American intervention in the war halted the onward march of communism southwards for 15 years-- roughly from 1960 to 1975. In that crucial period, the new ex-colonial states of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, maybe India itself, took advantage of this incidental U.S. protection to develop from poor agricultural and trading post economies into modern industrial and information societies, more or less immune to the communist virus."

"If Lee Kuan Yew is to be believed, then, the U.S. intervention in Vietnam was a major factor is achieving the West's overall victory in the Cold War. It held the line while freedom and prosperity were established in non-communist Asia--and that provided the rest of the world, including the evil empire itself, with a "demonstration effect" of how freedom led to prosperity."


At least now I can quote an expert -- the first minister of Singapore -- instead of this just coming from "that long-haired liberal who doesn't know anything about it".

http://www.suntimes.com/output/osullivan/cst-edt-osul09.html

[expatriot]

1. anyone that reads my posts knows I am prettty damn radical...

...but i am scaring myself in that I think I am mellowing out. I have just formulated a new position on how the spread of Maoist-Stalinist Comintern was stopped in East Asia and it is not pretty. I mean what/who I give credit for it.

1. The CIA's unscrupulous activities in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, etc.

2. The increasingly rapid industrial/economic successes of Japan and the little dragons that didn't start picking up until the late sixties.

3. The war of attrition the U.S. fought with the NVA and the VC in Vietnam.


See this third reason I have stated scares me because I have never before admitted any constructive purpose for the bloody and nonsensical imperialist war in Vietnam -- even as a obstacle for the Comintern in East Asia. But perhaps our war of attrition bought time for western industrialism to "succeed" in the rest of East Asia, even though the war was doomed to be lost from the very beginnning.


I am also scaring myself in that while I am still a bitter anti-imperialist and there is no doubt that we were on the side of empire in the Vietnam War, the Comintern was also an empire (and I have said this for a long time) --- an tripartite alliance between a reborn imperial Russia, a remade dynastic China and an "International Anti-Colonialism" that both the Tsar Stalin and Emporer Mao supported as an ally against the Western Foe. Because we all know that the COMINTERN was about as Marxist as the Organized Church is Christian.

[ieoeja]

2. I agree with you 100%

While combating evil our leaders committed evil acts to achieve selfish goals. In the process they did accomplish some good, but only where it did not interfere with their ultimate aim: the enrichment of themselves.