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May 06, 2005
Dean on Vietnam War Protesters...
Dean of Dean's World has this cogent critique of some Vietnam War protesters.
- I think it's clear that there were basically five types of people who opposed the Vietnam war:
1) Isolationists of the "this is none of our business" variety.
2) People who just didn't want themselves or their brothers, husbands, and sons drafted.
3) Liberals who thought it was a lost, doomed cause.
4) Pacifists of the "all war is bad" variety.
5) Communists, communist apologists, and generally anti-American dips***s.
The only people I really hold in contempt are groups 4 and 5. Pacifism is immoral, selfish, and destructive. Communism is as evil as Nazism. But the others are people I can understand and respect.
What disturbs me is that, in retrospect, a lot of people just sort of accept as axiomatic an historical view which reads, "this was an evil racist immoral war fought becuase America was a bunch of bullies and/or wanted to fuel the military-industrial complex." Honestly, that's the only position I take strong exception to. That and the revisionist history that goes along with it, most of which seems to have been concocted by groups 4 and 5.
Ho Chi Minh was never, ever a "freedom fighter," nor even a home-grown hero. Nor was he ever a sincere revolutionary who wanted help from the Western powers and only turned communist because "we gave him no choice." All of that is pure commie propaganda bulls**t. He was a KGB stooge and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist radical from day one. And when he got into power, exactly what the anti-communists said would happen did happen: the bloodletting was horrendous, and the oppression incalculable. The much-maligned "domino theory" was also vindicated, as neighboring regimes quickly fell (or in some cases very nearly fell) to totalitarianism.
Now it may be that we never should have gone there in the first place. It may also be that we made the right choice in going but conducted ourselves poorly. All of that is debateable. Either way, it is fair to say that America cannot stop all oppression and genocide worldwide.
In retrospect, the only thing I find genuinely contemptible in our exit was that, after the U.S. troop withdrawl, we broke our promise to the government of South Vietnam. We suddenly, and with little warning, cut off all the funding we had promised to give them so that they could defend themselves--and then sat on our hands while hundreds of thousands were butchered in the camps and millions more fled for their lives, with quite possibly as many drowning or dying of exposure as died in Uncle Ho's "re-education" camps.
What he says is true. Ho was a Communist from the begining. It is also the case that the domino theory was vindicated by events following our withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. It is also the case that the Congress (and the American people) left South Vietnam in the lurch, despite our sworn agreements to the contrary - with the result being that about 1 million South Vietnamese lost their homes and at least 150,000 were killed.
Posted by rakhier at May 6, 2005 04:18 PM