Question about ethics of Cold War policy.

[MrFun]

So then why was it that later during the Vietnam War, our South Vietnamese allies increasingly went over to our enemy's side, Ned??

[Japher]

I always felt that absolut power corrupts absolutly. In communism it seems that it forms something of a dictatorship that gives one person the control over all worldly affairs... Now, that's a lot of power.

I think communism would of work had it not been for the really corrupt leader they had.

As for the equality thingy; stripping away once individualism is a definite downfall of communism, but in my opinion socialism does the same thing, yet it seems to work just fine for those who live there (excpet maybe for the health care issues). Communism may have worked had the oppresion by the corrupt leaders had not been so strong. If this had not been the case the doctors, laywers, artisans, farmers, etc... may have been more willing to do their job in the name of the state and for patriotic reasons, not just for fear of being killed if they didn't.

Another point; communist ideals has a share the wealth type economy feel to it. An issue I have with this is that needs are so much addressed by the different social structures within this ideal. For example, as a doctor in a hospital, in order to do my job well, I need supplies and support staff. If I am in a hospital I probably live in a larger city thus I need transportation to and from work, I probably need a supply of heat, transportation for my food, and myriad of other things. Whereas a farmer lives on their farm, needs very little support staff, has heat sources as near as the nearest tree, and has food coming out of the ground. Yet, both these people would get paid the same? The downfall of communism was not in their ideal, or political practices, per se, but in the economic reality of it when applied to the rest of the non-communist world.

[Arrian]

MrFun,

Clearly because they didn't want us there. A similar phenomenon is taking place slowly in SK. Despite the fact that NK is ruled by a terrible regime, South Koreans favor the "Sunshine Policy" (which, IMO, is appeasement, and we've been playing along for roughly a decade) because the people of NK are of the same ethnicity - not to mention families that are divided by the DMZ.

The difference being that the SV gov't was atrocious too, whereas the SK government has improved from a military dictatorship to a democractic government. So you don't have people wanting to go over to communism like in Vietnam. You just have people who want reunification (even if they have no clear idea how that's gonna happen) and the Amis to go home.

At least that's my perception of it.

-Arrian

[Ned]

Originally posted by MrFun
So then why was it that later during the Vietnam War, our South Vietnamese allies increasingly went over to our enemy's side, Ned??

The way the war was conducted by Kennedy and Johnson lead to a demoralization of our troops. They increasingly became a drug addicted, officer fragging mob.

Kennedy had taken over the war and had taken over the government. This, and the state of our troops, caused an increasing hatred of America in the countryside. As the countryside became increasingly anti-american, we became increasingly trigger happy with civilians because we could not distinguish between enemy soldiers and civilians. Our drugged out, ill-disciplined, corrupt, troops increasingly were viewed as the enemy by the local inhabitants. It was a vicious, downward spiral.

So, by the time Nixon took power in '69, there was no way to win that war even if he was inclined. We pulled out as fast as we could, and rightly so.

The funny thing is that Kennedy knew full well that we could not win that war without the support of the people. He was reluctant to take command of the ARVN and to assassinate Diem. Had he not died, he may have conducted the war differently from Johnson. However, we will never really know.

What is true is that Kennedy went to the defense of SV because it was attacked. Niether SV nor the US attacked the North.

[Shi Huangdi]

"Humans have never been to Mars... I don't have proof, so according to Shi, I'm Fezzing."

That is not a topic that is debated. The nature of socialism is up for debate. Marxist group have split up into a myriad of different factions, Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, etc. What is and what is not socialist is a subject which has been debated over in length. You apparently, however, lack the capacity to debate this subject at all, and so you just jump up and down screaming your bald-faced assertation.

"You seem to enjoy stereotyping everyone who disagrees with you "

You do this on practicaly every other thread, with your comments about "right-wing conservative puds" who are brainwashed by the media. Take your own advice about stones and glass houses.

"True, he failed to predict that peasants would revolt, but all the more reason to not consider the USSR a communist state as far as Marx described one. I think that it is important for a state to develope under capitalism instead of communism. Industrialization is exploitive in its nature, because you have to take away from current consumption to build the means of production. This happens much more naturally and more efficiently under capitalism. Exploitation has its rightfull place."

Well you are right in that they may have done better if the state in question had industrialized first, but also problematic to Marx's theory is that against his prediction no industrialized country did have a revolution, although East Germany did go communist. But I don't think you can have as a nessecary property for a type of system: "had system X previously". If a state has the properties of a socialist state, I would argue it could still be considered socialist even if it didn't form the same way Marx predicted.

"Since Shi did not want to answer my last question, can someone else answer it?"

I am sorry, but having a life means I can't always answer everything so quickly. The reason why socialism as it was practiced was evil was the oligarchical nature of said states and the fact that they practiced totalitarianism. Socialist states minimized freedom to extreme degrees, in many cases you didn't even have the freedom to leave the country, and they practiced cruel treatment of dissenters. Read Solzhenistyn's The Gulag Archipelago for a good read on the brutal nature in Soviet Russia. Also, socialism is inherently expansionistic given Marx's focus on international revolution.

[Sandman]

Well it was Marx who invented the term, although you are correct in that others have used it as well. However for the purposes of discussing the cold war, the "socialist" states of Western Europe were very much distinct from their socialist neighbors to the east. It wasn't the West European "socialism" we were fighting.

Marx did not invent the term. Robert Owen did.

[DuncanK]

Marx was the first to take a scientific approach

[Lancer]

Zkribbler, yeah I know. I was trolling the America haters. In fact half the casualties in Vietnam happened under Nixon. He wanted terms that wouldn't cause a civil war at home. There were alot of people who weren't ready to accept defeat. Though I was just a young teen I was one of them. Though it was over by then the defeat was one of the reasons I joined up the day I turned 17. Pissed me off.

BUT!

As you know Nixon was handed the mess by Johnson. IMO he was really the guy that screwed up and must bear the bulk of the blame. However, he was also handed the problem, though at the time it wasn't the festering wound it would become.

Any idea what year Eisenhower sent advisors?

[Ned]

Lancer, you and I both know that as we withdrew we beefed up the SV, even while forcing the NV to the bargaining table by end-running them on China and by bombing the **** out of Hanoi and Haiphong. At least Nixon had a plan to get us out.

Johnson, in contrast, was completely pathetic.

[Ned]

MrFun, The US never joined the anti-Comitern Pact, but instead recognized the USSR in '36. We were willing to play ball with uncle Joe until he betrayed us in Eastern Europe in 1946 by not withdrawing or allowing free elections. Stalin provoked the Berlin crisis, supplied Mao to take China, and authorized the NK invasion of SK.

Later, Kruschev came to the UN, slamed his shoe on his desk and shouted "We will bury you."

Kruschev backed Castro. When Kennedy scewed up the Bay of Pigs, Kruschev really turned up the heat. He erected the Berlin wall, moved missles into Cuba and escallated in IndoChina.

Kennedy was really in a mess largely because he rejected the detente that Eisenhower had observed and had shown real weakness not only with the Bay of Pigs, but during his first summit.

You can see that most of the above really had nothing to do with the US being aggressively anti-communist. It had to do with anti-West aggression by the USSR because of their communistic beliefs.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm familiar with the horrendous crimes that Stalin committed in the name of communism -- tens of millions of Russian lives were wasted.

What I'm saying is that if it is possible to strive towards communism through government policies without disregard for human rights and dignity, then communism in of itself cannot be evil.

I never mentioned, or even thought about Stalin in my post.

The problem is that it seems almost impossible to achieve communism through government policy. This is why Marx advocated revoluton.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Lancer
As you know Nixon was handed the mess by Johnson. IMO he was really the guy that screwed up and must bear the bulk of the blame.

Agreed.

Years ago, I heard an interesting commentary. Whoever was talking said that Johnson knew he had screwed up, and the guilt soon killed him. In contrast, Nixon always believed he had acted correctly, and so he lived to be an old man.

Any idea what year Eisenhower sent advisors?

Sorry. I'd have been during his second term, but that's probably not much help.

Originally posted by Ned
Mr. Fun, the US never declared war on any country that I can recall because they were communist.

The N. K.'s invaded S. K.

The N.V.'s invaded S.V., first through the Viet Cong. Then directly.

How 'bout Grenada?
(& of course, Cuba by proxy)

[Odin]

The only "right" communism takes away is to be greedy. A true communist state would be democratic since the workers, the majority, would have power. As people on this thread have said, the so-called "communist" nations in history are acttually socialist dictatorships, not true communist states. Cuba is probably the only nation that is close to being a true, democratic, communist state, although there are a few things in Cuba I am against (like the government telling you where to work ).

[Lancer]

Ned, we later hung the ARVN out to dry by not providing the ammo all that hardware we left behind needed. Sickening. Was that Ford or Carter? I can't recall. I just remember the ARVN falling back, lacking in everything, abandoned by the United States, losing itc all for want of supply, in dire need of some air support. Air support that for once would have found a very target rich environment. Even if we didn't have the backbone for airstrikes, some ****ing ammo... What a horror, dispicable.

Damnit, I can't recall now if that was Ford or Carter.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Lancer
Ned, we later hung the ARVN out to dry by not providing the ammo all that hardware we left behind needed. Sickening. Was that Ford or Carter? I can't recall. I just remember the ARVN falling back, lacking in everything, abandoned by the United States, losing itc all for want of supply, in dire need of some air support. Air support that for once would have found a very target rich environment. Even if we didn't have the backbone for airstrikes, some ****ing ammo... What a horror, dispicable.

Damnit, I can't recall now if that was Ford or Carter.

In order to get the SV to agree to the peace agreement, we agreed, but not in writing, to use our airpower against the NV's if they broke the deal. We also agreed to supply them.

Well, that was early 1973. In that same year, Congress passed the War Powers Act that handcuffed the president from committing American troops to combat.

Then we ran into Watergate in the same year. Nixon resigned in the summer of '74. It was during this time that the Democrat Congress, feeling its oats, begin denying administration requests for funding for the SV. Our allies became the "corrupt" Thieu regime. When things really got out of hand in '75, Ford went on TV and called for $730 million in emergency funding. The Democrat Congress said no. Because of this and the War Powers Act, he also did not commit US airpower to the defense of the South.

Ford was handcuffed by the Democrat Congress. The Democrats, including Kennedy who was there at the time, sold our former allies down the river.

This same Democrat Congress then evicerated the CIA. This arguably lead to 9/11.

To a Democrat, these were the golden years. They got Nixon, South Vietnam and the CIA. I hope they are proud of themselves.