Ah yes, it's been all downhill for the US capitalist imperialist running dogs and their western allies since 1968. Following the Vietnam defeat, the Soviet Union won the Cold War; East Germany and North Korea out-competed West Germany and South Korea; China demonstrated that Maoism works; Kampuchea took the moral lead in human rights; the feminist Taliban regime was elected to power in Kabul, millions of poor people illegally crossed the border from the US into Mexico... It can surely only be a matter of time now before the people of the world embrace socialism.

Interesting to note that Kampuchea under Pol Pot took their "moral lead" at the UN supported by the "beast" still lurking in its lair, the PR of China, Maggie Thatcher and the British SAS, and Thailand, and seeded Cambodia with minefields to continue the Vietnam war. And that the "beast" happily countenanced the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1978, just when the Vietnamese army was liberating Cambodia in answer to three years of Cambodian, Chinese-sponsored raids into Vietnam. History shows strange bed-fellows. Socialist beasts and capitalist beast all happily fornicating together.

I probably shouldn't dignify that ignorant comment by Saunders but against my better judgement I will. The comment is based on the premise that opponents of US imperialism are invariably in the former Soviet camp or are Stalinists of some form or other. Well, Saunders, plenty of leftists have also opposed Russian imperialism - didn't you read Passants comments on Russia's defeat in Afghanistan? And maybe you should read Socialist Alternative because it challenges the assumption that to be a socialist you have to support Soviet-style state capitalism (are you familiar with that term? If not, read Tony Cliff's work State Capitalism in Russia. Think outside the CIS box).

Whether you can pinpoint the Tet Offensive as the beginning of the end of the US as dominant force in world politics I think is questionable. What you can say is that it is likely that US economic and political dominance can't last forever and may well go the way of the Soviet empire and the British empire before it - based on statistical probability.

What twaddle.

So we are intended to believe that since Tet, the US has gone downhill? Are we also supposed to believe that Vietnam was NOT converted to a backward, broken-down totalitarian state - I suppose that isn't going backwards, whereas astonishing economic success and cultural penetration is?

We should recognise treason where it is sown. The media after Tet misrepresented the war as lost, and perjurers (like John Kerry) brought the Vietnamese people to failure and oppression, by self-defeating internal information warfare in the US.

“It is not often you can pinpoint the decline of a great empire. For the US January 30, 1968, 40 years ago, is a worthy contender.”

You know I could suggest similar points in history for the moment of decline of the USSR and socialism.

I could suggest the point was when the Berlin wall fell but that would obviously be wrong, more like it was when the Berlin wall was erected.

However, I could go back further and suggest it might have been when Hungary was invaded.

Or back further, when Stalin, through Molotov, made a pact with Hitlers nominee, Ribbentrop.

Actually the point which started the decline of Soviet tyranny was not even when Stalin came to power but when Lenin starved millions to sate the Bolshevic evil obsession with power.

In comparison, if someone were to suggest the decline of the British Empire was marked by the loss of the American colonies (1777), I would possibly agree and point out that whilst in “decline”, Britain was still expanding into colonies like Australia (1788).

As for “For the US there will be more and more Tets, not just politically but, as Iraq and Afghanistan show, militarily as well.”

And for USSR there will be no more anything. That plague of the politically aberrant and the infections it spawned, like Vietnam, is dead.

Thinking that some perverse miracle will overwhelm libertarianism and democracy to force it into some sad socialist cesspool, where no one is allowed to develop beyond that potential prescribed by the state, is not going to happen any time soon. Such fixations are the nightmares of the chronically deluded.

Peter Saunders, succinctly put.

David JS “US economic and political dominance can't last forever”

Nothing lasts for ever. However, the politics of “democratic libertarianism” has certainly outlasted by a factor of more than three, the politics of communism (240 years to 73 years) and the insipid aspirations of socialism which has still to find a proper place, despite 150 years of the intelligensia masturbation of itself.

vietnam was a temporary setback, soon rectified, think of the brilliantly successful campaign against grenada.

a better measure of a nation's health is to look at the budget. unlike other large nations, the usa spends more on defense than the rest of the world. combined. this may explain why they spend so little on schools, education, health care, and physical infrastructure.

they have been importing educated people for a long time now, it's cheaper than educating americans. i suspect the principle will be extended to importing ignorant labor soon. for the army. americans won't pick fruit for the wages offered and it's getting to the point they won't sign up to spread democracy anymore also, even though everyone makes sergeant if they get through basic.

an american 'foreign legion' will have many good points for politicians. no relatives complaining about casualties for instance. and some day the general commanding can look forward to being chosen president. by his troops.

Gotta give points for having a go. Tet was a defeat for the Viet Cong but as a propaganda exercise, it was a winner. Old Norodom S might have thought Cambodia was neutral but Kissinger, Nixon, the NVA and the KR sure didn't.

There's a few books out now making claims that these are the last days of the USA. Like Rome in 400 AD (or there abouts). Not so sure about that. Their (USA) ability to wage covert and overt war in half a dozen places, although messy, is tactically quite fascinating. Far from being in decline.

I reckon though if you want to go back to a 'tipping point' look at the last days of the Nixon administration and the helplessness of 'stagflation'. If that hits again as we approach 'peak oil' start learning Chinese quickly.

What a load of crap. Typical leftist propaganda by people who are still angry that their hero the soviet union fell on its own economic incompetance. The world is a better place without them.

One of the strengths of Marxism was an occasionally well reasoned analysis of power and the state etc.

Even that seems to have gone now.

I loved Peter Saunders' response. Did he actually read what John wrote, or does CIS stand for the Centre for Idiocy and Stupidty?

Where is John's praise for the imperialist Soviet Union? Nowhere. Pol Pot? Nowhere. Stalin? Nowhere.

John in the article specifically rejects the idea Vietnam was or is socialist. Nor does he suggest it is some economic miracle. However the vultures of Western profit are circling to take advantage of its low wages now that China is becoming too expensive. If that happens it too, like China, will move from state capitalism to market capitalism. The problem then for the Vietnamese dictatorship is that like China they will be creating their own gravedigger - the working class.

The overtrow of the dictatorships in the Soviet Union and the occupied states of Eastern Eurpope shows a glimpse of the future - a future in which people rise up to get rid of their overlords and develop a society in which all can live comfortably without repression and in freedom and peace. The incomplete revolutions in Eastern Europe and the USSR were political not economic revolutions. The next chapter on this is yet to be written by the working class.

I was surpised that Saunders did not respond with some current economic analysis which argues that the decline of the US economically is overrated. This argument suggests that US economic power peaked in 1951 at 28% of world GDP and then declined to 21% in 1975, but that it has remained around that figure ever since. Of course the nature of what the US produces may have changed markedly, perhaps away from goods towards sevices.

I think the date John picks is hyperbole, and a journalistic device to remind people of the defeat of the US in Vietnam and of its inability to best the rebels in Iraq or Afghanistan. In my view the US has already lost in both countries.

And John's other point was that the ghost of Vietnam haunts the US ruling elite today. Why else do they not saturate Afghanistan and Iraq with troops and weapons?

America's world ascendancy is surely waning, but I'm not sure that the Tet offensive was the moment it began. America's inevitable decline will be a direct product of what made it so successful - i.e. global capitalism - as the mega-economies of China and South Asia expand exponentially.

At least until some of the more vital resources get scarce and the sh!t really hits the fan.

Having spent a fair bit of time in Vietnam in the last 13 years, including working there, it certainly is not a broken-down state. It is booming. And whether or not one likes the government and the corruption that is inherent everywhere, as eleswhere throughout Asia, there is some very good planning for the future going on. Vietnam also has some top quality professionals, and especially in the medical field. And their education system produces better results than ours; I have seen it. Funnily enough, Vietnam built its first university in 1066, at the time when the French thug William the Conqueror was bringing yet another genocide into Britain.

The reason VN didn't work too well after 1975 is simple.Firstly, after fighting continously for 30 years, it's dificult to get peace working for you when the infrastructure has been bombed to smithereens and 1 in 10 people have been killed. And in 1975 the USA and the rest of the world slapped a trade embargo on the place that only began to be lifted in 1989. VN also liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot's criminals, had a war with China because of it, and was obliged to maintain a standing army in Cambodia to make sure Pol Pot didn't come back. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was feting Pol Pot's thugs in the UN as the rightful rulers of Cambodia, because the good old USA, with the Chinese and Thais, was using them to get back at VN.And the VN population doubled between 1975 and 1995 to close to 80 million, in a country smaller than the Northern Territory.

I'm not interested in the left v right polemics. Vietnam has done very well, in contrast to PNG which, with 5 million people, a capitalist society if ever there were one, massive resources and all the best will in the world from aid donors, is a basket case undergoing self-inflicted Africanisation after "liberation" from its Australian "colonial oppressors" at the same time that VN kicked out the Americans.

Just a note to Henry VIII Australia was not really a colonial oppressor of New Guinea. It was actually mandated to us as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. New Guinea was originally a colony of Germany. We got it as the closest Allied Power. WE were never comfortable running New Guinea because like America we were also colonies of England. As such both powers are not adept at running colonial empires. Actually we were glad to get rid of the place and leave it to its own devices.

"Democratic libertarianism"? Sounds like a good idea. I don't think it could ever work though. Not under capitalism at any rate.

Note to ST George: while Australia was indeed mandated the former German colony of New Guinea after WW1, we already were colonists in the former British colony of British New Guinea from 1904, when it became the Australian external terriory of Papua.

The mandated territory of New Guinea and the external territory were combined into the Territory of Papua and New Guinea after WW2, which was run as an Australian colony until independence was attained peacefully in 1975.

So Trotskyists still sustain their denialist mantra that none of the bloody and odious regimes which have seized power in the name of socialism has ever been the real thing – not in Albania, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe …

The fact that the Vietnamese government doesn’t fit some western ideologue’s socialist ideal makes very little difference to the fact that it is a vile and repressive regime that has impoverished its own citizenry in the name of socialism. Passant’s weaselish qualification that Vietnam’s leaders were “not in any way socialist” does not in any way diminish his obvious admiration of this tyranny.

Likewise, his attempt at moral equivalence between the Soviet and US “empires” serves less to distinguish him from the Stalinist apologists for the former, and more to illustrate his blind and undiscriminating hatred for the latter.

Passant celebrates any perceived victory over the USA, however reactionary, repressive, murderous, misogynist, or plain weird the subsequent regime may be. It is a sorry state of affairs when any supposed leftist anticipates the victory of the Taliban with pleasure.

Nick Cohen is dead right about the moral bankruptcy of parts of the modern left:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Left-Liberals-Lost-Their/dp/0007229690

PNG-I used to live there. The terms colonial oppression etc are in parentheses as an irony but I guess my irony is lost on the readership of this thread. The PNG politicians indeed do talk about past Australian "colonial oppression" from time to time when it suits their purpose, even though they were brought up by the Australian administrators to run the place. A number of Papua New Guineans have told me they wished Australia would come back.Others would hate the idea. One even told me he wished the Japanese had won WW2.

Nicaragua-another example of a vicious right-wing dictator being ovethrown by a populist socialist governmnt and which was in the proceeds of bringing literacy and health-care to people who had been denied such, when the USA-sponsored Contra terrorists moved in to destroy the place through mudering civilians and making it ungovernable. 80 000 dead wasn't it?. When will the neo-fascists who rave about "lefties" simply get down to reading books about the histories of the places they rave about, and then sit down and think about what they have read. But fascists burn books, don't they?

DavidJS “Democratic libertarianism"? Sounds like a good idea. I don't think it could ever work though. Not under capitalism at any rate.”

I can understand how a socialist apologist is so blind as to not see the essential commonality of capitalism and libertarianism.

With a small mind, distorted by the sense of envy for anyone who might work harder and have more than you.

It must be hard, accepting that where others can excel, you are left defending the gridlocked and shackles of socialism, a philosophy determined to ensure no one is allowed to aspire to anything more than that prescribed by the state.

Rhian “Nick Cohen is dead right about the moral bankruptcy of parts of the modern left:”
The bankruptcy is nothing new. Socialism was founded on the bankrupt ideas of the small and envious men and women who know they will always live in the shadow of anyone who is gifted (I could have said “more gifted” but that would presume the dullards of the left had any redeeming qualities in the first place).

Whilst the seven deadly sins include “Invidia” and some folk given to indolence, the politics of the left will be with us. The only chance for humanity is to recognize the nature of socialism and challenge it with the freedoms we take, possibly for granted, like freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to private ownership of property, government for the benefit of all people and other accepted democratic freedoms hold it in check.

It might be a continuing drain on the resources for commonsense but to falter will only result in the sort of despotism identified with Stalin because as Lenin said

“The goal of socialism is Communism”

History shows us that Stalin was the result of communism (along with Mao, Pol Pot Ceausescu, Honecker etc).

Trotsky was a the father of entryism, the process where hardline communists infiltrate the soft politics of socialism for their known bestial ends.

Socialism is weak. It is limp, flabby and vulnerable to entryism; just as a weak or diseased mind is vulnerable to delusion.

"the essential commonality of capitalism and libertarianism." Really? And here I was thinking the 19th and 20th Century colonial empires in Asia, Africa, the Middle-East and elsewhere were brutal, racist tyrannies whereas in fact they were essentially libertarian and created by hard working upright people who were good enough to put slaves and children to work. I'll try not to be so ungrateful in future.

A big fat yawn ... who cares?

Was I morally bankrupt to support the defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam?

Was I morally bankrupt to support the defeat of Russian imperialism in Afghanistan?

Am I morally bankrupt to support the defeat of US imperialism today around the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq?

Am I morally bankrupt to support the defeat of Chinese imperialism around the wrold, including in Tibet?

Am I morally bankrupt to oppose Australian imperialism in places like the Solomon Islands, PNG, Vanuatu, Nauru, the Cook Islands and East Timor?

Apparently it is easier to hurl peurile abuse at the Left than to recognise imperialism in whatever guise as the greatest threat to the lives of ordinary people.

Passy,
Yes.

From your responsse ChrisPer I take it you supported (or would have if you were not politically active then) Russian imperialism, and that you support the continuing Chinese occupation of Tibet.

You seem by your answer to support all imperialist actions (not just, as most apologists for Western capitalism do, the actions of Western imperialists.) That is an interesting moral and political position. You may have problems when the interests of Chinese imperialism and US imperialism clash.

Passy

The question of whether you’re morally bankrupt revolves around whether you can recognise that some of the alternatives are even worse than the regimes you oppose. By taking the position that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” extreme anti-americanism and anti-imperialism can lead to supporting and celebrating the “successes” of some pretty vile regimes.

I’m no apologist for the US-backed regime in Afghanistan, but I feel the Taliban would be infinitely worse. Ditto the coalition of Islamofascists and Baathists looking to seize power in Iraq. Comparing North and South Korea, I’d prefer the South. Comparing communist China and (historically) capitalist Hong Kong, I’d prefer Honkers. The racist regime of Ian Smith was despicable, and like many I rejoiced when it was overthrown. But the sufferings of the Zimbabwean people under his successor have been even worse, and one-eyed anti-imperialism still deludes some to the murderous reality of Mugabe’s regime.

Equally, I recognise that leftist regimes are sometimes better than their predecessors. Repressive and murderous though they were/are, I’d definitely prefer the Sandinistas to Somoza and Castro to Batista. But I don’t feel my pleasure that Somoza or Batista were overthrown obliges me to be blinkered to the many faults of their successors.

Australia’s intervention in East Timor is – admittedly belatedly and imperfectly – an attempt to shore up democracy and independence there. I dispute that it even deserves the name “imperialist”, still less that it’s on a moral par with the Indonesian occupation that preceded it.

DavidJS ” in fact they were essentially libertarian and created by hard working upright people who were good enough to put slaves and children to work. I'll try not to be so ungrateful in future.”

I see far more tyrannies, torturers and murderers eminating from the systems of government endorsed by the left of politics than the right.

For instance, national “socialism” in Germany and the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. The leaderships of which was collectively responsible for the death of around 50 million of their own people.

Some might question the American position in Afghanistan. However if they do that they should not ignore the Russian position for the 20 years preceding the US arrival.

I see Passy (read Passe) declares his opposition to everything which has ever happened (typical socialist excuse).

This seemingly entitles Passe, to claim the moral high-ground, indifferent to things actually done by “socialists”.

In the early 1980s, Michael Foot was elevated to leader of the British Labour Party.

He was amazing, he and his offsider the eternal apologist and social misfit, 2nd Viscount Stansgate, later “Anthony WedgeWood-Benn then reduced to just “Tony Benn” ,

(he could have gone further and become known as “TB”, as in the disease).

As opposition leader, Foot was made to account for himself and failed at every opportunity. He was typically a “Passe” socialist, full of grandiose schemes for telling everybody how they would be allowed to exist under his draconian socialist manifestos of the time.

However, he was never able to sell the “stupid idealism” which is indivisible from every perennial socialist theorocrat.

DavidJS the British Industrial Revolution. Many major elements of social reform predated, by decades both the British Labour party and the deranged scribblings of Karl Marx.

So DavidJS and Passe, you suffer a dearth of ideas to bring to the debate.

I understand, individual innovation being discouraged by the socialist system incase someone might ends up with more than someone else.

You fallback to cynicism, sarcasm and hubris. That is all you have to challenge libertarian democracy.

Rhian, I agree

Marx was no more deranged than is George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice. He took a seriously bad social situation in the UK around 1840, analysed it logically and then within the paradigm of the logic that nothing could be changed without violence, so well entrenched was the upper class, argued that revolution would be the only answer. The conclusion was shown to be wrong by the formation of the Fabian Society, the Trade Union movement and the Labour Party, all of whom seem to be hated as much by marxists as by fascists, as they brought in evolution and not revolution to achieve the necessary changes in working conditions of the time.

And Hitler was by no means a socialist. If I stick a Ferrari badge on my Ford Falcon, does it a Ferrari make? That's what Hitler did; he lucked onto an insignificant National Workers' Socialist Party and rebadged it to fit his image of the world.

HenryVIII ”Marx was no more deranged than is George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice.”

Lets consider that comment and firstly observe, GWB and DC were both appointed by a democratic process and CR was appointed after being subject to review by a democratically elected US assembly.

Marx was never elected to anything.

“He took a seriously bad social situation in the UK around 1840, analysed it logically and then within the paradigm of the logic that nothing could be changed without violence”

But it never happened, for all his insightful analysis, he misread the situation and died, without ever seeing any of his ideas implemented.

“so well entrenched was the upper class, argued that revolution would be the only answer. The conclusion was shown to be wrong by the formation of the Fabian Society, the Trade Union movement and the Labour Party . . . . as they brought in evolution and not revolution to achieve the necessary changes in working conditions of the time.”

And it was Asquith’s government and David Lloyd George “Peoples Budget” (1910) which broke the authority of the House of Lords. I do recall reading of the plan to simply appoint enough peers of the appropriate political persuasion to outnumber the “hereditaries”, who could block commons legislation.

Oh and were they part of the labour party? Of course not, they were “Liberals”.

Keir Hardie might have got elected in 1901 but it was not until 1924 that labour came to power (then only as a minority government), 14 years after the Liberals overthrew the authority of the House of Lords to block commons legislation.

Darn it Henry, you might use the name of an English Monarch but you have a really poor understanding of British political, social and legal history. And I might add, your decidedly wobbly defense of “socialism” does no good whatsoever.

What Hitler did was no different to what Stalin did and displays the vulnerability and actual susceptibility of “socialist” political organisations to the entryist activities and the takeover by thugs, despot and mass murderers.

“Socialism” is a fatally flawed philosophy.

Actually Marx was elected. The International Working Man's Association comes to mind.

And the Paris Commune showed a glimpse of what the future could look like, while he was still alive.

Marx believed in revolution, but not a clique acting on behalf of workers. He believed in workers' revolution from below. For him revolution was the emancipation of the working class - the act of the working class, the majority in society.

Marx did not worship bloody destruction but recognised the defeated minority, the ruling class and its hangers on, would respond with blood.

The reformists did not replace the revolutionaries on the road to socialism. They chose a different road, the road of capitulating to capitalism and continuing wage slavery.

Rhian says:

"By taking the position that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” extreme anti-americanism and anti-imperialism can lead to supporting and celebrating the “successes” of some pretty vile regimes."

Anti-imperialism is not that you support the enemy of your enemy. I have no illusions in those resisting the US occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan. But even on moral grounds I would have thought you might question what the US occupation has caused. A study in Lancet said 650,000 civilians had died in Iraq as a consequence of the US invasion. A more conservative estimate puts the figure at 150,000. That looks pretty horrific to me.

The defeat of imperialist powers has actually benefited the world. The Afghanis (including Afghan war hero Bin Laden, supplied and funded by Pakistan and the US) drove the Russians out. That was a victory for the majority of people in the world. It was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the stalinist regimes.

And even today the US ruling elite is constrained by its defeat in Vietnam.

As well its invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was an attempt to warn China and Europe that it was the dominant power and would use force to remain so. The lesson China might draw from this (and remember it is possible China could overtake the US as the world's dominant economic power in twenty years) is that the US can't even impose its will on two fairly undeveloped countries.

I believe it is up to the people of each country country to overthrow their dictators - whether that be Saddam or Mugabe or Kim Il Sung or Karzai or Malarki. You cannot impose democracy from the outside, and in any event imperialism is not interested in democracy.

Wasn't Hitler elected? Oh but that's right - Col claims Hitler was a socialist. I've heard he was Greenie too.

Please note that the above comment is not subject to Godwin's Law, since I wasn't the first to invoke Hitler.

Passy ”Actually Marx was elected. The International Working Man's Association.”

That has the political significance of becoming Vice President of the Bexleigh Heath Model Railway Club, hardly comparable to public election for national government office. Although, I am sure Marx would relish the authority bestowed by a copy of the timetable, a whistle and other regalia afforded to the position of fat controller.

“For him revolution was the emancipation of the working class, the act of the working class, the majority in society.”

The processes of “democratic libertarian evolution” and capitalist consumer economics have achieved far more for the working class than any “working class revolution” inspired by Marx or his acolytes and of course, has rendered far few dead than the 30 to 100+ million who expired at the hands of Lenin, Stalin and the other practitioners of “real world Marxism”.

“They chose a different road, the road of capitulating to capitalism and continuing wage slavery.”

You know the difference between a “capitalist wage slave” and a “Marxist ideological slave”?

It is like being a dog.

The capitalist dog might not afford to eat very well.

The Marxist ideological dog does not eat at all because the shelves are always bare,

but that is not the worst of it.

The Marxist ideological dog is not allowed to bark.

And what sort of a dogs life is it if a dog is denied the right to bark ?

The sort of a dog life for which, in desperation, the dog risks death to escape over the Berlin wall.

Be as fake-moralistic and faux-passionate as you like, Passy. Use all the weasel words you want. I have heard them all and then some.

If you need me to prompt you on the script just holler, I can fill the gaps you miss.

Please come back soon.

CJ Morgan “Hitler . . socialist”

That is recorded history

“Greenie too.”

Looking at the state of the Aral Sea, under USSR environmental stewardship, he was.

Socialism is continually usurped by thugs, despots and murderers.

Socialism, the fatally flawed philosophy of chardonnay swilling academics.

Rhian wrote: "... the Vietnamese government ... is a vile and repressive regime ..."

Whatever can be critically said of the current Vietnamese Government's human rights record, it would have to be far better than that of the previous unelected(1) US backed dictatorship which, with the help of the US and, to our own eternal shame, Australia, murdered possibly millions (2) of its own defenceless citizens, not to mention the combatants who had to defend their country against the awesome destructive firepower of the US military machine.

"... that has impoverished its own citizenry"

Could you please substantiate that statement, Rhian? Can you tell us what are the policies enacted by the Vietnamese government that could possibly have impoverished Vietnam to the same degree that the bombardment of the Indochinese Peninsula with more bombs than were dropped in the Second World War (not to mention napalm, phosphorus and Agent Orange) could have?

Footnotes
_________

1. Had elections been held in 1956 as agreed to at the 1954 Peace accords, the Communists would have easily won in both the North and the South, even according to Richard Casey Australia's foreign minister at the time.
2. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualties) cites sources which reveal "that 5.1 million people died during Hanoi's conflict with the United States" which is even more horrific than the 2 million figure given by John Passant.

Rhian said "By taking the position that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” extreme anti-americanism and anti-imperialism can lead to supporting and celebrating the “successes” of some pretty vile regimes."

Jeane Kirkpatrick, US Ambassador to the UN during the first Reagan Administration did openly call for US support of "the enemy of my enemy". That is, non-communist dictatorships such as in Latin America, the Middle-East and elsewhere. Her essay "Dictatorships and Double Standards" spells this out. And obviously Reagan agreed with her and that strategy became an explicit part of US foreign policy. That lead to the US supporting some pretty vile dictatorships such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq (because fundamentalist Iran was the main enemy). Human rights for the US ruling class was and still is a sideshow and takes a back seat to strategic issues. And yes, the Russian ruling class under the Soviets and now under Putin have worked on the same basis.

For the record, I regard my politics as left-libertarian not socialist (particularly if socialist is supposed to mean support for Stalinist dictatorships). As I'm openly gay and support free trade unions, I'm not likely to get a cabinet position in Castro's government. And if anyone wants to still call me a socialist I won't argue. I'll just assume you're an ignorant pig.

DavidJS
I agree that “enemy of my enemy is my friend” is equally reprehensible whether advocated by the USA or John Passant. The USA’s propping up vile dictatorships in the Middle East, South America and Asia is a source of much geopolitical instability today. But this is a discussion on John Passant’s views on Vietnam. “The USA is just as bad” is a familiar red herring in such discussions.

Daggett,
You ask what is the evidence that Vietnam’s government was responsible for its people’s poverty:
1) it fared worse than most other East Asian economies in the post-revolutionary period, with the exceptions being other totalitarian dictatorships (Cambodia, North Korea, Myanmar);
2) when its government started to adopt the “Doi Moi" policy reforms that liberalised its economy, economic growth rates picked up substantially –

see http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&theSitePK=523679&entityID=000012009_20040609161332&searchMenuPK=64187283&theSitePK=523679

Rhian,

The measures of prosperity including the GDP employed by the World Bank to measure the performance are hogwash. I have discussed how these measures actually conceal declines in the average quality of life, let alone the decline in living standards of the poorest, because they count all economic activity as a plus, be it paper shuffling on stock markets, paramedics attending to road accidents, the installation of security devices on houses etc (see my article "Living standards and our material prosperity" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6326 and some of my responses on this question to the Peter Saunders of the CIS, who posted at the start of this discussion at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4418#42094 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3737#12173). The GDP also fails to measure economic activity largely displaced by globalisation which doesn't include the transfer of money.

The World Bank, whose authority you rely upon, together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are organisations which have been captured by extreme neo-liberal followers of Milton Friedman. They have again and again abused their control of these institutions to force countries, particularly poor third world countries to reduce government spending, reduce taxes on the rich, publicly-owned privatise assets and reduced protections for workers in order to transfer wealth to the rich.

For the truth about the World Bank, read Naomi Klein's excellent best-selling "The Shock Doctrine" (2007) RRP AU$32.95 (http://www.naomiklein.org/ShockDoctrine).

So I would reject any notion that the World Bank is a credible authority on Vietnam.

Daggett
If you check out the link you’ll find the articles discuss a range of welfare measures, including not just GDP but also private consumption trends, real wages, literacy, life expectancy, school enrolments, and child malnutrition.

If you choose to accept the authority of Naomi Klein (what has she said about Vietnam’s economic record, anyway?) over that of the World Bank that’s your business. But how about addressing the issues raised, rather than dismissing out of hand any argument or evidence published by an agency you disapprove of?

Rhian,

Firstly, let's get back to the original point.

You claimed that Vietnamese government policies had "impoverished its own citizenry" without any acknowledgement of the devastation inflicted upon that country by the war against the US.

You attempted to substantiate that case by citing World Bank statistics which purportedly show an improvement in prosperity since free market policies were adopted. Therefore, presumably, the supposed relative poverty prior to then was all the fault of the Vietnamese Government's prior socialist economic policies.

But didn't this period also coincide with the end of economic sanctions imposed against Vietnam as punishment for removing the genocidal Pol Pot regime from neighbouring Cambodia in 1979? And what of the war it was forced to wage against its northern neighbour China as well as the ongoing conflict in Cambodia?

Therefore, I would suggest that it is hardly fair of you to attribute all problems prior to the 'liberalisation' of Vietnam's economy to the policies of the Vietnamese Government.

Even if it is true, that that is any improvement in Vietnam's standard of living has occurred, there is still a down side. Both China (of which Klein has written in her book) and Vietnam have become sweatshop economies to which manufacturing jobs from Australia and many other countries including other third world economies have been exported with devastating social consequences. Furthermore, the growth in those economies is accelerating the harm to the world's environment as well as the depletion of the world's finite endowment of natural resources.

In any case, the World Bank clearly has an ideological axe to grind, so I would be skeptical of any of its statistics, particularly real wages and GDP of which I have written elsewhere.

Given the disgraceful record of the World Bank as documented by Naomi Klein in "The Shock Doctrine" and given the broader circumstances of Vietnam's recent history not acknowledged by yourself I don't see why I need to feel obligated to rush out in order to digest the undoubtedly skewed claims made by that organisation about Vietnam.

Firstly, some corrections:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6974#106156 (Friday, 15 February):

The last sentence in the second paragraph should have read:

"They have again and again abused their control of these institutions to force countries ... to ... privatise publicly-owned assets and reduce protections for workers in order to transfer wealth to the rich."

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6974#106286 (Sunday, 17 February)

First sentence of the third last paragraph should have begun:

"Even if it is true, that any improvement in Vietnam's standard of living has occurred ...

---

The World Bank document appears to be scholarly, but I simply don't have time to verify its claims, or to ascertain if it takes due account of the broader factors I have mentioned. As free market policies (combined with excessive population growth) have been disastrous for most of the rest of the world, I think an objective examination of the evidence, would draw the same conclusion about Vietnam.

The fact is that autonomous democratic socialism was never given a chance in Vietnam. At every stage it had to cope with, at best, sanctions and a legacy of death and destruction and, at worst, some of the most extreme adversity known to humankind.

Marilyn Young's "The Vietnam Wars 1945-1995"(1991) gives a glimpse of just what might have been possible. She cites Joseph Alsop, who visited the "palm-hut state" in the Mekong Delta in the south which had to be dismantled under the unjust terms of the Geneva Peace accords of 1954:

"I would like to be able to report--I had hoped to be able to
report--that ... I saw all the signs of misery and oppression
that have made my visits to East Germany like nightmare journeys
to 1984. But it was not so." ... Alsop described an idyllic
landscape of emerald rice fields, tiny villages along canal
banks thick with mangoes, palms, palms, bamboo, papaya. Here,
during the war against the French, the Viet Minh established a
"strong self-contained state, with a loyal population of nearly
2 million, a powerful regular army, a complete civil
administration, and all other apparatus of a established
governmental authority."

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

Alsop's fellow passengers confirmed his observations, expressing
their contentment and boasting of the Viet Minh victory over the
French. Reluctantly, he believed them, for "their was no hint
of the bleak, guarded, totalitarian atmosphere, ... that I
imagined I would find." ... "At first," Alsop confessed, "it was
difficult for me, as it is for any Westerner, to conceive of a
Communist government's genuinely 'serving the people.' I could
hardly imagine a Communist government that was also a popular
government and almost a democratic government. But this is just
the sort of government the palm-hut state actually was. ...".
(p55 of "The Vietnam Wars").

The original article was Joseph Alsop, "A Man in a Mirror," The New Yorker, 25 June, 1955.

However, this living example of popular socialism was dismantled and the people of the "palm-hut state" were forced to submit to the authority of the corrupt unelected US-backed regime of the artificially created South Vietnam.

The elections that were promised in 1956 were cancelled, when the US backed dictators realised they stood no chance of winning.

Comrade Passant follows the pop history analysis of picking a moment in time that defines a war, a campaign or an empire, if that is what the US really is. No more shallow than the blindly anti US chants I recall of him at Monash 20 odd years ago. Tet was a political win for the VC and the North but by any measure a complete military disaster for them. Continue banging the drum comrade Passant. And North Korean missile testing was the turning point in the war against the South Korean running paper tiger running dogs!

Vinegar Joe

Thanks for the “heads up” I had not considered the history of John Passant the OLO trailer nearly describes him as “a Canberra based Writer”.

I threw the name into google and got the following

http://workers.labor.net.au/51/a_guestreporter_john.html
“The white rich elite are disillusioned with Mugabe because he cannot provide them with …”

http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/xTrots.html

“John Passant, formerly an ISO leader but now of Socialist Alternative (which split from it.”

Good for JP however, he must never have heard the well known Lenin quote

“the goal of socialism is communism”

and the observation of history is not only is that true but confirms how socialist governments are inherently infiltrated and usurped by trotskyites, despots, murderers, torturers who ensure the limp and facile values of socialism ensures the descent of mankind into the morass of a third world life expectations.

The other references seemed to be about someone involved in the tax office.

I doubt much of our “Canberra Writers” postings would earn a dollar so can understand how and why he might need another job. It does concern me we have a leftwing radical employed by the tax office.

As I wrote earlier in this thread

“Nothing lasts for ever. However, the politics of “democratic libertarianism” has certainly outlasted by a factor of more than three, the politics of communism (240 years to 73 years) and the insipid aspirations of socialism which has still to find a proper place, despite 150 years of the intelligensia masturbation of itself.”

to quote you “No more shallow than the blindly anti US chants I recall of him at Monash 20 odd years ago.”
From the brief points above I would surmise, nothing has changed.

But I welcome his articles. Through them he exposes himself and the politics of the left as the shallow, worthless shams and faux-compassion, full of the weasel words which give that warm feeling most commonly associated with incontinence.

I would note however, free speech is one of the first things to disappear under the style of politics he endorses, regardless of whether he agrees with it or not.

Viniger Joe wrote: "Tet was a political win for the VC and the North but by any measure a complete military disaster for them."

Apologists for the war have a propensity to dwell on the supposed military achievements of the US and its Saigon puppets rather than the rights and wrongs of that conflict.

To put the military performance of the NLF and NVA in its proper perspective it is worth reading the abovementioned "The Vietnam Wars" (p217).

For the first time the war was brought directly to the cities.
... The fighting was astonishingly fierce. In Saigon, a force of
one thousand NLF troops fought eleven thousand combined American
and ARVN troops to a standstill; it took three weeks to subdue them.
Hue was quickly occupied, and a coalition municipal government
drawn from those who had been active in the 1966 Buddhist Struggle
Movement administered the city. ... "Joking and laughing, the
soldiers walk in the streets without showing any fear. ... They
give an impression of discipline and good training. ... Numerous
civilians brought them great quantities of food. It didn't seem that
these residents were being coerced in any way." For almost a month
the NLF flag flew over the citadel, until the Marines, bombing and
strafing from the air, fighting street by street, house, by house,
retook the city. "Nothing I saw during the Korean War, or in the
Vietnam war so far," Robert Shaplen wrote as he toured the city, "has
been so terrible in terms of destruction and despair, as what I saw
in Hue." Of Hue's 17,134 houses, 9,776 were completely destroyed;
3,169 seriously damaged. (The figure was almost as high in the rest
of Thua Thien Province.)

Just as the 1944 Warsaw uprising was a costly military defeat for the insurgents, so too was the Tet Offensive for the Vietnamese. However, the fact they were defeated by the vastly superior firepower of a ruthless enemy should not detract from their heroism or the justice of their cause.

Actually to correct the scintillating military analysis.

The “Vietnam War” was not actually a war but more a battle and the Vietnamese were the surrogates.

The Americans picked up the mess which the French had created (yes, never trust the French to do the right thing).

Whilst the Americans withdrew in 1975, the War itself did not end until 1991 (the start of the end being 1989).

Before anyone goes around pronouncing “victory” for the Vietcong or North Vietnam, we should look at the changes which have occurred since in their major sponsors -

USSR collapses in a crumpled heap

China does a 180 degree turn on economic policy

As dearest Margaret said “Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul.”

Well Warring pre-empted the economics in this case and the attitudes have changed somewhat.

Socialism and its inevitable consequence (communism) have failed the people they were supposed to elevate and the libertarian-capitalist democracies have prevailed.

The world is a big map, larger than Vietnam or any other single nation and history does not spin on any one moment in time.

I think we have someway to go before Margaret Thatcher can put a tick against the “attitude” but I think we are closer than we were in 1975, although the pernicious nature of socialism is always a draw for the weak of will and lacking in vision (thinks, should I suggest the author of the article), so it looks like it is going to be inter-generational process before that one is finally laid to rest.

Col Rouge,

Where is your evidence that the Vietnamese were merely surrogates in a broader struggle? Every credible historian of the Vietnam War, of which I am aware understands, that the causes of the war were principally local.

If you understood the history of the conflict, you would know that in 1954 both the Chinese and the Soviets twisted the arms of the Viet Minh negotiators into signing the agreement which gave back much of what had won on the battlefield. This included, as well as 'South' Vietnam with the abovementioned 'palm-hut state', nearly all of 50% of Laos conquered by the fraternal Pathet Lao (who were themselves denied independent representation at Geneva) ("The Vietnam Wars", Young p 41).

But for this sellout, the war could have largely been over in 1954 and the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians would have been largely spared at least two more decades of horrific death and destruction.

In turn the Vietminh imposed the Geneva Peace accords on its own supporters. After the agreed elections were cancelled in the South, instead of resuming the war, the government in the North largely left its supporters in the South to their own devices, until 1961. Of this, one independence fighter later wrote:

(The Southerners felt) that the Party and Ho Chi Minh had turned
out to be more stupid than the French, the Americans, or even
Diem himself ... People had sacrificed heavily in the resistance
and had been told by the Party that that the Geneva accords would
be carried out.(Young,p54)

If, instead, the example of the "palm-hut state" in the South had been allowed to endure, the people of the rest of South East Asia would have, in all probability, wanted to emulate that example in their own country, and the whole course of history since 1954 would have been very different.

A rather strange way for the Soviet 'communists', supposedly bent on using the Vietnamese as surrogates in order to impose communism on the rest of the world, to behave, would you agree?

---

James Sinnamon
Independent candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane
http://candobetter.org/SweepOutCityHall

Vinigar Joe says:

"Comrade Passant follows the pop history analysis of picking a moment in time that defines a war, a campaign or an empire, if that is what the US really is. No more shallow than the blindly anti US chants I recall of him at Monash 20 odd years ago. Tet was a political win for the VC and the North but by any measure a complete military disaster for them. Continue banging the drum comrade Passant. And North Korean missile testing was the turning point in the war against the South Korean running paper tiger running dogs!"

Wow. John is remembered for his activities at Monash twenty two years ago! Perhaps Vinigar Joe's memory (a sweet irony in such a bitter name) was really prompted by John being one of the leaders of the successful defence of library conditions. The chanting of anti-US slogans is the usual bull the right comes out with when they can't address the issues.

If you read the article John says that the win was a political victory but a military defeat.

In one page a writer cannot explore ideas deeply. The suggestion that that day marks the decline of the US empire is a journalistic stunt to get people's attention to discuss the issues. Discussing ideas is something the right appears incapable of doing. Perhaps 11 years of suckling from JWH's teat has lobotomised most of them.

Second, Col Rouge cites a website where John wrote some years ago about Zimbabwe, and gives the impression from his half sentence quote that John supports Mugabe. I read the article. It actually called for a workers' revolution to drive Mugabe out of power.

Finally Col raises concerns about a possible left-wing radical working in the ATO. Purge the left, should we, Col? Typical of the McCarthyist right. No one can have a brain. No one can think outside the capitalist sqaure.

Instead of tendentious rubbish, why not try to address the issues John raised?

Can someone from the intelligent right please make the occasional contribution to Online Opinion?

Some have commented about John's philosophy apprently being that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I disagree with their analysis.

For example, I don't know about John, but I support the right of Kosovo to determine its own future, even though the US clearly supports an independent Kosovo for its own imperialist reasons.

Passy,” Typical of the McCarthyist right. No one can have a brain. No one can think outside the capitalist sqaure.”

ME, McCarthyism? Your claim is unsubstantiated by anything I have written.
It is simply your sad, feeble and failed attempt at vilification.

“no one can have a brain”

I have always taken it for granted that whilst every socialist has a brain, a belief in socialism indicates an option to avoid using all of it, relying on the Limbic System and having to wait until older, when the higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, develop, to facilitate reasoning.

Hence the old observation,

if he isn’t a socialist by the age of 18 he hasn’t got a heart (emotion) but

if he isn’t a conservative by the age of 25, he hasn’t got a brain (or one capable of logical reasoning).

Actually capitalism relies on people thinking outside the square.

It is socialism and its goal, communism, which is afraid of people thinking for themselves and going against the “party line”.

Capitalism does not lock its dissidents in prison or psychiatric wards or force them to be “re-educated”
Capitalism rewards the "outside-the-square” thinkers for their innovation. Just count the number of Internet and video game millionaires.

Socialism / communism reduces everyone to the lowest level of subsistence to finance the failures of the five year plans and sells off the seed stock for next years crop to pay off the equipment purchased by the state for “industrialization” but fails to use the equipment to produce things people want.

“Can someone from the intelligent right”

You can always find us,

However, the “intelligent left” is an oxymoron.

“the US clearly supports an independent Kosovo for its own imperialist reasons.”

The re-unification of Kosovo back into Serbia has far more significance to Russia than an independent Kosovo has for USA.

I do see significant merit in a less belligerent and less influential Serbia but it is a merit which has more to do with the future stability of the Balkans than any aspirations which you could ascribe to USA.

Col Rouge wrote:

"if he isn’t a socialist by the age of 18 he hasn’t got a heart (emotion) but

"if he isn’t a conservative by the age of 25, he hasn’t got a brain (or one capable of logical reasoning)."

In fact what was said, whether or not we accept the validity of the observation was:

"Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head."

It was said by French Premier Georges
Clemenceau (1841-1929). Variations of this were also attributed to Disraeli, Shaw, Churchill, and Bertrand Russell. (see http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=374518 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A43103-2001Jun8&notFound=true)

So, were you trying to tell us you were a socialist at the age of 18? I would have to say that it would be quite difficult for some of us to imagine.

Daggett thanks for providing the original quote, far more eloquent than my paraphrasing.

”So, were you trying to tell us you were a socialist at the age of 18? I would have to say that it would be quite difficult for some of us to imagine.”

At age 18 I had just done a year at art college, but decided I did not want to spend the rest of my life impoverished.

My politics were still forming and largely influenced by my parents values. I considered the merits of socialism and could see it might support me, better than the risky hurly-burly of capitalism.

Maybe I was a late developer but it was after my first few economics lectures, when studying to be an accountant, that I could see why socialism does not and never will work to the benefit of anyone.

Everything since those days has merely confirmed how correct my analysis has been.

Nothing which socialism (or any of its malformed derivatives) attempts has bettered what a libertarian capitalist system has delivered, in terms, not simply of economic opportunity but in the quality of life of the individuals embraced by the system.

I do endeavour to focus on the holistic effect of political philosopies and not just the "material". Thus "life quality" embraces more than simply everyone having somewhere nice to live.

Whilst I recognize that not everyone under capitalist libertarianism achieves great things or wealth and some fall into poverty; socialism, despite the promises and rhetoric, fails to prevent poverty but also demands to minimise the reward for personal effort.

I would also say that whilst the libertarian / capitalist system has not always been able to prevented famine, at least it has not deployed famine and starvation for its political ends, as is the case for various socialist / communist governments.

Those are some of the good reasons for me being what many might call “right of centre”.

I apologize to no one for thinking that way or promoting those values in the face of the socialist credo of small-minded envy, faux-compassion and arbitrarily enforced leveling.

Col

We are all in the gutter. However some of us are looking at the stars.

Passy “We are all in the gutter. However some of us are looking at the stars.”

Oh I sincerely agree.

There is, however, a difference,

In a capitalist gutter, you are allowed to build your own ladder to escape,

In a socialist gutter, anyone who saves up for or invents a ladder long enough to escape has it expropriated by the state and used as fire wood for the other gutter-mongers.

On that criteria, I will prefer to “look at the stars” from a capitalist gutter than a socialist gutter,

I might not get to the stars but at least in the capitalist gutter I get to live with hope

In the socialist gutter there is no hope.

Life without hope is mere existence and not worth living.

Got any more cute cliches you want me to elaborate on?

Col

You drive me Wilde.

Passy “You drive me Wilde.”

Spelling it that way, should I presume you have nominated me for an Oscar?

Col

It was a quote (slightly changed) from well known dramatist and self declared genius, Oscar Wilde, who also happened to be a socialist. Like Einstein, Wilde's socialism is ignored in polite circles. His politics have been airbrushed out of history, like Stalin airbrushed Trotsky out of a famous photo with Lenin in 1917. (The exact detail might be off there, but you get the idea. Stalinism equals the death of socialism, (and Lenin's democratic vision of socialism), not its logical conclusion.)

So yes I guess I was awarding you an Oscar. That could lead in to various pathetic jokes about acting, and pretending and the like and your seeming role on OLO, but I am not that sort of person.

Besides, it is late and the guard is tired.

Sorry, I found it necessary to drop out of the discussion. Whilst there is a lot I could say in response to Col's polemic against socialism in general I think he really should get back to addressing the points concerning the Vietnam War, including those made in my posts.

I was wondering where socialism and British political history was mentioned in the article. Then I realised that comrade Col Rouge was yet to start Art School in the UK, perhaps he was dreaming of being another Peter Partridge. Unlike Americans and Australians of the time, he actually didn't have the Tet Offensive fought on his TV screen in the nightly news and he wasn't being forced to swallow the Domino Theory. More importantly his hide wasn't on the line in the conscription ballot - the thought of slogging through the jungle in an unwinnable war focused young men's political awareness wonderfully.

Passy wrote on Wednesday 13 December: "You cannot impose democracy from the outside."

In fact, the Chapter in Naomi Klein's "The shock doctrine" dealing with the invasion of Iraq, reveals that democracy was beginning to work in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Iraq could have become a secular democracy. I don't think that this would have justified the horrors of invasion, but at least the story would have had a somewhat happier ending.

However, democracy was suppressed by the occupying administration when they realised that it would get in the way of their plans to privatise Iraqi government assets and sack large numbers of Iraq's pubic servants and variously impoverish the whole nation. So, possibly hundreds of thousands more have died to allow the likes of Halliburton to profit at the expense of Iraqis and the US taxpayer

Thanks Daggett

I was actually doubting my own comment when thinking about Japan. For ten years US troops imposed their rule on japan after the war. Yet Jaan is a democracy of sorts.

So maybe there is an example that contradicts my comment.

In terms of Iraq I was more thinking that it was up to the Iraqi people to overthrow their dictator and establish democracy. Certainly Eastern Europe is a good example of that, with some of the countries involved being more or less democracies.

Passy,

You're welcome.

I think the Marxist approach of seeing every capitalist society as being equally bad has been a serious mistake. Clearly European capitalist societies such as Sweden, France and Norway have a lot going for them in comparison to Anglophone countries under the grip of the extreme free market agenda.

And the US, under new-Deal economic policies had a lot going for it in comparison to what it became under Reagan and his successors.

In Iraq, a Marshall plan and democracy, even under US occupation, would have been vastly preferable to the abolition of democracy and the extreme free-market anti-Marshall plan that was imposed by the US administration.

Had this happened, most of the problems we see in Iraq now would not exist, and it would have demonstrated that even an imperialist capitalist country like the US could indeed liberate a country like Iraq from a dictatorship, even though that outcome was far less likely than what actually did occur.

Of course, I strongly believe it was still correct to oppose the war. However, once Iraq had been occupied if the anti-war movement had focussed on trying to make the US live up to its rhetoric about wanting to bring democracy and prosperity to Iraq, it may have been possible to thwart some of the plans by Rumsfeld and the neo-cons to ransack the country.

---

In regard to East European countries, the baby was thrown out with the bath water. The publicly owned enterprises and utilities were worth preserving as such even if the regimes were not. it seems to me that much the left in these countries was so fixated on the evil of Stalinist rule that they were blind to the plans of local and international capitalists to steal those assets from the people of those countries.

In the chapter on Russia, it is shown that Yeltsin was a dictator little better than Pinochet as a number of his proponents openly acknowledged.

Daggett.

The problem is that the invasion of Iraq was never about democracy. It was in part about showing China that militarily the US was still the biggest and best and that it would use that military superiority if necessary to support its continuing economic dominance. In this regard it has been an utter failure for US imperialism, so they continue to look for other targets - Afghanistan, Iran, even Venezuela. Unfortunately none of them are or will be the pushovers the US imagined or imagines.

Even if it was about democracy, a democracy born of invasion and imposed on the population (perhaps against their will) is not democracy. Democracy can I think only come from the oppressed themselves. As Marx wrote the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class.Ttransfer that to national struggles against dictators or for independence and the same logic seems to apply. It is the struggle itself which liberates people.

DAVID_Boaz says about the reference to gallows that it means hanging people in violence. I think you will find the reference is really to the historical gallows - the dustbin of history if you like.

DAVID_Boaz may also be misinterpreting the idea about the road the Jerusalem. That is a reference to the liberation of Palestine, a liberation for both Palestinians and Israelis. It is not a reference to a shared capital which accepts the two state solution.

I agree that we are a long way from John's vision. However the unrest in Cairo at the moment is class based. Whether it increases, and whether it continues in a working class direction or is sidetracked by the islamists, who knows? I suspect it is but one of many skirmishes before a bigger battle. We shall see.

As to democracy and Vietnam, it is interesting that the US cruelled the 1956 elections because they knew the result would be a landslide win for Ho Chi Minh. Almost twenty years later and millions dead the nationalists (parading through Stalinism as socialists) won the victory the US denied them in 1956.

Passy,

Of course you are correct that the invasion of Iraq was never about democracy. However, the US propagandists uttered lofty phrases about democracy and reconstruction and then did precisely the opposite. As far as I can tell few opponents of the war pointed out this contradiction. Had this been done, I believe that Howard's case for our participation in that war would have unravelled far more rapidly than it eventually did and we would have most probably been spared the national disaster of his Government's re-election in 2004.

Instead they seemed to have bought the idea that Iraqis were inherently incapable of embracing democracy, or at least, only capable of religious sectarianism once the country had been militarily occupied, but as Naomi Klein writes on page 350 of "The Shock Doctrine":

... in February 2004, eleven months after the invasion of Iraq,
an Oxford Research international poll found that a majority of
Iraqis wanted a secular government: only 21% said their favoured
political system was an 'Islamic state'. ... Six months later ...
another poll found that 70% wanted Islamic law as the basis for
the state.

Klein disputes the prevailing view that the 'fiasco' of Iraq was the result of incompetence, rather it was "created by a careful and faithful application of the Chicago School ideology." (i.e. the same ideology espoused by Australian think tanks such as the CIS and the IPA and a few who have contributed to this very discussion).

The plans of the US centred upon the Iraqis being too disoriented to resist the plans to privatise their economy for the benefit of the likes of Bechtel and Halliburton and open it wide for foreign investment, however on page 361 Klein writes:

Instead, a great many Iraqis immediately demanded a say in the
transformation of the country. And it was the Bush administration's
response to this unexpected turn of events that generated the most
blowback of all.

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

There were spontaneous elections in many parts of the country and "In many cases, US forces believing their President when he said the army had been sent to Iraq to spread democracy, played a facilitating role, helping to organise the election, even building ballot boxes."(p362)

However, Paul Bremer, realising that these would pose an obstacle to the plans of the US occupying authority, did not allow those elected a role in the administration of Iraq and cancelled its stated plans to convene a large constituent assembly.

When the constituent assembly was cancelled there should have been a huge outcry from across the globe. Had this been done, then the truth of what the US occupying authority was actually doing against the clear wishes of a democratic and secular majority of Iraqi public opinion would have been obvious to all.

To return to the original point of these posts about Iraq. The US could have "imposed democracy" upon Iraq if it had chosen to as Naomi Klein has shown.

Instead they chose to impose dictatorship so that US corporations could loot the assets of the Iraqi people as well as US taxpayer funds.

When opponents of the war carelessly repeat these sorts of catchphrases, it only serves to let off the hook the likes of George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair and John Howard.

Daggett

I am not sure what point you are making about opponents of the war. There may have been/was a popular democratic uprising after the invasion which the US put down because they wanted their puppets in power to as you say loot the country.

In fact the US fears the democracy of thsoe it has "liberated"if it does not control it. (As an aside i think that was why in Japan after the war it brutally suppressed the strike movement and communist party.) In any event the desire to loot Iraq explains too why the US jailed the trade union and other leftist leaders as baathists and terrorists because it knew they had some sort of power to challenge their puppets.

I think we might be agreeing here.

Passy,

Of course, I am sure we largely are in agreement. Sorry for having given a different impression.

However, I believe that when phrases like "You cannot impose democracy from the outside" are used it has the unintended effect of helping to let the invaders of Iraq off the hook.

I believe this unwittingly propagates views of the likes of retired US Army officer Ralph Peters cited by Klein in "The Shock Doctrine"(p350):

Peters ... wrote in "USA Today" that "we did give the Iraqis a
unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy," but Iraqis "preferred
to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and
a culture of corruption. It appears that the cynics were right: Arab
societies can't support support democracy as we know it. And people
get the government they deserve. ... The violence staining Baghdad's
streets with gore isn't only a symptom of the Iraqi government's
incompetence, but of the comprehensive inability of the Arab world to
progress in any sphere of human endeavour. We are witnessing the
collapse of a civilisation." Though Peters was particularly blunt, many
Western observers have arrived at the same verdict: blame the Iraqis.

(Klein then goes on to convincingly refute this view.)

Because many critics of the war had, more or less, accepted Peters' view, I also naively accepted it, that is, until I recently read Klein's evidence to the contrary.

My point remains, that, contrary to Peters' assertion, the US occupying authority could have, had it wished, once it had overthrown Hussein's regime 'imposed' democracy, or, more accurately, allowed the Iraqis, themselves, to build democracy. Such an outcome may have only just justified the terrible cost of the invasion and made the case of war opponents seem wrong. However, I would hasten to add, as the likelihood of such an outcome was always low, I believe the stance of war opponents was still correct.

As Klein shows, they imposed dictatorship and not democracy so that US corporations could both ransack Iraq culminating in the privatisation of current efforts to privatise its oil wealth (http://www.handsoffiraqioil.org) and loot the US treasury.