What ever happened to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination? Shouldn't President Obama being standing up for this right for the people of Crimea and the eastern Ukraine?
Geopolitics is complicated. Ethnic (and religious & other) minorities within a nation are often majorities within a smaller region, and often aspire to have their own nation-states. Right now the Scots are getting ready to vote on independence from Great Britain, the Palestinians want independence from Israel ... the list is quite long.
Who gets a nation, and who does not? The strong get nations; the weak do not. But often the strongest nations, like the United States, do a lot of the decision making. Right now Russia looks like it is determined to help do some decision making in parts of the Ukraine, particularly in Crimea. To have a fair position on this specific application of the principle of national self-determination, it helps to have a historic perspective. Tweets from 3 microseconds ago are hard to interpret if you don't know the history of the past hundred years or so.
After making sure the British Empire won World War I (thereby protecting U.S. banking loans to London and Paris), Woodrow Wilson went to Europe with a lot of big ideas about permanent world peace. Best known for advocating the creation of the League of Nations, President Wilson proposed the principle of national self-determination. His specific territorial recommendations made in his Fourteen Points were supposed to derive from this principle.
Self-determination, the right of people to choose their sovereignty and political status, to be "governed only by their own consent," got off to a bad start. Woodrow Wilson himself was the architect of modern racism in the United States and within the Democratic Party. This was reflected in his attitude towards non-white people. He wanted self-determination for Poland, a state that did not exist before World War I, because that would weaken both Germany and Russia. But when the Japanese proposed that national self-determination should mean all the colonies of Britain, France, Belgium, Italy (and presumably the Japanese colony of Korea) should be granted independence if they wanted it, Wilson blocked that proposal in a committee which he chaired.
Putting aside Wilson's personal hypocrisy, consider the problem of trying to apply national self-determination to the real world, with its actual real human beings on the ground. Consider some 20th century examples.
Wilson did not grant independence to the American colonies of Puerto Rico or the Philippines. While Puerto Rico is still a possession of the United States, the Philippines became independent under Japanese tutelage during World War II. Then the U.S. recaptured the Philippines in an exceptionally brutal campaign notable for the massive execution of POWs by U.S. soldiers, a war crime. Only when the Philippines leaders agreed to permanent U.S. military access to the islands did the U.S. grant independence, of sorts, in 1946.
The basic principle the U.S. has operated under is democracy and national self-determination is fine as long as pro-U.S. governments end up in control. If anti-U.S. people want independence, or win an election to control a nation, that is another matter entirely.
Vietnam is perhaps the best example, although it is just one of many. Vietnam was a French colony [actually 3 colonies, collectively French Indochina] starting before World War I. It had an independence movement throughout its colonial history. Japan took over Vietnam during World War II, but the French [who were controlled from fascist France] continued to work with the Japanese. The Vietnamese independence movement fought for national self-determination during World War II, and tried to convince the Allied Powers (notably the U.S.) to support Vietnamese national self-determination.
American policy makers (ultimately President Truman) flirted with the idea of an independent Vietnam. Then they decided keeping France happy was more important. The French re-conquered Vietnam. The Vietnamese fought a bloody war for independence, and won. As part of the peace & independence deal the French and those Vietnamese loyal to them (mainly Roman Catholics) concentrated in southern Vietnam. They then refused to allow for national elections because they knew the Viet Minh, who had fought the French, would win. Instead, with U.S. backing, the French set up a regime in South Vietnam that was universally despised from its inception. The U.S. fought the Vietnamese War to try to keep Vietnam from being united and independent.
Even as President Obama scolds Russia for using military intervention in Crimea rather than diplomacy, the U.S. is paying anti-gay rights nations like Uganda to fight in Somalia. The U.S. has not even withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan. France has troops in several African nations, helping to decide who will rule there.
So why is the Ukraine so special? Well, first of all it is white people. Second of all, it has a large pro-Western following. But the pro-Russian faction won the last election. Why are the people violently protesting the last elections, including many young men who admit to being nationalist thugs, given the Democracy label? Can't Americans just admit that our leaders are not for majority rule democracy, they just want the Ukraine to join the European Union and be allied with the U.S. and NATO? Why can't we just wait for the next round of elections to see if sentiment has shifted and power can be transferred peacefully?
Why are Russian police actions bad, but U.S. and French and Brit police actions good?
Because Americans, the vast majority of them, or us, have a misinformed sense of right and wrong.
Is Vladimir Putin an asshole? Sure. But that is not the issue for Obama and the American corporate security state. The only question they ask is: Is Putin our asshole? As long as he is our asshole, as Saddam Hussein once was, and as Osama bin Laden once was, being an asshole is no problem. In politics Putin can be a friend of the U.S. on one issue, an enemy on another.
Self-determination for the Crimea would mean an election to see if the people of Crimea prefer to be part of the Ukraine or part of Russia. Or maybe even independent. I hope such an election is held so the rest of the world can know what Woodrow Wilson would think.
And how about independence or statehood for the U.S. possession known as Puerto Rico? What about Kurdistan for the Kurds, and ... list almost every ethnic minority that does not have its own nation here. There are literally hundreds of them.
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Monday, March 3, 2014
Monday, December 2, 2013
Other People's Imperialism: Roosevelt, Hitler and Ho Chi Minh
Americans, the citizens of the United States of America, have a long tradition of anti-imperialism. After all, our 13 original colonies rebelled against the British Empire in 1776 and established a "novus ordo seclorum," in which, in theory at least, all men are created equal.
Hypocrisy, however, was in no shortage among America's founders, who went off a conquering as soon as they got the rabble they whipped up for the Revolution back under control. Jefferson, Jackson and the lot did not consider Native American nations to be real nations, hence there was nothing imperial about taking their land. Nor was there anything imperial about trying to take Canada in 1812, since the Canadians should have had the good sense to toss off the Brits all along.
Well before World War II began the U.S.A. had become one of the great imperialist powers, behind Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, but ahead of Spain, Italy, Germany, and Japan. We ruled the Philippines, Hawaii and Puerto Rico directly, and maintained puppets in many Western Hemisphere nations. Despite that many Americans, including presidents like Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), made good anti-imperialist speeches.
FDR and crew were against British, French, Dutch and Japanese imperialism. Those imperialists prevented U.S. commercial penetration of their domains. It is possible FDR's rhetoric even fooled Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnamese struggle for independence.
Before World War II what we now call Vietnam was divided into three parts [if you must know: Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochin China in the South], but all were essentially one big colony run by the French, who also ran Laos and Cambodia, the whole region being referred to as French Indochina. The French were vicious in their exploitation of Vietnam, killing and starving people to death in numbers that, had the French been Communists, would have got them in big trouble with both yesterday's and today's American propagandists.
Ho Chi Minh, aiming at independence, was dealing with a remarkably complex situation. Although he was a communist, he was also a nationalist whose first goal was to kick the French out. There were also Vietnamese nationalists who were not communists; most allied with Ho, but some saw themselves as future rulers, and so either fought the French separately or even put energy into sabotaging Ho's organization, the Viet Minh. The nationalists bickered among themselves, but there was a lot of bickering in the Viet Minh as well.
Before World War II the French kept alternating governments between conservatives, who had no sympathy at all for the Vietnamese, and socialists, who in theory had sympathy but who nevertheless opposed independence for Vietnam. Ho and his diplomats negotiated with all of them. Ho was willing to accept independence within a French federation. He was a moderate and worldly guy who had lived at times in France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, before setting up his headquarters in southern China.
Where and when World War II began depends on who you ask. Japan started styling itself the America of Asia in the 1930s. Japan was one of the few independent Asian nations, it had a democratic and militaristic government (just like the U.S.), and it asserted its own equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe told the European imperialists to keep their hands off the New World (western hemisphere). But later U.S. presidents grabbed as much territory as they could and frequently sent in the Marines to "restore order," often by appointing a dictator.
Japan told the European imperialists it was time to get out of Asia, and Japanese leaders were very interested in the restoring order game. The most disorderly nation in Asia was China, where a combination of internal weakness and predatory tactics by Europeans and Americans had left a state of chaos characterized by warlord rule, famine, and economic distress. Communists had set up their own Chinese state in the northwest, while in theory Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party "governed" the nation as a whole. To describe the mess in detail is beyond the scope of this essay. The Japanese, on the other hand, had built up industrial and military capabilities sufficient to defeat both China and Russia in earlier wars.
The Japanese went about restoring order in China, meeting the same kind of resistance the U.S. met when restoring order within the Monroe Wall. No American President liked the Japanese out-competing the U.S. in China, but in particular FDR did not like it. The "Delano" side of his family had made its fortune running illegal opium into China, and Roosevelt backed the Open Door Policy, which allowed every imperialist nation to pillage and rape China's economy, as long as new official colonies were not established. Roosevelt berated the Japanese and sometimes even British, French and Dutch colonialism in Asia, but note he did not grant independence to the Philippines, a U.S. colony.
Pretty soon there were 3 major governments of China (many more, if you count the war lords who ran with Chiang but obeyed no one but themselves): the communists, the Japanese puppets (one in Manchuria, one in Coastal China), and the increasingly irrelevant Kuomintang. FDR decided to prop up Chiang, who had married a Christian, American-educated banking princess. Money flowed and ammunition flowed to Chiang, but most of it was diverted by his corrupt cronies or Madam Chiang's family. So FDR sent the U.S. Air Force to fight the Japanese. In order to avoid going to Congress to ask for a declaration of war (the Republican Party was opposed to war back then, and enough Democrats were for peace to kill such a request) the U.S. Air Force in China pretended to be volunteers in the Chinese air force. They were known as the Flying Tigers.
Meanwhile, back in Europe, Adolf Hitler's German army had defeated the French Army. The French fascists, led by Petain, made a deal to rule much of France and all its colonies from Vichy. The Japanese then demanded and got the right to station their troops in Vietnam.
No one was helping Ho and his comrades very much. After Pearl Harbor, Chiang and the Americans were willing to give Ho limited support as long as his ragtag guerillas fought the Japanese. The Russians were too busy with their own problems to help. The Chinese communists provided some training, but they had to fight both Chiang and the Japanese, so their support was minimal.
Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh did the best they could during the war years. They organized a vast underground network and a Provisional Government. The French killed as many Viet patriots as they could, and the Japanese did too. [Many native leaders in the Philippines cooperated with the Japanese, as did Indonesian and Burmese leaders, and in turn these nations were granted independence. It is not clear why that strategy was not followed in Vietnam.]
When FDR died and President Truman vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Vietminh thought the time for Vietnamese independence had finally come. Instead, since the U.S. was busy occupying Japan (a goal of U.S. imperialists from at least 1850), the allied imperialists somehow decided that the Chinese would occupy northern Vietnam and the British would occupy southern Vietnam. They were to ship the Japanese soldiers home, but what would come next?
The French wanted Vietnam back! The Chinese considered keeping North Vietnam, but Chiang could not really spare the troops since he was planning to wipe out the Chinese communists. The Cold War was already on, with the U.S. and British Empires demanding free elections in Eastern Europe (held by the Russians after defeating Hitler) and the Communists demanding free elections in France and Italy, plus the deposing of General Franco from power in Spain. Similarly, free elections were all the rhetorical rage in Vietnam, but just in case the imperialists refused to cooperate, the Viet Minh seized what territory they could, which included most of Tonkin. The local remnants of French fascism not being up to the task of fighting, they encouraged the Japanese, who were now POWs, to fight the Vietnamese independence forces!
To wrap up an already long story, while Ho negotiated with the new government of France organized by Charles de Gaulle, the French got enough material from President Truman to put together an army and reinvade Vietnam. Truman felt that French imperialism was better for the U.S. than Vietnamese independence probably leading to communism.
So the Vietnamese had to fight a long war with the French, and when they won they only got North Vietnam (the deceitful French agreed to nationwide elections, then used an interval of peace to set up a puppet regime in South Vietnam, which the U.S. soon came to equip, finance, and generally pull the strings of).
Sadly, although imperialism has taken on forms different from the colonies of the past, it is still a major part of the world order today. As I write this the French are "helping" African nations by sending in the Foreign Legion again. America has never given up the imperialist game; Barack Obama has approved plans to establish U.S. military bases in almost every country in Africa.
Inside the U.S., the anti-imperialist movement is weaker than it has been at any time since the American Revolution. People just don't care, they don't know the present day facts or the historical facts. American citizens don't understand how imperialism enriches our elite, sucks the blood out of our working class (and even the middle class), and is largely responsible for the impossible-to-pay-back federal debt.
But hey, won't Apple being coming out with a new phone next year? Shouldn't that be what we are focusing our attention on? Or Lady Gaga? Or World of Warcraft?
Hypocrisy, however, was in no shortage among America's founders, who went off a conquering as soon as they got the rabble they whipped up for the Revolution back under control. Jefferson, Jackson and the lot did not consider Native American nations to be real nations, hence there was nothing imperial about taking their land. Nor was there anything imperial about trying to take Canada in 1812, since the Canadians should have had the good sense to toss off the Brits all along.
Well before World War II began the U.S.A. had become one of the great imperialist powers, behind Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, but ahead of Spain, Italy, Germany, and Japan. We ruled the Philippines, Hawaii and Puerto Rico directly, and maintained puppets in many Western Hemisphere nations. Despite that many Americans, including presidents like Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), made good anti-imperialist speeches.
FDR and crew were against British, French, Dutch and Japanese imperialism. Those imperialists prevented U.S. commercial penetration of their domains. It is possible FDR's rhetoric even fooled Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnamese struggle for independence.
Before World War II what we now call Vietnam was divided into three parts [if you must know: Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochin China in the South], but all were essentially one big colony run by the French, who also ran Laos and Cambodia, the whole region being referred to as French Indochina. The French were vicious in their exploitation of Vietnam, killing and starving people to death in numbers that, had the French been Communists, would have got them in big trouble with both yesterday's and today's American propagandists.
Ho Chi Minh, aiming at independence, was dealing with a remarkably complex situation. Although he was a communist, he was also a nationalist whose first goal was to kick the French out. There were also Vietnamese nationalists who were not communists; most allied with Ho, but some saw themselves as future rulers, and so either fought the French separately or even put energy into sabotaging Ho's organization, the Viet Minh. The nationalists bickered among themselves, but there was a lot of bickering in the Viet Minh as well.
Before World War II the French kept alternating governments between conservatives, who had no sympathy at all for the Vietnamese, and socialists, who in theory had sympathy but who nevertheless opposed independence for Vietnam. Ho and his diplomats negotiated with all of them. Ho was willing to accept independence within a French federation. He was a moderate and worldly guy who had lived at times in France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, before setting up his headquarters in southern China.
Where and when World War II began depends on who you ask. Japan started styling itself the America of Asia in the 1930s. Japan was one of the few independent Asian nations, it had a democratic and militaristic government (just like the U.S.), and it asserted its own equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe told the European imperialists to keep their hands off the New World (western hemisphere). But later U.S. presidents grabbed as much territory as they could and frequently sent in the Marines to "restore order," often by appointing a dictator.
Japan told the European imperialists it was time to get out of Asia, and Japanese leaders were very interested in the restoring order game. The most disorderly nation in Asia was China, where a combination of internal weakness and predatory tactics by Europeans and Americans had left a state of chaos characterized by warlord rule, famine, and economic distress. Communists had set up their own Chinese state in the northwest, while in theory Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party "governed" the nation as a whole. To describe the mess in detail is beyond the scope of this essay. The Japanese, on the other hand, had built up industrial and military capabilities sufficient to defeat both China and Russia in earlier wars.
The Japanese went about restoring order in China, meeting the same kind of resistance the U.S. met when restoring order within the Monroe Wall. No American President liked the Japanese out-competing the U.S. in China, but in particular FDR did not like it. The "Delano" side of his family had made its fortune running illegal opium into China, and Roosevelt backed the Open Door Policy, which allowed every imperialist nation to pillage and rape China's economy, as long as new official colonies were not established. Roosevelt berated the Japanese and sometimes even British, French and Dutch colonialism in Asia, but note he did not grant independence to the Philippines, a U.S. colony.
Pretty soon there were 3 major governments of China (many more, if you count the war lords who ran with Chiang but obeyed no one but themselves): the communists, the Japanese puppets (one in Manchuria, one in Coastal China), and the increasingly irrelevant Kuomintang. FDR decided to prop up Chiang, who had married a Christian, American-educated banking princess. Money flowed and ammunition flowed to Chiang, but most of it was diverted by his corrupt cronies or Madam Chiang's family. So FDR sent the U.S. Air Force to fight the Japanese. In order to avoid going to Congress to ask for a declaration of war (the Republican Party was opposed to war back then, and enough Democrats were for peace to kill such a request) the U.S. Air Force in China pretended to be volunteers in the Chinese air force. They were known as the Flying Tigers.
Meanwhile, back in Europe, Adolf Hitler's German army had defeated the French Army. The French fascists, led by Petain, made a deal to rule much of France and all its colonies from Vichy. The Japanese then demanded and got the right to station their troops in Vietnam.
No one was helping Ho and his comrades very much. After Pearl Harbor, Chiang and the Americans were willing to give Ho limited support as long as his ragtag guerillas fought the Japanese. The Russians were too busy with their own problems to help. The Chinese communists provided some training, but they had to fight both Chiang and the Japanese, so their support was minimal.
Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh did the best they could during the war years. They organized a vast underground network and a Provisional Government. The French killed as many Viet patriots as they could, and the Japanese did too. [Many native leaders in the Philippines cooperated with the Japanese, as did Indonesian and Burmese leaders, and in turn these nations were granted independence. It is not clear why that strategy was not followed in Vietnam.]
When FDR died and President Truman vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Vietminh thought the time for Vietnamese independence had finally come. Instead, since the U.S. was busy occupying Japan (a goal of U.S. imperialists from at least 1850), the allied imperialists somehow decided that the Chinese would occupy northern Vietnam and the British would occupy southern Vietnam. They were to ship the Japanese soldiers home, but what would come next?
The French wanted Vietnam back! The Chinese considered keeping North Vietnam, but Chiang could not really spare the troops since he was planning to wipe out the Chinese communists. The Cold War was already on, with the U.S. and British Empires demanding free elections in Eastern Europe (held by the Russians after defeating Hitler) and the Communists demanding free elections in France and Italy, plus the deposing of General Franco from power in Spain. Similarly, free elections were all the rhetorical rage in Vietnam, but just in case the imperialists refused to cooperate, the Viet Minh seized what territory they could, which included most of Tonkin. The local remnants of French fascism not being up to the task of fighting, they encouraged the Japanese, who were now POWs, to fight the Vietnamese independence forces!
To wrap up an already long story, while Ho negotiated with the new government of France organized by Charles de Gaulle, the French got enough material from President Truman to put together an army and reinvade Vietnam. Truman felt that French imperialism was better for the U.S. than Vietnamese independence probably leading to communism.
So the Vietnamese had to fight a long war with the French, and when they won they only got North Vietnam (the deceitful French agreed to nationwide elections, then used an interval of peace to set up a puppet regime in South Vietnam, which the U.S. soon came to equip, finance, and generally pull the strings of).
Sadly, although imperialism has taken on forms different from the colonies of the past, it is still a major part of the world order today. As I write this the French are "helping" African nations by sending in the Foreign Legion again. America has never given up the imperialist game; Barack Obama has approved plans to establish U.S. military bases in almost every country in Africa.
Inside the U.S., the anti-imperialist movement is weaker than it has been at any time since the American Revolution. People just don't care, they don't know the present day facts or the historical facts. American citizens don't understand how imperialism enriches our elite, sucks the blood out of our working class (and even the middle class), and is largely responsible for the impossible-to-pay-back federal debt.
But hey, won't Apple being coming out with a new phone next year? Shouldn't that be what we are focusing our attention on? Or Lady Gaga? Or World of Warcraft?
Friday, January 18, 2013
Chiang, Diem, Hamid Karzai and Sheikh Mohamoud
Chiang Kai-shek was not a bad guy. He did not lose China to the communists on purpose, any more than the monarchist governor of Virginia Colony meant to lose the Americas to Republicans.
The Communist victory in China during the Truman administration created the mindset in which cold warriors like Joseph McCarthy and John Kennedy came to power. Not losing nations to communism was as important to American politics between 1948 and 1990 as not losing nations to radical Islam has been since 2001.
Chiang was a remarkable guy. Born in 1887, as a youth he was disgusted by the inability of China to modernize and by the depredations of imperialist nations: Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and the United States. Even Japan, which modernized quickly after the U.S. attack on it in the 1850's, was acting like an imperial power in China by 1900. Chiang went to military school in Japan, then joined the Chinese republican movement, the Kuomintang, started by Sun Yat-sen. Showing intelligence, efficiency, and bravery, Chiang became the military leader of the Kuomintang and did much to create a modern Chinese military and government capable of liberating China from foreign aggressors.
Unfortunately, China was more of a mess than Chiang could handle. He came to rely on generals who were more like war lords than loyal members of his government. He married a member of a Chinese banking family who had been educated in the United States. He decided he could not fight all the imperialists at once, converted to Christianity, and increasingly allied himself with the United States. His government became more Fascist than democratic. The man who easily defeated other Chinese warlords found he could not effectively fight the Japanese, even with considerable American help.
The Chinese communists, in contrast, lived among the peasants and workers, in fact most were peasants and workers. They also were not very effective fighting the Japanese during World War II, but they did far more with far fewer resources. When the Japanese withdrew Chiang's troops took over most of the country, but they were unreliable troops. Vast quantities of U.S. aid meant to feed and equip Chiang's troops disappeared into the pockets of Chiang's generals. While there was certainly fighting in China's civil war, for more important movement was troops deserting Chiang's generals and enlisting with the Communists. Ironically, it was Chiang who had given military training to the Communist leaders at the Whampoa Military Academy in the 1920s.
Chiang did not seem to be able to comprehend what was happening. He expected orders to be obeyed. He believed he was reforming China. He was not corrupt, but he tolerated corruption because he did not feel he could risk alienating his warlord generals. He simply was no match for Mao and the Communists. In the end billions of American taxpayer dollars either disappeared or ended up as weapons captured by the communists.
Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon showed a remarkable ability to learn from U.S. mistakes in China and repeat them exactly in Vietnam. After the Vietnamese defeated the French in 1954, the U.S. supported a Roman Catholic Vietnamese political leader, Ngo Dinh Diem. Let's just note that most Vietnamese were not Roman Catholic, a religion associated with their former French colonizers. Although the young Diem moved up quickly through the ranks of the Vietnamese who served the French, in the 1930's he joined a call to create a Vietnamese legislature and was dismissed from office. Diem became a nationalist and rival to Ho Chi Minh. But unable to compete effectively among the Vietnamese, he instead sought help from the United States and the Vatican. It was President Eisenhower who chose Diem to rule South Vietnam, over French objections. His rule was reinforced by hundreds of thousands of Catholic refugees from the north.
Eisenhower sent a lot of money to Diem, who used to to consolidate his control of the south. He imprisoned anyone who disagreed with him. President Kennedy sent in U.S. troops when Diem's could not handle a nationalist uprising against him. As with Chiang, money and arms were used to buy a lively life style for Diem's cronies, and little effort was made to either win the hearts of the peasants or even win the war against their (mostly communist) leaders. In addition Diem discriminated against Buddhists, the dominant religious group. Diem was assassinated by his own followers working with the CIA on November 2, 1963 with the okay of President Kennedy, who wanted to put a more effective leader in place. Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
In Afghanistan the U.S. chose a different sort of puppet, Hamid Karzai. Born in 1957 in Kandahar, to a powerful, corrupt political family, he was educated in Afghanistan and India, then became a CIA contractor during the Afghan civil war against the Soviet-backed government. When the Taliban took over they offered him a post as an ambassador, but instead he joined the monarchists in opposition in Pakistan, as well as traveling to look for support in the United States. He worked closely with the United States during its war of aggression against Afghanistan in 2001. He was selected as Chairman of a U.S.-backed government, then was appointed President of Afghanistan by American-vetted "leaders."
For over a decade now the U.S. has poured money and troops into Afghanistan. Karzai's family, and a few other upper-level crooks, are now rich. The Afghan Army is, if not quite a joke, not very effective in fighting the Taliban. We can pretty much plan on Karzai & friends taking their loot into exile fairly soon after the U.S. military withdraws in 2014. Unless, of course, President Obama changes his mind and wastes even more American blood and taxes on Afghanistan.
Compared to the immense sums of money wasted in China, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, the nation of Somalia has been a side show. Neither President Bush nor Obama have sent in troops. Instead they have trained, equipped, and bought troops of African nations to do the fighting. Somalia was moving towards a stable governance supported by a majority of the population under the Islamic Courts Union, but that frightened the anti-Islamic U.S. corporate security state. So Ethiopia (a Christian nation), Uganda, Burundi, and lately Kenya were paid to invade Somalia. Meanwhile the Shabab, a very radical Islamic group, became first the de-facto government and later the main armed opposition group.
No one strongman is associated with American attempts to control Somalia. The newly selected American puppet is Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud. Mr. Mohamoud probably has some good qualities. At least he is not a warlord. He was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was chosen by his U.S.-approved fellow leaders as President of Somalia in September 2012. He heads no powerful faction, so is not a likely threat to the clan and militia power bases of the other members of the government. He hails from an area until recently controlled by Shabab, now controlled by the Kenya military.
Mohamoud's lack of clout is revealed in this report from 2011: "Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud remains the leader of the Peace and Development Party (PDP) for the next three years after being elected unanimously by 155 members of the PDP ... [attendees included] members of Hawiye traditional elders" Network Al Shahid, Nasongo Willy, "Somalia: new independent political party leader", April 20, 2011.
Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is being reconstructed with American taxpayer dollars. It gives a nice appearance to things. But without the foreign militaries the government would not even control Mogadishu, much less most of the rest of Somalia.
I don't know if there is any alternative for Somalis other than working with an American puppet and hoping to defeat Shabab, or working with Shabab to drive the Americans, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Ugandans and Rwandans out of the county. Somalia is a mess of truly historic proportions. It is a witch's brew that, a poison pot that was started when Portuguese pirates (well, the official Portuguese navy) started raiding the area back in the 1500s.
The likely outcome in Somalia is probably the same, in a generalized way, as we had in China and Vietnam, and will soon have in Afghanistan. Whether with ballots or bullets, the Somalis will eventually get rid of the foreigners and govern themselves. Meanwhile, America continues its relative decline as a global power, as its economy wilts while it feed its military establishment and its puppets around the world.
The Communist victory in China during the Truman administration created the mindset in which cold warriors like Joseph McCarthy and John Kennedy came to power. Not losing nations to communism was as important to American politics between 1948 and 1990 as not losing nations to radical Islam has been since 2001.
Chiang was a remarkable guy. Born in 1887, as a youth he was disgusted by the inability of China to modernize and by the depredations of imperialist nations: Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and the United States. Even Japan, which modernized quickly after the U.S. attack on it in the 1850's, was acting like an imperial power in China by 1900. Chiang went to military school in Japan, then joined the Chinese republican movement, the Kuomintang, started by Sun Yat-sen. Showing intelligence, efficiency, and bravery, Chiang became the military leader of the Kuomintang and did much to create a modern Chinese military and government capable of liberating China from foreign aggressors.
Unfortunately, China was more of a mess than Chiang could handle. He came to rely on generals who were more like war lords than loyal members of his government. He married a member of a Chinese banking family who had been educated in the United States. He decided he could not fight all the imperialists at once, converted to Christianity, and increasingly allied himself with the United States. His government became more Fascist than democratic. The man who easily defeated other Chinese warlords found he could not effectively fight the Japanese, even with considerable American help.
The Chinese communists, in contrast, lived among the peasants and workers, in fact most were peasants and workers. They also were not very effective fighting the Japanese during World War II, but they did far more with far fewer resources. When the Japanese withdrew Chiang's troops took over most of the country, but they were unreliable troops. Vast quantities of U.S. aid meant to feed and equip Chiang's troops disappeared into the pockets of Chiang's generals. While there was certainly fighting in China's civil war, for more important movement was troops deserting Chiang's generals and enlisting with the Communists. Ironically, it was Chiang who had given military training to the Communist leaders at the Whampoa Military Academy in the 1920s.
Chiang did not seem to be able to comprehend what was happening. He expected orders to be obeyed. He believed he was reforming China. He was not corrupt, but he tolerated corruption because he did not feel he could risk alienating his warlord generals. He simply was no match for Mao and the Communists. In the end billions of American taxpayer dollars either disappeared or ended up as weapons captured by the communists.
Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon showed a remarkable ability to learn from U.S. mistakes in China and repeat them exactly in Vietnam. After the Vietnamese defeated the French in 1954, the U.S. supported a Roman Catholic Vietnamese political leader, Ngo Dinh Diem. Let's just note that most Vietnamese were not Roman Catholic, a religion associated with their former French colonizers. Although the young Diem moved up quickly through the ranks of the Vietnamese who served the French, in the 1930's he joined a call to create a Vietnamese legislature and was dismissed from office. Diem became a nationalist and rival to Ho Chi Minh. But unable to compete effectively among the Vietnamese, he instead sought help from the United States and the Vatican. It was President Eisenhower who chose Diem to rule South Vietnam, over French objections. His rule was reinforced by hundreds of thousands of Catholic refugees from the north.
Eisenhower sent a lot of money to Diem, who used to to consolidate his control of the south. He imprisoned anyone who disagreed with him. President Kennedy sent in U.S. troops when Diem's could not handle a nationalist uprising against him. As with Chiang, money and arms were used to buy a lively life style for Diem's cronies, and little effort was made to either win the hearts of the peasants or even win the war against their (mostly communist) leaders. In addition Diem discriminated against Buddhists, the dominant religious group. Diem was assassinated by his own followers working with the CIA on November 2, 1963 with the okay of President Kennedy, who wanted to put a more effective leader in place. Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
In Afghanistan the U.S. chose a different sort of puppet, Hamid Karzai. Born in 1957 in Kandahar, to a powerful, corrupt political family, he was educated in Afghanistan and India, then became a CIA contractor during the Afghan civil war against the Soviet-backed government. When the Taliban took over they offered him a post as an ambassador, but instead he joined the monarchists in opposition in Pakistan, as well as traveling to look for support in the United States. He worked closely with the United States during its war of aggression against Afghanistan in 2001. He was selected as Chairman of a U.S.-backed government, then was appointed President of Afghanistan by American-vetted "leaders."
For over a decade now the U.S. has poured money and troops into Afghanistan. Karzai's family, and a few other upper-level crooks, are now rich. The Afghan Army is, if not quite a joke, not very effective in fighting the Taliban. We can pretty much plan on Karzai & friends taking their loot into exile fairly soon after the U.S. military withdraws in 2014. Unless, of course, President Obama changes his mind and wastes even more American blood and taxes on Afghanistan.
Compared to the immense sums of money wasted in China, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, the nation of Somalia has been a side show. Neither President Bush nor Obama have sent in troops. Instead they have trained, equipped, and bought troops of African nations to do the fighting. Somalia was moving towards a stable governance supported by a majority of the population under the Islamic Courts Union, but that frightened the anti-Islamic U.S. corporate security state. So Ethiopia (a Christian nation), Uganda, Burundi, and lately Kenya were paid to invade Somalia. Meanwhile the Shabab, a very radical Islamic group, became first the de-facto government and later the main armed opposition group.
No one strongman is associated with American attempts to control Somalia. The newly selected American puppet is Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud. Mr. Mohamoud probably has some good qualities. At least he is not a warlord. He was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was chosen by his U.S.-approved fellow leaders as President of Somalia in September 2012. He heads no powerful faction, so is not a likely threat to the clan and militia power bases of the other members of the government. He hails from an area until recently controlled by Shabab, now controlled by the Kenya military.
Mohamoud's lack of clout is revealed in this report from 2011: "Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud remains the leader of the Peace and Development Party (PDP) for the next three years after being elected unanimously by 155 members of the PDP ... [attendees included] members of Hawiye traditional elders" Network Al Shahid, Nasongo Willy, "Somalia: new independent political party leader", April 20, 2011.
Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is being reconstructed with American taxpayer dollars. It gives a nice appearance to things. But without the foreign militaries the government would not even control Mogadishu, much less most of the rest of Somalia.
I don't know if there is any alternative for Somalis other than working with an American puppet and hoping to defeat Shabab, or working with Shabab to drive the Americans, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Ugandans and Rwandans out of the county. Somalia is a mess of truly historic proportions. It is a witch's brew that, a poison pot that was started when Portuguese pirates (well, the official Portuguese navy) started raiding the area back in the 1500s.
The likely outcome in Somalia is probably the same, in a generalized way, as we had in China and Vietnam, and will soon have in Afghanistan. Whether with ballots or bullets, the Somalis will eventually get rid of the foreigners and govern themselves. Meanwhile, America continues its relative decline as a global power, as its economy wilts while it feed its military establishment and its puppets around the world.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Ike Eisenhower, Business, and War
Imagine if former President Dwight Eisenhower ("Ike") had been around to advise President George W. Bush during the 2001 crisis, instead of Dick Cheney.
General Eisenhower ran for President in 1952 and assumed office in early 1953. He was conservative, but he was a calm conservative who was willing to leave most of the New Deal intact. He was anti-communist, but unlike many Republicans of his era he did not believe that Democrats were communists, or that it was impossible to negotiate or even cooperate with communist governments. After President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the European theater during World War II, Eisenhower had worked with communists, including Joe Stalin himself, to defeat Nazi Germany in battle.
Senator Joe McCarthy, Ike's own vice-president Richard Nixon, and other Republicans (and quite a few democrats, notably John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey) had made anti-Communism the center of both domestic and foreign policy. The Korean War was basically in a stalemate, with North Korea and the U.S. facing off near the 38th parallel, roughly where they had been when the war began. Red Scare politicians wanted Ike to conquer the whole peninsula.
Although the U.S. refused to officially recognize the then-popular new regime in China because it was communist, Eisenhower opened secret lines of negotiation. After a couple of false starts, sabotaged by South Korea's fascist leader Syngman Rhee, on July 27, 1953 a truce was signed.
Meanwhile the French were unable to muster sufficient military force to crush the Vietnamese independence movement (which had been pro-U.S. until Harry Truman decided to allow the French to re-colonialize Vietnam after World War II). They wanted Eisenhower to bomb the Vietnamese, and almost all of Eisenhower's advisors thought that was a good idea. But Eisenhower, and General Matthew Ridgeway, thought Vietnam was lousy terrain to fight on.
Eisenhower was a big-picture guy who was willing to let subordinates handle details, unlike most recent U.S. presidents. He understood that Communism had an appeal to some people; it was not just something imposed by Joe Stalin. He did not want to bleed America to death fighting peasant rebellions. He also understood that, even at a time when the U.S. economy was riding high (the only major rival at that time being communist Russia, the U.S.S.R.), military spending had a dark side for any economy.
Even so, Eisenhower allowed the French $385 million in military aid specifically for Vietnam, and the continued use of 200 U.S. Air Force advisors authorized by President Truman.
When Joe Stalin had died, Ike had said:
"The jet plane that roars over your head costs three-quarters of a million dollars. That is more money than a man earning ten thousand dollars a year is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead? ... to robbing every person and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil."
So here is what Ike would have told Bush: send in the CIA. Back them up with Special Forces if necessary. But don't increase the military budget, and don't get involved in a ground war in Asia.
Instead Bush listened to Dick Cheney and crew, the spiritual and mental descendents of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. He enlarged the military budget and invented the Homeland Security boondoggle. At the same time he cut taxes on the highest income Americans to the lowest level since 1933, resulting in the highest annual budget deficits ever. Combined with the Clinton-era banking "reforms," this set the stage for the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
The thing was, because Americans saw General Eisenhower as one of the greatest military leaders of the era, he was able to resist pressure for military expenditures and unwinnable wars.
Now we are in the second term of the Barack Obama administration, and another weak President has neither the backbone nor the gravitas to do what is right for America. In 2006 U.S. citizens voted to end the war in Afghanistan. Obama bought peace with the Pentagon by staying at war with the Islamic world. He has extended the war to North Africa. He is even looking to evade his won 2014 deadline for Iraq.
Now "everyone" of importance in Washington, Democrat and Republican alike, believes that more economy-crippling military and homeland security spending is justified. Damn the free markets, what business people really want is guaranteed profit government contracts.
I like Barack Obama's speeches, mostly. When it comes to actually doing the job, I Like Ike.
Agree? Disagree? You can leave feedback below.
Note: The Eisenhower quote above is from page 807 of William Manchester's The Glory and the Dream, to which I am also indebted for many of the historic details used in this essay.
General Eisenhower ran for President in 1952 and assumed office in early 1953. He was conservative, but he was a calm conservative who was willing to leave most of the New Deal intact. He was anti-communist, but unlike many Republicans of his era he did not believe that Democrats were communists, or that it was impossible to negotiate or even cooperate with communist governments. After President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the European theater during World War II, Eisenhower had worked with communists, including Joe Stalin himself, to defeat Nazi Germany in battle.
Senator Joe McCarthy, Ike's own vice-president Richard Nixon, and other Republicans (and quite a few democrats, notably John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey) had made anti-Communism the center of both domestic and foreign policy. The Korean War was basically in a stalemate, with North Korea and the U.S. facing off near the 38th parallel, roughly where they had been when the war began. Red Scare politicians wanted Ike to conquer the whole peninsula.
Although the U.S. refused to officially recognize the then-popular new regime in China because it was communist, Eisenhower opened secret lines of negotiation. After a couple of false starts, sabotaged by South Korea's fascist leader Syngman Rhee, on July 27, 1953 a truce was signed.
Meanwhile the French were unable to muster sufficient military force to crush the Vietnamese independence movement (which had been pro-U.S. until Harry Truman decided to allow the French to re-colonialize Vietnam after World War II). They wanted Eisenhower to bomb the Vietnamese, and almost all of Eisenhower's advisors thought that was a good idea. But Eisenhower, and General Matthew Ridgeway, thought Vietnam was lousy terrain to fight on.
Eisenhower was a big-picture guy who was willing to let subordinates handle details, unlike most recent U.S. presidents. He understood that Communism had an appeal to some people; it was not just something imposed by Joe Stalin. He did not want to bleed America to death fighting peasant rebellions. He also understood that, even at a time when the U.S. economy was riding high (the only major rival at that time being communist Russia, the U.S.S.R.), military spending had a dark side for any economy.
Even so, Eisenhower allowed the French $385 million in military aid specifically for Vietnam, and the continued use of 200 U.S. Air Force advisors authorized by President Truman.
When Joe Stalin had died, Ike had said:
"The jet plane that roars over your head costs three-quarters of a million dollars. That is more money than a man earning ten thousand dollars a year is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead? ... to robbing every person and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil."
So here is what Ike would have told Bush: send in the CIA. Back them up with Special Forces if necessary. But don't increase the military budget, and don't get involved in a ground war in Asia.
Instead Bush listened to Dick Cheney and crew, the spiritual and mental descendents of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. He enlarged the military budget and invented the Homeland Security boondoggle. At the same time he cut taxes on the highest income Americans to the lowest level since 1933, resulting in the highest annual budget deficits ever. Combined with the Clinton-era banking "reforms," this set the stage for the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
The thing was, because Americans saw General Eisenhower as one of the greatest military leaders of the era, he was able to resist pressure for military expenditures and unwinnable wars.
Now we are in the second term of the Barack Obama administration, and another weak President has neither the backbone nor the gravitas to do what is right for America. In 2006 U.S. citizens voted to end the war in Afghanistan. Obama bought peace with the Pentagon by staying at war with the Islamic world. He has extended the war to North Africa. He is even looking to evade his won 2014 deadline for Iraq.
Now "everyone" of importance in Washington, Democrat and Republican alike, believes that more economy-crippling military and homeland security spending is justified. Damn the free markets, what business people really want is guaranteed profit government contracts.
I like Barack Obama's speeches, mostly. When it comes to actually doing the job, I Like Ike.
Agree? Disagree? You can leave feedback below.
Note: The Eisenhower quote above is from page 807 of William Manchester's The Glory and the Dream, to which I am also indebted for many of the historic details used in this essay.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Herman Cain's Twisted Politics
In the Republican presidential hopeful field, in which candidates rise and fall like so many prairie dogs, Herman Cain has recently risen to number two status. A business guy with no prior experience in political office (though he ran for Senator of Georgia in 2004), it is impressive that he has done so well. In fact, his entire life is impressive, if you don't think about it too much.
Mr. Cain can genuinely claim to be a rags to riches story. In contrast to President Obama, he came from a working class black family, growing up when being black was a serious disadvantage (he was born in 1945). Also unlike Obama, he was good at math, and so he received a B.A. in mathematics in 1967 and a M.S. in computer science in 1971. Thus he somehow avoided the typical fate of men of his age bracket: killing or being killed in the jungles and cities of Vietnam. He did work a bit for the Navy as a civilian before going to work as an analyst for Coca Cola.
So Mr. Cain is a smart guy, he dodged the draft and used his smarts to get ahead in business. Nothing wrong with that in so far as it goes. Any prol doing well in business is alright with me. He was no entrepreneur, to be sure; he was a corporate man. He was given increasing levels of responsibility at Pillsbury. They eventually made him President of their Godfather's Pizza subsidiary.
That is when Herman learned the lesson that he'd like to teach the entire nation. He took the over 900 stores of the money losing division and he made the division profitable. Did he do that by improving employee spirit, a clever advertising campaign, or inventing a better pizza? No. He made two lists: profitable stores and unprofitable stores. He closed almost 500 unprofitable stores. All the employees had to find new jobs. Herman's economic conservatism in largely colored by that success. He bought Godfather's from Pillsbury, using borrowed money. He was a king, the head of his own 400 store empire. The paupers who were his ex-employees should have taken more time with their math lessons; they deserved whatever fate awaited them.
Meet Herman Cain, the man who proved that hard work and business acumen and permission to swing an ax can make anyone a CEO multi-millionaire. The man who believes welfare and the laziness it inspires are what is keeping poor people down. The man who does not like government handouts, except when they are military jobs and contracts.
Get ready for a caining, or a caning, if you are among the irresponsibly unemployed. Herman Cain is the True Conservative who will cut, cut, cut government programs the way he cut Godfather's Pizza. He'll cut taxes too, those terrible taxes that slow the rise of bright fellows like himself up the social ladder.
Strangely, Herman Cain served on the board of the Federal reserve Bank of Kansas City from 1992 until 1996. How did he, with no banking experience, get appointed to a such a post? I suppose we'll have to read his new book, "Magical Me," to find out.
You would think that at least a slight understanding of macroeconomics would be required to be a Federal Reserve board member. Things that seem to work out on a small scale, say for an individual business, can become a disaster if done on a large scale. You may have noticed this in 2008, during the CEO panic. CEO's began laying off workers, even before demand dropped, even at corporations that were very profitable. Surprise, when enough CEO's had fired enough workers, we were in a severe recession.
While each individual termite benefits from eating the house, and the whole colony benefits for a while, eventually the house falls down.
When Herman takes away people's food stamps, he may think that will force them to go out and earn a living. Instead the corporate supermarket chains and mom & pop corner stores alike will go under. When he cuts back on funding for education, he thinks parents will pay for private schooling, but instead the streets will fill up with delinquents. When he takes away Medicare Social Security, he thinks seniors will quietly curl up in the streets and die. They might, but most of the nations doctors and nurses and biotechnology CEO's will be joining them in the streets.
After 4 years with Herman Cain, he'll probably just close up America, because the entire nation will be unprofitable.
I wish I could endorse a math guy for President, but it isn't how good you are with math, it's what you do with it. If you close your mind to the bigger realities of the world, and just use it to count and hoard beans as Herman Cain has, then math has been wasted on you.
Still interested? Herman Cain for President
Mr. Cain can genuinely claim to be a rags to riches story. In contrast to President Obama, he came from a working class black family, growing up when being black was a serious disadvantage (he was born in 1945). Also unlike Obama, he was good at math, and so he received a B.A. in mathematics in 1967 and a M.S. in computer science in 1971. Thus he somehow avoided the typical fate of men of his age bracket: killing or being killed in the jungles and cities of Vietnam. He did work a bit for the Navy as a civilian before going to work as an analyst for Coca Cola.
So Mr. Cain is a smart guy, he dodged the draft and used his smarts to get ahead in business. Nothing wrong with that in so far as it goes. Any prol doing well in business is alright with me. He was no entrepreneur, to be sure; he was a corporate man. He was given increasing levels of responsibility at Pillsbury. They eventually made him President of their Godfather's Pizza subsidiary.
That is when Herman learned the lesson that he'd like to teach the entire nation. He took the over 900 stores of the money losing division and he made the division profitable. Did he do that by improving employee spirit, a clever advertising campaign, or inventing a better pizza? No. He made two lists: profitable stores and unprofitable stores. He closed almost 500 unprofitable stores. All the employees had to find new jobs. Herman's economic conservatism in largely colored by that success. He bought Godfather's from Pillsbury, using borrowed money. He was a king, the head of his own 400 store empire. The paupers who were his ex-employees should have taken more time with their math lessons; they deserved whatever fate awaited them.
Meet Herman Cain, the man who proved that hard work and business acumen and permission to swing an ax can make anyone a CEO multi-millionaire. The man who believes welfare and the laziness it inspires are what is keeping poor people down. The man who does not like government handouts, except when they are military jobs and contracts.
Get ready for a caining, or a caning, if you are among the irresponsibly unemployed. Herman Cain is the True Conservative who will cut, cut, cut government programs the way he cut Godfather's Pizza. He'll cut taxes too, those terrible taxes that slow the rise of bright fellows like himself up the social ladder.
Strangely, Herman Cain served on the board of the Federal reserve Bank of Kansas City from 1992 until 1996. How did he, with no banking experience, get appointed to a such a post? I suppose we'll have to read his new book, "Magical Me," to find out.
You would think that at least a slight understanding of macroeconomics would be required to be a Federal Reserve board member. Things that seem to work out on a small scale, say for an individual business, can become a disaster if done on a large scale. You may have noticed this in 2008, during the CEO panic. CEO's began laying off workers, even before demand dropped, even at corporations that were very profitable. Surprise, when enough CEO's had fired enough workers, we were in a severe recession.
While each individual termite benefits from eating the house, and the whole colony benefits for a while, eventually the house falls down.
When Herman takes away people's food stamps, he may think that will force them to go out and earn a living. Instead the corporate supermarket chains and mom & pop corner stores alike will go under. When he cuts back on funding for education, he thinks parents will pay for private schooling, but instead the streets will fill up with delinquents. When he takes away Medicare Social Security, he thinks seniors will quietly curl up in the streets and die. They might, but most of the nations doctors and nurses and biotechnology CEO's will be joining them in the streets.
After 4 years with Herman Cain, he'll probably just close up America, because the entire nation will be unprofitable.
I wish I could endorse a math guy for President, but it isn't how good you are with math, it's what you do with it. If you close your mind to the bigger realities of the world, and just use it to count and hoard beans as Herman Cain has, then math has been wasted on you.
Still interested? Herman Cain for President
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
China, Aircraft Carriers, and U.S. Bonds
Before getting to the Chinese aircraft carrier issue, let me point out one very important thing missed by almost all commentators.
Osama Bin Laden triumphed, even though he was dead. His secondary goal, after helping to defeat the old Soviet Union, was to defeat the United States. He never expected to invade the U.S. and force everyone to wear beards and turbans. He used his followers' minimal resources to cause an economic and military collapse. The downgrading of U.S. debt (bonds) by Standard & Poor's was a public assessment of the success of Al Qaeda. Americans spent too much energy on global military dominance, too little energy on building a sustainable national economy. We lost, and everyone intelligent now knows we lost. We could still retrieve the situation by using our democratic system to take power away from the ruling corporate security state, but it looks like we are too stupid and lethargic to even do that. So, on to Chinese aircraft carriers.
The cry babies at the Pentagon, led byLeon Panetta, don't want the Chinese navy to have any aircraft carriers. In their minds Chinese aircraft carriers would shift the balance of power in the China Sea and require a buildup of the U.S. Navy in the Western Pacific. Which would require a bigger Navy budget.
The real question should be, given the history of China and aircraft carriers, why don't the Chinese already have a half dozen aircraft carriers? The answer is that China has not been a global military aggressor [Yes, I know, Tibetian nationalists and Vietnamese would disagree]. Of course, any country with a military is in some danger of becoming a military aggressor, but the Chinese Communist Party has a much better history of restraint than the United States Democratic Party does.
China, in the later 1800s and early 1920s, was being torn apart by the Great Powers. In 1914, During World War I, a Japanese proto-carrier, the Wakamiya, lowered 4 seaplanes in the sea, which then attacked German forces in Tsingtao (Qingdao), a German colony in China. No matter how you define the term "first aircraft carrier," by the 1920's these ships were being built by all the great powers, including the United States, Britain, Japan and France. By World War II naval battles were largely won or lost by aircraft launched from the carriers. The Barbaric U.S. attacks on Vietnam were also largely carrier-based.
The United States has been bullying nations with its aircraft carrier based terror bombing for closing in on a century now. Who are Barack Obama and Leon Panetta to tell the Chinese they can't have their own aircraft carriers for defense?
If Chinese aircraft carriers are not for defense, why should U.S. aircraft carriers classified as "defensive?" Aren't they inherently aggressive vessels, used only for war crimes? Including the current war crimes in Afghanistan?
If Panetta and the corporate security state he so proudly serves had half a brain left, they would negotiate a global treaty to decommission all aircraft carriers. Then China would not need to build new ones. Then the U.S. might have some money for schools or to invest capital to create jobs. Or to pay off those bonds that Standard & Poor's and others have suggested are less than sterling investments.
See also: history of the aircraft carrier
Osama Bin Laden triumphed, even though he was dead. His secondary goal, after helping to defeat the old Soviet Union, was to defeat the United States. He never expected to invade the U.S. and force everyone to wear beards and turbans. He used his followers' minimal resources to cause an economic and military collapse. The downgrading of U.S. debt (bonds) by Standard & Poor's was a public assessment of the success of Al Qaeda. Americans spent too much energy on global military dominance, too little energy on building a sustainable national economy. We lost, and everyone intelligent now knows we lost. We could still retrieve the situation by using our democratic system to take power away from the ruling corporate security state, but it looks like we are too stupid and lethargic to even do that. So, on to Chinese aircraft carriers.
The cry babies at the Pentagon, led byLeon Panetta, don't want the Chinese navy to have any aircraft carriers. In their minds Chinese aircraft carriers would shift the balance of power in the China Sea and require a buildup of the U.S. Navy in the Western Pacific. Which would require a bigger Navy budget.
The real question should be, given the history of China and aircraft carriers, why don't the Chinese already have a half dozen aircraft carriers? The answer is that China has not been a global military aggressor [Yes, I know, Tibetian nationalists and Vietnamese would disagree]. Of course, any country with a military is in some danger of becoming a military aggressor, but the Chinese Communist Party has a much better history of restraint than the United States Democratic Party does.
China, in the later 1800s and early 1920s, was being torn apart by the Great Powers. In 1914, During World War I, a Japanese proto-carrier, the Wakamiya, lowered 4 seaplanes in the sea, which then attacked German forces in Tsingtao (Qingdao), a German colony in China. No matter how you define the term "first aircraft carrier," by the 1920's these ships were being built by all the great powers, including the United States, Britain, Japan and France. By World War II naval battles were largely won or lost by aircraft launched from the carriers. The Barbaric U.S. attacks on Vietnam were also largely carrier-based.
The United States has been bullying nations with its aircraft carrier based terror bombing for closing in on a century now. Who are Barack Obama and Leon Panetta to tell the Chinese they can't have their own aircraft carriers for defense?
If Chinese aircraft carriers are not for defense, why should U.S. aircraft carriers classified as "defensive?" Aren't they inherently aggressive vessels, used only for war crimes? Including the current war crimes in Afghanistan?
If Panetta and the corporate security state he so proudly serves had half a brain left, they would negotiate a global treaty to decommission all aircraft carriers. Then China would not need to build new ones. Then the U.S. might have some money for schools or to invest capital to create jobs. Or to pay off those bonds that Standard & Poor's and others have suggested are less than sterling investments.
See also: history of the aircraft carrier
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Bribes, Corruption and Lost Wars
Corruption, the taking of bribes by politicians and government employees and the theft of public funds, is a nearly universal practice. But it is also a spectrum, with come governments having very little corruption, and ranges to governments that exist almost exclusively. South Vietnam (the Republic of Vietnam) during the 1960s is noted for its high degree of corruption. It is generally agreed that government corruption was one of the main reasons the government eventually collapsed and the south was unified with North Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
I am reading Understanding Vietnam
It fits in too with what one of my political science professors told me about the Rhode Island state legislature, back in 1974. He said the salaries of the legislators were kept low so that only wealthy businessmen or corrupt political hacks could afford to hold office. To be a full time politician, to server the people full time, elected officials needed major supplements to their incomes. Those could only come from illegal donations, diversions of campaign funds, or outright bribes.
In Vietnam (I will call South Vietnam just Vietnam from this point forward) traditional status was highly dependent on wealth. However, leaders were supposed to show their wealth by providing feasts for their villages, and through other forms of ostentation public distribution of their wealth. In a village economy men competed for status by sharing with the less fortunate. Their families had priority, of course, but it was not too bad of a system.
When the U.S. invaded (invited by puppet governments) in the 1960s the shock to the Vietnamese economy was profound. Government employees, including military employees, changed in a few years from being highly respected and decently paid members of a mainly traditional society to among the poorest citizens.
American privates had higher salaries than Vietnamese generals. For that matter, call girls whose clients were American enlisted men made more money. The influx of American money drove inflation, but while America paid for military supplies and all sorts of economic programs, no one thought to make payments to the Saigon regime to increase the salaries of soldiers and bureaucrats. High-ranking military officers would moonlight as taxi drivers to try to make enough pay to keep their families from losing face due to poverty.
Their wives came to the rescue, and that was also due to cultural traditions. In Vietnam women had traditionally done the marketing and small scale craft making that kept families afloat. Men, mostly, did not engage in business. While men went about their hierarchically controlled, government-dictated lives, women had to do more than make ends meet: they had to maintain their family's status in society. "During the late 1960s and early 1970s it was often impossible to be a dutiful and virtuous family man and a dutiful and virtuous military officer or civil servant ... his womenfolk kept reminding him that prices were up again in the market and the children needed new shoes." Women ran the free market show, which largely consisted of diverting American-donated goods into the black market. "As Madam General called Madam Colonel who called Madam Head Clerk ... the daily flow of money and of goods throughout the country was anticipated and careful plans were formulated for diverting some percentage of this bounty."
This looking deeper contrasts with A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
In America now there is an argument that public sector workers are paid too much, particularly because they get pensions and medical benefits far more generous than those most ordinary workers get. I think it comes down to individual cases. We want government employees to make enough money to motivate them to come to work every day, work effectively all day, and be immune to bribery. We want there to be enough employees so that the work gets done. Such a system cannot be perfected, only worked toward. We need to keep pay fair. Some want it on par with the private sector, but in the private sector fairness is not an issue. The system favors underpaying those lowest in the hierarchy and overpaying those highest on the corporate ladder. It all comes down to specifics, which vary by locality and job title.
Corruption has its own cultural momentum. Simply raising pay is not a sure way of stamping out corruption. Lowering pay somewhat is not likely to cause most honest civil servants to suddenly be selling their souls. Nevertheless, poor pay in the long run does breed corrupiton and incompetence.
A single word, corruption, encapsulates a wide variety of social pressures. Americans thought that the corruption of Vietnam was due to weak ethical values in the national culture. American soldiers did not need to steal food from peasants to fill their bellies. Their corruption was at a higher level, the corruption of an entire nation by wealth from industrial production and imperialist domination.
That era of American global economic supremacy is coming to an end. The corruption (lack of self-control and external control) of the banking sector and Wall Street almost brought the entire nation to its knees in 2008. The same gang funded Barack Obama's presidential campaign, just like they funded Clinton and Bush before him. So we have had much talk of reform, but very little reform.
Millions of people died violent deaths in Vietnam during the French and American interventions and civil war. Corruption was problem, but it was also a symptom of the larger problems of that era. The problem now is we still have an American economy and government built for imperialism. The cracks in that system will continue to widen as the imperialist overhang continues to crumble.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Okinawa, Japan, and China
At the end of World War II, the actions of the United States of America proved that much of Japanese propaganda about the USA had been true. Not only was Japan occupied, but the U.S. refused to support independence for other Asian nations. Under the scheme devised largely by U.S. and British leaders, China was to be ruled by a coalition of warlords headed by Chiang Kai-shek, an American puppet. South Korea was occupied by U.S. troops who installed a right-wing puppet there. The French were encouraged to reoccupy Vietnam. The Dutch went on another of their murderous rampages in Indonesia. Of the nations granted independence by the Japanese during World War II, only Burma was able to retain its independence.
To this day the Japanese government has never has quite been able to stick up for itself and become independent. That seems to be changing.
If the Japanese no longer want a U.S. military base in Okinawa, the U.S. should just withdraw.
After World War II, the Cold War began almost immediately. Although the U.S.S.R. (Russia) soon withdrew from Manchuria, turning it over to Chiang Kai-shek, and from North Korea, the U.S. kept up an imperialist posture. Japan, so recently an enemy, was well-treated because President Truman and General MacArthur wanted to keep make it an ally against the Russian communists. When China was finally united and independent under their native Communist Party's leadership, the U.S. really panicked. China was not quite united because the U.S. used a fleet of war ships to protect Chiang Kai-shek's last citadel, Formosa (now Taiwan).
Today, however, the old communist/capitalist divide has largely given way to new alignments. The Japanese have lived peacefully since World War II. The Chinese have seen some battles, but seem content within their traditional borders. Most East Asian nations have prospered better than most of the world in the last two decades.
China and Japan appear to be ready to set aside their World War II era quarrels. Russia is not much of a threat to anyone in the Far East.
It is time for America to withdraw its troops and war ships from Asia. This would allow all Asian nations to spend less on their military; it would allow the U.S. to spend less on its military.
We should encourage the unification of Taiwan and mainland China (it really is none of our business; it is an internal Chinese matter). We need to close our bases in Japan, Korea and the Philippines. These bases threaten Asian nations and destabilize the region. They are relics from a bygone era. Barack Obama might want to use this opportunity to earn his Nobel Peace Prize.
Our governments all need to focus on the prosperity of the people and on the grave environmental issues that confront all the species on this planet.
To this day the Japanese government has never has quite been able to stick up for itself and become independent. That seems to be changing.
If the Japanese no longer want a U.S. military base in Okinawa, the U.S. should just withdraw.
After World War II, the Cold War began almost immediately. Although the U.S.S.R. (Russia) soon withdrew from Manchuria, turning it over to Chiang Kai-shek, and from North Korea, the U.S. kept up an imperialist posture. Japan, so recently an enemy, was well-treated because President Truman and General MacArthur wanted to keep make it an ally against the Russian communists. When China was finally united and independent under their native Communist Party's leadership, the U.S. really panicked. China was not quite united because the U.S. used a fleet of war ships to protect Chiang Kai-shek's last citadel, Formosa (now Taiwan).
Today, however, the old communist/capitalist divide has largely given way to new alignments. The Japanese have lived peacefully since World War II. The Chinese have seen some battles, but seem content within their traditional borders. Most East Asian nations have prospered better than most of the world in the last two decades.
China and Japan appear to be ready to set aside their World War II era quarrels. Russia is not much of a threat to anyone in the Far East.
It is time for America to withdraw its troops and war ships from Asia. This would allow all Asian nations to spend less on their military; it would allow the U.S. to spend less on its military.
We should encourage the unification of Taiwan and mainland China (it really is none of our business; it is an internal Chinese matter). We need to close our bases in Japan, Korea and the Philippines. These bases threaten Asian nations and destabilize the region. They are relics from a bygone era. Barack Obama might want to use this opportunity to earn his Nobel Peace Prize.
Our governments all need to focus on the prosperity of the people and on the grave environmental issues that confront all the species on this planet.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Vietnam and America Go to War, 1954-1968
This is just to let you know that I posted another draft chapter of my book The U.S. War Against Asia. This is the second chapter on Vietnam. Here are the links:
Vietnam and the West Until 1954
Vietnam and the U.S., 1954 to 1968
Vietnam and the West Until 1954
Vietnam and the U.S., 1954 to 1968
Monday, July 6, 2009
Memento, History, and Political Tattooes
First, a couple of iiipublishing.com new articles not given blog entries: Catholic Inquisition of U.S. Nuns and review of Zonet 16-Port Ethernet Switch.
In the movie Memento the main character, Leonard, has lost his short term memory. The movie runs back through time, showing how how Leonard uses a system of notes, some tattooed to his body, to try to track down the killer of his wife. The problem is that other people realize Leonard has not only lost his short term memory, but that his long-term memory has deficits as well. So they use him for their own ends.
I doubt the writer or director intended it, but this is a nearly perfect metaphor for American politics. It is an even scarier notion than George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian government manipulates people by actually re-writing history as needed. The governance (here I include both the government and corporate decision making) of America is not totalitarian. If you don't like Vista, you can buy OSX or Linux. But it does encourage forgetfulness, History Channel not withstanding.
Lack of long-term memory is at least comprehensible as a human fault. There is a lot of history. Just to survey it takes a huge commitment. For example, there are quite a few nations in the world that I have not read a single history book about. Even if you focus on American history, and just try to get a sense of what really happened in each decade of our history, you have a lot of reading to do. Once you realize how carefully edited most history books are, how they lie by omission, you have a lot of work to do finding books that have critical views. Usually to find a critique of any given nation you must look to histories written about it by other nations.
There is no easy way around the long-term memory problem. We can't all be history majors.
You would think, however, that people would remember what happened in their own lifetime, and learn from their experiences.
If the Democratic Party members over the age of 55 in this rural area of northern California are any indication, we might as well save ourselves the ritual of voting. Sadly, many Green Party members (but not all) have been just as forgetful. We are reliving 1965. I was ten back in that bygone year. I paid minimal attention to news and politics, but I knew Lyndon Johnson had beat Barry Goldwater in the November 1964 presidential election largely by implying that Senator Goldwater would get us into a nuclear war with Russia.
We did not have a war of any kind with Russia, but Johnson bombed North Vietnam and then invaded South Vietnam on the flimsiest of excuses. Not that President Johnson was all bad. He was the first Democratic Party president to break with the racist past of the party in deeds as well as words.
Now we have a black President (but not one whose ancestors were slaves in the United States), and the excitement over that caused otherwise cynical voters to forget everything else. Like that politicians tell you what you want to hear, then deliver unto their major donors.
So now what was the Bush war on terror is wider than ever before. Fighting in Iraq has cooled for the moment because we are happy with our puppet government there. But fighting has intensified in Afghanistan and we are regularly bombing Pakistan. Shades of President Johnson, shades of President Nixon.
And let's not forget about the economy. I predict there will be no real economic reform. The crisis is past, and for a while bankers and investors will be cautious. With no reform, however, the conditions will be in place for another massive round of thievery, with working class Americans, again, as the ultimate victims.
Nor are we getting real reform on environmental issues. The Democrats figure that by being slightly more green than the Bush administration, they can keep their corporate sponsors and trap voters in the old the-Republicans-are-worse recycling bin.
So, ask yourself, what should you tattoo to your body politic?
In the movie Memento the main character, Leonard, has lost his short term memory. The movie runs back through time, showing how how Leonard uses a system of notes, some tattooed to his body, to try to track down the killer of his wife. The problem is that other people realize Leonard has not only lost his short term memory, but that his long-term memory has deficits as well. So they use him for their own ends.
I doubt the writer or director intended it, but this is a nearly perfect metaphor for American politics. It is an even scarier notion than George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which a totalitarian government manipulates people by actually re-writing history as needed. The governance (here I include both the government and corporate decision making) of America is not totalitarian. If you don't like Vista, you can buy OSX or Linux. But it does encourage forgetfulness, History Channel not withstanding.
Lack of long-term memory is at least comprehensible as a human fault. There is a lot of history. Just to survey it takes a huge commitment. For example, there are quite a few nations in the world that I have not read a single history book about. Even if you focus on American history, and just try to get a sense of what really happened in each decade of our history, you have a lot of reading to do. Once you realize how carefully edited most history books are, how they lie by omission, you have a lot of work to do finding books that have critical views. Usually to find a critique of any given nation you must look to histories written about it by other nations.
There is no easy way around the long-term memory problem. We can't all be history majors.
You would think, however, that people would remember what happened in their own lifetime, and learn from their experiences.
If the Democratic Party members over the age of 55 in this rural area of northern California are any indication, we might as well save ourselves the ritual of voting. Sadly, many Green Party members (but not all) have been just as forgetful. We are reliving 1965. I was ten back in that bygone year. I paid minimal attention to news and politics, but I knew Lyndon Johnson had beat Barry Goldwater in the November 1964 presidential election largely by implying that Senator Goldwater would get us into a nuclear war with Russia.
We did not have a war of any kind with Russia, but Johnson bombed North Vietnam and then invaded South Vietnam on the flimsiest of excuses. Not that President Johnson was all bad. He was the first Democratic Party president to break with the racist past of the party in deeds as well as words.
Now we have a black President (but not one whose ancestors were slaves in the United States), and the excitement over that caused otherwise cynical voters to forget everything else. Like that politicians tell you what you want to hear, then deliver unto their major donors.
So now what was the Bush war on terror is wider than ever before. Fighting in Iraq has cooled for the moment because we are happy with our puppet government there. But fighting has intensified in Afghanistan and we are regularly bombing Pakistan. Shades of President Johnson, shades of President Nixon.
And let's not forget about the economy. I predict there will be no real economic reform. The crisis is past, and for a while bankers and investors will be cautious. With no reform, however, the conditions will be in place for another massive round of thievery, with working class Americans, again, as the ultimate victims.
Nor are we getting real reform on environmental issues. The Democrats figure that by being slightly more green than the Bush administration, they can keep their corporate sponsors and trap voters in the old the-Republicans-are-worse recycling bin.
So, ask yourself, what should you tattoo to your body politic?
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Vietnam by Stanley Karnow, a review
I picked up a used copy of Vietnam by Stanley Karnow to help with my current book project, The U.S. War Against Asia. I found the book to be well written, but focussed on history in the context of what we call in the United States the War in Vietnam. In my generation that was frequently just called The War.
There is a general history of Vietnam leading up to the French colonial period that emphasizes the various independence struggles in the area we now call Vietnam. If you want a cultural history of Vietnam, or a detailed look at Vietnam before 1500, this book does not cover that adequately.
If you want to understand the motives of the Vietnamese independence movement and major players like France, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States, this book is great. Karnow views everyone with an eye that is capable of both compassionate understanding and a hard gaze. He does not gloss over any parties attrocities or stupidities. On the whole it seems like a fair, balanced, factually-based book.
Karnow shows that there were times when France and the United States came quite close to at least a temporary defeat of the Vietnamese communists. In a sense the book supports the hypothesis that America lost the war because of its lack of intelligence (that is, spying capabilities). It creates a strange symmetry with the War against Japan (part of World War II) in which it is fair to say that the U.S. won the war because it had better intelligence capabilities. In Japan's case, the U.S. broke Japan's encryption, and simply new everything Japan would do in advance. In Vietnam encryption was not an issue: on the Vietnamese end it was a low-tech war, and intelligence was provided mostly by sympathisers inside the domestic establishments of the South Vietnamese regime and the American invaders.
We tend to see the war as a two-sided affair, with the communists on one side and the U.S. and its local allies on the other. But in fact is was extremely complicated, with many groups trying to maintain an independence from both the U.S. and the communists. In a civil war groups and individuals flip sides; the winner is usually the group that is best at gaining the support of formerly neutral groups.
The effects of politics in the United States are well-documented. President Eisenhower, a Republican, tried to avoid involvement in Vietnam largely in reaction to Truman's policy in Korea, which itself was in reaction to accusations that President Truman lost China to the communists. President Kennedy greatly increased involvement in Vietnam. A member of one of the most successful capitalist families in the United States, he lacked Eisenhower's gravitas and allowed himself to be pressured by the Pentagon. Lyndon Johnson inherited the war and felt the Republicans and his enemies in the Democratic Party, in particular Robert Kennedy, would crucify him if he lost Vietnam. Richard Nixon actually started pulling troops out of Vietnam soon after his election in 1968 and was still in office after they were all withdrawn, yet the liberal establishment still insists on blaming Nixon and the Republicans, rather than themselves and the Democrats, for the war.
The French come out looking badly as well. When Hitler conquered France and set up the Catholic, nationalist, racist Vichy regime, the French colonial structure in Vietnam simply agreed to follow orders from Japan. So the Japanese did little fighting in Vietnam in World War II. To the extent there was fighting, it was with the Vietnamese resistance movement that was already fighting the French. The U.S. encouraged the resistance even though it was dominated by communists (we were allied with the communists in World War II) and implied Vietnam would become independent when Japan was defeated. Of course Vietnam was handed back to the French just as Britain was given Hong Kong and the U.S. and Russia divided up Korea.
This book is probably the single best book on the Vietnam War. It was fascinating to read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Vietnam or in U.S. history.
This book should be generally available in libraries and used book stores, but you could also pick up a copy of Vietnam at Amazon.com
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Vietnam, Iraq, and the U.S. Senate
"...Congress lagged even farther. The legislature's main instrument was its constitutional authority to appropriate money for the war, but senators and representatives ... consistently balked at using that prerogative, lest they be charged with shunning their patriotic obligation to furnish funds to the fighting men in the fields."
We can say this about the Democratic Party majority in the United States House and Senate post the 2006 elections. But the Democratic Party had an even larger majority in 1967, which is the year intended by this quote from Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, A History.
And who were the leaders of the Senate from 2007 until today? Presumably the three Senators who are still possible presidential candidates, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
At the end of 1967 Senator Eugene McCarthy declared himself an anti-war candidate for president against the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson. Because he had served almost two full terms, Johnson announced he would not be a candidate on March 31, 1968. Then Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Robert (Bobby) Kennedy jumped into the race. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968. Kennedy, like his big brother and former President John, had been an eager communism fighter earlier, but had turned against pursuing the war in Vietnam. Humphrey became the Democratic nominee, but narrowly lost the election to Republican candidate Richard Nixon, who said he had a peace plan.
Unfortunately Nixon's peace plan consisted of threatening to drop atomic weapons on North Vietnam. When the Vietnamese government called his bluff he just amped up the conventional war. When that did not work he made a deal to withdraw U.S. troops. Not long after troops were withdrawn Vietnam was reunited under the North Vietnamese government.
At this point the U.S. is in Iraq because the U.S. is in Iraq and no one has had the courage to pull the plug on the idiocy. Nothing particularly bad is going to happen if U.S. troops are withdrawn. Maybe democracy will work, maybe a new un-democratic leadership will emerge, maybe the nation will break into pieces.
It just is not any of the U.S.'s business. We can't even fix problems here. We have wasted an astonishing amount of money that we will never get back.
Things might change after the 2008 elections. But don't be surprised if the Iraq War goes on in some form or another. Because George W. Bush is not particularly stupid or cowardly as U.S. politicians go. What we have is a stupid system. Stupid in, stupid out.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Quagmires: Bush's Iraq and Kennedy's Vietnam
Barack H. Obama is being promoted as another John F. Kennedy. Given his likely nomination and presidency, this is a good time to compare real Kennedy to the Democrat Party propaganda image of him. As a standard of comparison I'll use the current President, George W. Bush, because his record is still relatively fresh in people's minds. We'll start with the foreign wars of these two Presidents; other parallels will have to wait for later essays.
The Iraq War has been called a quagmire, as was the Vietnam War. The image of armies wading into swamps and disappearing in the mud was nearly literal in the Vietnam War. Iraq is a desert country; dying of thirst in the desert, or sinking into the sands, would be a more appropriate metaphor for U.S. military efforts there.
John Kennedy was the son of a billionaire; his political ambitions were backed by a lot of money. He received an undergraduate degree from Harvard. His thesis was published in book form as Why England Slept and made him famous at an early age. He asserted that World War II was caused by England's appeasement of Adolph Hitler. After World War II Kennedy was vehemently anti-communist and was a strong supporter of Joe McCarthy's red-baiting. He had won a seat in the House of Representatives in the 1946 elections and voted against many of the New Deal programs of Harry Truman. In 1952 he was elected to the US Senate, then re-elected in 1958. In 1960 he beat Vice-President Richard Nixon to become President of the United States largely because Nixon's record on civil rights alienated voters in the southern states who had been willing to vote for Dwight Eisenhower. Kennedy had a poor civil rights voting record and was supported by segregationists (racists) in the Democratic Party.
JFK had become involved in Vietnam long before his presidency [See Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, A History] as a supporter of Catholic anti-communists. Dwight Eisenhower had "lost" North Vietnam, but actually that had been a pretty good deal because the Vietminh would have easily won nationwide elections. When Kennedy took office the U.S. had less than 500 military personnel in Vietnam, and they really were advisors. That was not anti-communist enough for John, who gradually increased American involvement in the civil war there. His "advisors" in Vietnam numbered 16,000, flew South Vietnamese army troops into battle, bombed and strafed "the enemy," and were seen by U.S. journalists engaging in combat. The South Vietnamese army was not half as interested in fighting communism as John Kennedy was, and kept trying to negotiate deals for a "neutral" government including the Vietcong, but Kennedy (and then Johnson) threatened to cut off all U.S. aid if a peace deal was made. Not happy with Ngo Dinh Diem's prosecution of the war, Kennedy gave the nod to a coup. Which was followed by a series of coups as corrupt Vietnamese military leaders fought each other for power.
In summary: Kennedy took the U.S. deeper into a quagmire. In retrospect it is easy to see that the Vietminh, while communist, where not just following orders from Moscow or Peking. They would eventually form an independent communist regime that has never been a threat to U.S. security.
George W. Bush was way different from John. F. Kennedy. He went to Yale instead of Harvard. His family was rich, but no where near as rich as the Kennedy family, but his grandfather Prescott Bush had been a Senator and his father George H. W. Bush served as President from 1989 until 1993. George followed a slightly different path, publishing no best-sellers, not seeing combat during his military service, but graduating from Harvard Business School and setting up a business in the oil industry. He became governor of Texas in 1995 and was elected President of the United States in 2000.
President Bush inherited the Iraq War from the Clinton administration, which in turn inherited it from the original George Bush (W.'s father). During the Clinton administration it was a low-level war mainly consisting of an economic embargo, "no-fly zones," and the occasional bombing run.
After the September 11, 2001 attack by Al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the American public was looking for vengeance. Al Qaeda was then based in Afghanistan, so the U.S. attacked that nation when its government refused to cooperate. By then it was long standing U.S. policy to want to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
In contrast to John Kennedy, who snuck U.S. troops into Vietnam, tried to hide the reality that they were engaged in combat, and tried to deny that he had anything to do with the coup against Diem, George W. Bush was open about his intention to have a full-scale war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. However, Bush also lied. He falsely claimed that Iraq was developing atomic and chemical weapons. His problem was there was no real just cause for war. Iraq had never attacked the United States.
Like Kennedy in Vietnam, Bush misunderstood the situation in Iraq. He thought the Iraqi people would welcome a U.S. victory, then quickly set up a stabile democratic regime that would be able to develop the country along Western lines. Bush appears to not have contemplated a prolonged U.S. mission in Iraq. But as with the anti-communist politicians and sects of South Vietnam, the anti-Saddam politicians and sects of Iraq have been more interested in their internal rivalries than in following the U.S.'s desires.
So the Iraq quagmire will be handed over to whoever wins the U.S. presidential elections of 2008. If history is any guide, things will only get worse. Lyndon Johnson ran in 1964 as a Democrat considerably to the left of Kennedy who would keep us out of war in Vietnam, but he sank us way deeper into the quagmire. Richard Nixon ran as a moderate Republican in 1968 saying he had a plan to get us out of Vietnam right away, but the North Vietnamese did not cooperate, so the war just kept getting bigger until Nixon finally withdrew all American troops in 1973.
The Democratic Party gained control of the House and Senate in the 2006 elections largely because the American public wanted to see U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq. Two years later it is the Democratic Party's quagmire. Neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama had the will or leadership skills to end the occupation despite being prominent leaders of a party that controls Congress. Clearly Senator McCain intends to continue the war if elected.
While fine points can be argued, George W. Bush and John F. Kennedy were products of the same mind set and conducted themselves in practically identical manners. To change U.S. foreign policy, the people of the United States themselves must change their mind set and then have the courage to elect new politicians who will govern effectively. We need to take a broom and clean away all the old Democratic Party and Republican Party politicians.
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