From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Sun Jul 10 2005 - 23:16:56 BST
On 10 Jul 2005 at 11:21, Platt Holden wrote:
MSH wrote:
> You need some new material You posted this same speech a year ago,
> as "evidence" of NC's Marxist support for brutal totalitarian
> regimes.
Since a year ago there have no doubt been some newcomers to the MD
who didn't know Chomsky was an avid supporter of Ho Chi Min's
communist regime. Now they know.
msh:
Fair enough. Now they have my response, as well. My guess is, if
they want to know what Chomsky thinks, they'll read one of his books.
Further, I doubt that they'll be put-off by the scare word
"communist," as if it is identical with "murderous brutality."
> As for the "Boat People" propaganda, the number is half what you
> say, from three different war-ravaged countries, Vietnam, Laos, and
> Cambodia. During any war, refugees go in both directions, some
> fleeing the conquering army, some flooding in behind it, back to
> their original cities, villages, farms and homes, as in this case
> where hundreds of thousands of people returned from self-imposed
> exile in the north.
>
> The fact that you are unaware of this, that you know only of the
> "Boat People," a story blasted wall-to-wall by the American
> commercial media, is evidence of just how deeply indoctrinated you
> are.
platt:
From Wikipedia: "Persecution and poverty prompted an additional 2
million people to flee Vietnam as boat people over the 20 years
following unification."
msh says:
I like Wikipedia as well as anyone; however, I don't think I'd rely
on it as my soul reference. But in this case, over a 20 year period,
the numbers are ok.
I disagree that fear of persecution played a significant role in
anything other than the first wave of boat people. And, yes, people
who supported the enemy government were likely to be imprisoned, just
as were people who supported the Vichy government, once the Nazi's
had been driven out of France. One person's idea of persecution is
another's idea of punishment for collaborating with the enemy.
The vast majority of boat people were fleeing what they perceived to
be hopeless poverty, and no one can blame them for that.
Nevertheless, in a country of 75 million, that means a whole lot of
people stuck it out and continued to work toward the kind of society
realized by Tanh Hoa province.
The real issue is why was there such poverty to overcome? For one
thing, the country had been bombed into the stone-age, utterly
destroyed, by the time of the communist takeover. For another, after
the fall of Saigon, a trade embargo originally placed on the north
by the United States was extended onto the entire, newly-named
Republic of Vietnam. That embargo, a purely punitive measure put in
place by a nation tweaked by its loss in the tiny country, was
ordered by Nixon and continued until Clinton dropped it in February
of 1994, a period not coincidentally parallel with the travails of
the boat people. Had relations been immediately normalized, as was
suggested by Henry Kissinger of all people, there is little doubt
that Vietnam's road to economic recovery would have been considerably
shorter and far less painful.
The great sadness, the beyond human sadness of that miserable war is
that it didn't have to happen. Rather than recognize Vietnam's right
to self-determination as a free and independent nation at the end of
WWII, and establish normal relations, the US spent $2.6 billion
helping France in its failed war to regain control of a former
colony.
After the French were defeated, in 1954, a peace conference was held
in Geneva where France and Vietnam agreed to divide the country into
a non-communist South and a communist North until an election in
1956, the results of which would determine the governmental nature of
the reunified whole.
When the time came, the US-backed South refused to participate in the
elections because they knew the Communists would win in a landslide.
The North then realized that diplomacy was useless in trying to
achieve a settlement, and the stage was set for all the misery that
followed, three countries destroyed, 2.75 million people dead,
including 1.6 million civilians, and 1 million people injured, at a
cost to American taxpayers of $200 Billion.
All of this, every last bit of it, could have been avoided if the US
had recognized for Vietnam what it recognizes for itself: the
absolute right of self-determination. This war was, truly, one of
the 20th century's great crimes against humanity.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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