: The remaining 20%, of course, apparently made up a significant majority of the population ... To understand this, one must be schooled in Marxist mathematics, of course (where the Communist Party regularly won with 95+% majorities in places like the U.S.S.R., Cuba, Cambodia, etc.): : 2) Our chosen man in South VN, Diem, apparently held eight times as many political prisoners as Brezhnev's Russiua.
: I was not aware that Brezhnev's Russia put out statistics on such things. Like the above, I assume a certain 'revolutionary feeling' is necessary to make sense of this factoid.
You're probably right. Now that I think about it, a figure of only 10,000 political prisoners in the USSR is patently ridiculous. I was clearly stupid to buy that.
: : 3) We converted North and South VN into the two most ravaged countries in the history of the planet, destroying their economy and environment and causing birth defects galore.
: We did the same in Korea; whereas the North is an elysian worker's paradise, the South is a decadent, consumer rotted, goods infested industrial slum. Or so I hear.
:
No, we didn't bomb Korea to anywhere near the same extent; there was no desire for unification in the South; South Korea was state-capitalist, not free-market (to a large extent).
: : 4) Less refugees fled Vietnam after the Communist liberation than fled from America after the 1776 Revolution.
: A most compassionate statement. I'm sure the boat people would have been comforted by your kind erudition.
I'm sorry. I have no intention of minimizing the plight of boat people. I know some myself, who were repressed in Vietnam. Although my statement si true (less refugees as a % of population in Vietnam than in America), still even one refugee is too many. Vietnam unfortunatley went overboard with reprisals after the war and punished many innocent people; and I believe that they should make some compensation to those who suffered, just as teh US should compensate the Vietnamese for bombing their country. I made the statement because I feel it is necessary to make the point that all revolutions create refugees, that Vietnam's problems are not new or the fault of "communism", since very similar tragedies happened in countries like the United States, and that the United States and Vietnam really ought not to be enemies.
The refugee situation is actually more complex than either of us claim; read David Dellinger's "Vietnam Revistied" for an interesting analysis.
: Which is most certainly irrelevant, in any case. Reactionary back sliding lap-dogs of the capitalist state deserve nothing but brutality and contempt.
No, they deserve every right to live in peace and air their views, whether they be offensive or not.
: Ask Pol Pot. Or, if you are looking for more accomplished practitioners of the people's liberation, their successors (by virtue of conquest, I am led to believe).
Vietnam pulled out of Cambodia ten years ago, i believe? so much for their "conquest".
: "Doc" Cruel
: P.S. It would be interesting to see in what context Eisenhower (of all people!) had been quoted in ...
None.
