Comments on: Ho ho ho Chi Minh City

By: Rick J

Rick J — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

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By: open365dayz

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By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Ref neo's last sentence in her post:

How many leftists would approve?

Damfew, is my guess.

Richard Aubrey

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

It is beyond stupid, ranging to dishonest, to presume, or plant the axiom, that the war would have been fought in the same way forever.
Had it been fought differently, gotten over sooner, and done so with more conventional methods, the casualties would have been far less, civilian and military.
Since we were calling the beat, it was our choice about how to fight it. We chose a bad model, but could have changed at any time, except that the prospect of success would have enraged the antiwar types even more.

It is odd, if the war were so bad while it was going on, that the exodus didn’t start until peace flowed like a river.
What did they know the antiwar types don’t–or do?

Richard Aubrey
raubrey@sbcglobal.net

By: Mork

Mork — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

You can go fuck yourself with your attempt to paint me as a defender or endorser of the communist regime, “Anonymous”.

If it is your contention that the Vietnamese people would have been better off with the continuation of a war in which more than one in ten of them had already been killed – including several million civilians, then you are the callous ideologue, not me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Mork, take a look.

Per UC Berkeley demographer, Jacqueline Desbarats' article "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation," research show an extremely strong probability that at least 65,000 Vietnamese perished as victims of political executions in the eight years after Saigon fell. Desbarats and associate Karl Jackson only counted executions eyewitnessed by refugees in the USA and France to project the rate of killings for the population remaining in Vietnam, and so discarded about two-thirds of the political death reports received, so their figures are likely very conservative. Their death count did not include victims of starvation, disease, exhaustion, suicide or "accident" (injuries sustained in clearing minefields, for example). Nor did they count Vietnamese who inexplicably "disappeared."

Gotta crack a few eggs to make Mork's omelet, eh?

By: Mork

Mork — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

What continues to confound me is how many people who were staunchly against the Vietnam War still have not confronted the brutal reality of what our leaving that conflict wrought. The death camps, the millions of refugees who barely made it out alive, the horrors perpetrated on the people by Ho Chi Minh once he was victorious...

Well, Dean, one reason they may not have confronted it is because it's not really true. There were no "death camps". There were a lot of refugees who had a terrible time making it out, but no harder than the hundreds of thousands of economic migrants every year who still voluntarily get into leaky boats from third world countries to try their luck in the west.

Yes, there were re-education camps to which hundreds of thousands were sent, and they were unpleasant places. Those who were regarded as collaborating with the South Vietnamese regime were actively discriminated against until the early 1990s. The country suffered economically much more than it should have because of the communist system and the corruption that it bred.

But one in ten Vietnamese people died in the Vietnam war. That rate of attrition would have continued as long as the United States continued to fight it. Given that, it grotesque to suggest that the Vietnamese people would have been better off if the U.S. had kept the war going longer ... unless you are one of those who literally believes that a person is better off dead than red.

By: Lance Hyatt

Lance Hyatt — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Having seen Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon when it was still Saigon, in 1968-1969,
What I will say is this: If you think everything is all roses and love, go there, but don’t dally in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City too long!!! Get out into the countryside, and get to know a few of the people that farm for a living. Ask them what they think-if you can do so without having a Communist there, recording his answer. You might get a real shock at what the truth is, rather than the party line. We had the chance to really make a difference there, but the idiot’s that were afraid of being shown to be lying, snake-in-the-grass left-wing loonies, pulled us out, before we could secure the freedom that the South Vietnamese wanted, so desperately. Now, we have the same breed of nut-case trying to do the same in Iraq!!! We need to stand up and show them that they are not in the majority, and that they are outvoted. Then we need to get the job done, decisively, and get our men and women out…but only when the average Iraqi can feel safe from the Taliban and other nut’s!!!

By: Fred

Fred — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

"Capitalism working much better in a dictatorship" is an utter oxymoron. State capitalism ain't capitalism. (No wonder it was an anonymous comment.)

When Poland was under communist rule some 2-3% of its farmland remained privately owned. That 2-3% accounted for over 90% of Poland's agricultural production. There is a are endless other examples.

By: David Thomson

David Thomson — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Joseph Schumpeter “creative destruction” thesis may be the most important economic dogma you need to understand. A fairly free (an absolute one is inherently impossible) economy will inevitably create new jobs---but will also destroy many others. Around 40% of all American adults, for instance, were employed in the farming sector in 1900. Today, less than 3% do so and food is ridiculously cheap. However, a high number of people had their lives dramatically upset by the process. Many farmers went to their graves unable to ever again find a good job. The same held true for a number of horse shoe makers after the automobile became popular. Capitalism can admittedly be a bit of harsh when the destruction price has to be paid. Allow me to revise Winston Churchill’s original insights regarding democracy to read:

Capitalism is an awful economic system, but far better than anything else devised by humankind.