Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Your exposition betrays a lack of proportion in using the word tyranny. Why not include other similar characteristics between us and actual tyrants? We eat. We breathe. Most of us wear shoes.

Henri, wouldn’t it be simpler to reinstate the former policy of permitting the CIA to stealthily assasinate tyrants? Far less costly, and with stealth, a lot less international dissent. Rats, I almost forgot about JFK. Guess we shouln’t do that afterall.

Democracy is only as good as its citizen’s education and indoctrination to its principles. Democracy is indeed no guarantee against tyrannical use of office. What amazes me is how easy it is today for tyrannical acts of heads of democracies to commit their acts in the light of day and fail to be held to account. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem to fit with my understanding of democracy in which the actions of office are held to account by the people. The pardon of Nixon comes to mind. But, this is redundant; interesting perspective.

The opportunities for the U.S. to lead the world toward peace, prosperity, equity, and democracy have never been greater. It is inexpressibly sad how many of those opportunities are squandered by short-sightedness, parochial interests and views, and the arrogance of greatness.

Sebastian
Tyrants have not always worn shoes My grandchildren are occasionally interesting examples of shoeless tyrants but proportionality should be served.

How much of the responsibility for over a million Indonesian deaths caused by Suharto using guns supplied by us and with our military support are you willing to bear? They slaughtered people on a master list of communists or communist leaning union members supplied by us and the British. This was done so that the natural resources of the region could be given by contract to corporations representing the “civilised” nations of the western world by a military dictator. He left office with billions in stolen money in the hands of his family and those of his cronies. How about the half a million dead Iraqi children killed by economic sanctions imposed by us that hurt Saddam not one whit. How about the dead Iraqi Kurds killed with gas supplied by us? How about the other actions we have supported in nations like Nicarauga that have caused hundreds of thousands of lives in an effort to impose the will of companies like United Fruit on the people there? Which of these actions of our government are you willing to take responsibility for today?

You, as do I, own responsibility for these actions and share in the very real tyranny that they represent. We supported Saddam for many years and were his major supplier in a needless war with Iran in which millions of young men were killed. If we, none of us, who have profited handsomely by living in a rich and powerful and secure nation that is responsible for these deeds care to take that responsibility then the brutality will continue endlessly. Our nation is now setting out to impose its will on the world in the name of eliminating tyrants who might threaten us. How long a step is it to making the decision to eliminate any possible threat from any government even legally elected ones?

It is after all our nation and we elect and should control the government when it is out of line with civilized behavior. The reason that Saddam will not appear in the Hague is because our government refuses to recognize that international law applies to our leaders, not our soldiers. They cannot recognize the world court as long as we pursue dominance in the world through military means. Lift up your share of the burden for changing the course of this nation which we both love warts and all. The tyranny committed by each of us may be small but collectively it is a horror to contemplate and massive in proportion to our individual contributions.
I am interested in your reply.

The Cold War was fought against actual, physical, Communist tyrants. Inattention to the context of the actions taken during the Cold War is breathtaking. If you want to debate the actions taken during the Cold War in context I’ll be happy to engage. But to vanish that context away is amazing.

Your use of the word ‘we’ expands and contracts at will. ‘We’ the United States of America were not the major suppliers for Saddam at any point. Your ‘we’ contracts whenever you are asked to see the benefits of capitalism. There is no force known to me which has lifted more people out of subsistence poverty other than capitalism.

The invocation of Indonesia is fascinating. Would you mind explicitly identifying the other of the two sides? Would you mind identifying their tactics? Or will that become uncomfortable for your argument?

Sebastian commented:
There is no force known to me which has lifted more people out of subsistence poverty other than capitalism.

You meant mixed economy, right? There has been nothing close to simple capitalism at work in the U.S., or any other idustrialized nation since the late 1930’s. It is a historical fact that the U.S.’s burgeoning middle class occured over these same years and social programs existed right along with and helps explain that middle class bulge.

It is an important distinction. Brevity permits far too many to speak of America’s success as a result of capitalism. The truth and facts are that the social programs, like public education, social security, major regional infrastructure programs, and organized labor had as much to do with the growth of the middle class as capitalism did. They worked hand in hand and have proved immensely successful.

Sebastian,
If you are worried about my concern for people regardless of whether they were commnunists or capitalists do not let it disturb you. Obviously the world is divided into two camps for you Communists and capitalists and all things capitalist are good.

I have created hundreds of jobs during my life as a capitalist and enjoyed the benefits of our society. Capitalism is a useful tool for creating wealth but it is far from perfect for creating a desirable society when it is left totally alone. I am still not blind to the injustice done to people in the PKI in Indonesia the vast majority of whom were only workers who wanted the same union rights at we held in this nation at that time. The dirty word Communist was used as the basis for over a million murders committed in the name of Suharto’s tyrannic regime. To cast any debate in the light of anti-Communism where a million people innocent of any crime but opposing a tyrant is quite disingenuous and bordering on delusional. By the way the pronoun we is notoriously vague but clearly you were able to decipher what I was addressing in my article.

In order to engage you would first have to work out a common vocabulary with me but the meaning of Communist never held the fearsome meaning for me that it did for the Right Wing in the USA. I viewed Communism as misguided for forty years before Russia crumbled under the weight of a despotic system as far from communism as ours is today. I find it interesting that when I talk about atrocities that had our tacit approval or clear support you talk about the “cold war” as if that were some justification for our involvement in tyrannical behavior. My problem is that you so far have never engaged in a debate on the issues but want the labels to suffice for your validity. Communist or not the PKI advocates in Indonesia were patriots and human beings first and should have been given the full measure of human rights, not murdered in cold blood as they clearly were. Do you think that somehow the “cold war” gave us a free pass to participate in atrocities?
Henri

“I viewed Communism as misguided for forty years before Russia crumbled under the weight of a despotic system as far from communism as ours is today.”

I don’t accept your definition of Communism. I simply don’t agree with you that Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot are ‘far from Communism’. And they certainly weren’t far from the defintion of Communism that the Indonesian Communists used. In every single country where Communism has taken hold, it is immediately followed by huge increases in oppression and often mass murder. I do not agree that Communism was some small threat. I certainly do not agree that Indonesian Communist guerillas were ‘patriots first’. They wanted to extend the internationalist Communist empire into their country. History shows that communist revelotions such as that in Indonesia do not cease their rivers of blood when they win. I offer the USSR, China, Hungary, Checkoslovakia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, and North Korea as examples. There is not a country in the world that has suffered under the US the way that these countries suffered and still suffer. And those countries which the US tanged with, the Philippines and Mexico are all doing quite well compared to even the countries which were only partially scarred by Communism. Communism was a horrible threat to the world. Unopposed by the West and especially the US, it would have conquered the whole world long before it collapsed. The price of opposing it was steep, and ugly. We can argue about whether certain individual choices made by the US were needed in context. But I will not agree that the context was not serious.

The fact that Communism does not hold a fearsome place in your vocabulary does not strike me as laudable. I’m not impressed by the humaness of the Communist revolutionaries in Indonesia. They were trying to lead their country into a darkness like Cambodia. It would not have been a good thing to allow them to succeed.

Pol Pot as part of an international Communist conspiracy along with the Indonesian workers party? Perhaps you have read too much of the literature spread by Fred Schwartz and other anti-Communist crusaders of the Sixties. Did the warlord system in China serve China better than Mao? I think not! Nor were the Pre-communist governments in Russia, Hungary or Yugoslavia much better than the quasi- Communist tyrants that followed WWII. We made the mistaken choice to leave much of Europe in Soviet hands at the end of WWII it was one of the biggest blunders of that period in history. Korea and Vietnam both suffered under the Japanese in WWII but North Korea is no functional example of Marxist Communism nor is there one left in the world.

I agree totally that millions of deaths were the result of consolidation of power in Communist nations following the Stalinist model. The truth is that Communism as written by Marx is nearer to a socialist model than the Communism of Lenin and Stalin. Autocracy and tyranny are not specific to Communist governments. Any dictator will do the same as Stalin did when confronted with a challenge or their own paranoia.

Our war against Communism did not feel cold to millions of people who suffered under our attacks and our support for opposing forces. The will to win that war against the “evils” of Communism has made the evils of our own military industrial complex more egregious. The issue here is not the war on Communism which we have won more with monetary and economic means than military force. It is our own nation’s totally unacceptable and inappropriate use of force and murder to control the populations of foreign nations.

A lot of the pogroms in Russia, China, Cambodia and elsewhere were residual wars against minority populations that used resistance to Communism as their excuse for campaigns of genocide. These were not all the actions of a of a vast worldwide communist conspiracy. It was useful to our government to have the horrors of communism to point to as it is useful today to have the fear of terrorism to drive our military machine.

Certainly the tribal wars of Cambodia were exacerbated by our presence but they were tribal not Communist at their core. In any case the future is what is at stake, the dead are going to remain dead no matter what we think. I am disturbed that our nation has taken on the same fervor toward a war on terrorism that it exhibited in its greatest fear filled days of the “Cold War”.

I think war is seldom a good answer to problems in a world so full of them that we could easily declare a war a day on a new problem for the rest of our lives. The need to clean the Taliban out of Afghanistan should not necessarily lead us into Iraq or Iran or Syria. I do not believe that there was any lock on tyrants in regard to Communism any more than we had any lock on tyrannical behavior. You are very good at moving the point of the debate to comfortable ground like anti-communism. I still want to know what share of our nation’s tyranny you are willing to take as your own? One three hundred millionth will do if that is what you feel is your contribution to that tyrannical abuse of human rights. Do Communists have human rights? If not why should their leaders cavail at killing millions. The people in Democratic nations have human rights and they share the obligations toward their fellow man’s rights equally among them.
henri

“Did the warlord system in China serve China better than Mao? I think not! Nor were the Pre-communist governments in Russia, Hungary or Yugoslavia much better than the quasi- Communist tyrants that followed WWII.”

You think not, but in fact they were not killed by the tens of millions before Mao. Siberia did not kill millions before Stalin. The Ukraine did not starve to death before Communism. Hungary especially was much much worse off under Communism. None of the previous warlords in Cambodia came anywhere near killing off 1/3 of the population.

These were not the actions of a Communist conspiracy. They were the semi-open semi-offical actions of Communists everywhere.

It is difficult for me to discuss history with you when you keep insisting on things that are frankly counter-factual. The future is what is at stake. But your apparent refusal to acknowledge that Communism was an especially evil mistake doesn’t fill me with much faith in your ability to chart the path to a good future—especially when you seem to be hinting that your future will involve trying ‘the real communism’.

Taken as a whole, communism has been one of the greatest contributers to tyranny in the history of the world.

Taken as a whole, the actions of the US have been to fight tyranny across the world.

You are asking me to own up the contributions of tyranny of the United States, while you refuse to acknowledge the fact that Communism across the world has always led to mass murder. US influence across the world has not always, or even often led or even contributed to mass murder. Communist influence has done so in almost every single country where it gained power. The Cold War was fought to decrease Communist influence. Communist control of a nation leads to mass murder. I will not be ashamed that we fought it. And except for some very limited areas I am not ashamed of how we fought it. I find it very difficult to be shamed into rexamining my thought about US participation in tyranny in the context of a discussion where my opposite cannot seem to come to grips with the seemingly inevitable tyranny that comes to countries in the grips of Communism.

The only thing I will conceed is this. The tyrants we supported during the Cold War were supported out of strategic planning. That Cold War no longer exists. We can and should avoid supporting tyrants now. I believe we had a plausible reason for doing so in the past but that past is gone. We should attempt to promote freedom wherever we can, because we have no excuse now.

Sebastian,
As with all of your comments thus far you insist on the version of history that the “victor” always writes after a war is over. I will grant you that the end result of the war we waged on Communism resulted in millions of deaths. I will never grant you that we took such a small part in creating the environment in which those deaths occurred. The Hungarian revolt of the 1950’s was my awakening to the evils of Communism. It was only far later that I began to wonder about the process involved in creating autocratic rule in a collectivised nation.

That process after 1950 usually followed a path related to the Western opposition to Communism that threatened the existence of most Communist nations very early in their development. This is not to say that we made it all happen but that the two sides of the conflict were locked in a battle that allowed no quarter to be asked or given. Our implacability had something to do with the awful conditions of oppression that people were subjected to in Russia and elsewhere. Nonetheless it is clear that the ruling elite in every Communist nation was willing to kill people by the millions without any other cause than their opposition to the tyranny visited on them. China’s vile “Cultural revolution came much later and was caused by a different pressure on Mao and the other Chinese leaders. That pressure was the product of a formulated response to Communism that was followed throughout the cold war.

We tried, as would have any civilisation in human history faced with such an opponent, to foment rebellion in China and other Communist nations. In that process we drove those nations deeper into a cycle of oppression and murder. Of course we were fighting for our lives, it remains to be seen if we were fighting for our freedoms which seem to be under a lot of stress right now.

War, even “Cold War” is hell. the truth is during that conflict we turned more and more to the deadly techniques of oppression used in Indonesia. We also became more and more enamored of our own, “military industrial complex” and warped our society and economy further and further from the competition driven model of Capitalism that had built our nation. As we became further driven by our miltary industrial need for oil and other resources derived from outside our borders our power grew and became more dominant in the world around us. The financial mechanisms used to defeat Communism have warped our economy further than most of us can grasp based on any set of short essays. We are now locked in a model that creates incredible pressure for our government to support our multi-national industrial giants with any level of fiscal and military support that they need in order to continue to grow and flourish.

We need to step back and loook at what we have created within our own nation during the cold war not continue to support it blindly.

By the way, I am not interested in imposing communism on anyone. I believe in the kind of capitalism driven by people who stand up and make a difference in our world. Not the capitalism of an Enron, but the capitalism of thousands of people who drove the computer revolution by building businesses with their credit cards and their twenty hour days. The genius and hard work of those who create wealth should be rewarded with any level of wealth that they can create. Whether we ought to reward a batch of administrative putzes running major corporations the way we do today is another issue. I do agree that we needed to oppose Communism and that the murders in those nations were horrors. I am equally certain that we committed many atrocities in our part in that conflict. I have seen the documentation that gives me that perspective and it disturbs me deeply that we were less able to uphold human rights when we were threatened than we ought to have been. I do fear a future of endless war with enemies around every corner will make us behave badly again and this time our own population may not escape with their freedom intact. I do appreciate your intellectual powers and the honesty that you bring to the task of analysing our history. Keep writing, I enjoy your work.
Henri

Labeling history as ‘victor’s history’ doesn’t make it wrong history. Stalinism was in full flower and had a firm grasp on Eastern Europe without a Western cause. In China the Great Leap Forward was supposed to prove that Communism was the most advanced system around, but its reference to the west had little or nothing to do with the West supporting rebels, and very much to do with the fact that Communism was already being revealed as an awful economic system.

“Of course we were fighting for our lives, it remains to be seen if we were fighting for our freedoms which seem to be under a lot of stress right now.

War, even “Cold War” is hell. the truth is during that conflict we turned more and more to the deadly techniques of oppression used in Indonesia. We also became more and more enamored of our own, “military industrial complex” and warped our society and economy further and further from the competition driven model of Capitalism that had built our nation.”

You use a very flexible ‘we’ again here. We were fighting for our lives, I’ll agree with that. The ‘we’ in Indonesia isn’t the same ‘we’. The West was not interested in conquering nations, so it had to make due with supporting those who were fighting Communism in their own countries. The West couldn’t choose what it would consider an ideal leader in Indonesia. We weren’t omnipotent. So we supported an authoritarian who fought the Communist rebels. We did not turn to more deadly forms of oppression and even Suharto never descended to the depths of a Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. If we could have supported another effective leader who could fight against Communism we would have. Your statements have an underlying assumption that we make choices from an ideal world. We don’t. We have to choose from the options available.

Our options were much more limited during the Cold War. We ended up supporting people whom we should never support under less dire circumstances. So to bring it back to Iraq and current US-tyrant relations, the fact that we supported him during the Cold War, was no excuse to allow him to remain in power.

“I do fear a future of endless war with enemies around every corner will make us behave badly again and this time our own population may not escape with their freedom intact.”

This I can agree with as written. If we get hit by a nuke or two from Islamist fundamentalist terrorists, I suspect our freedoms may be put under far more stress than anyone can really imagine. I also suspect that there would be a large push toward very serious retaliation which won’t particularly good at discriminating between foes and bystanders. I would prefer to avoid dealing with that problem by dealing with the problems in the Middle East before terrorists can get a hold of nuclear weapons. I agree with the words in this last quote, but in context with the rest of your posts I worry that you may be again focusing too much on the US in that statement. Enemies can exist without being of our making. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were all paranoid and powerful without the US causing them to be that way. If they insist on fighting with us, we must do so. But if you want to avoid being in a situation where we prop up dictators, my remedy is to deal with serious threats before they gain lots of power. If we keep tyrannies from gaining the power of a USSR, we won’t have to make many of the uglier choices of the Cold War. (And to head off a too easy objection I don’t think invading Iraq is nearly as bad as say supporting Pinochet for decades).