Posted on 08/24/2007 1:24:55 AM PDT by DakotaRed
Aug. 23, 2007 - The Soviet Union was in its final days of existence when I visited Vietnam in late December of 1991. The cold war was about to end forever with the collapse of one of the two adversaries that had kept it going for 40-odd years. A lot had changed in Vietnam, too, I discovered during my trip. The coziness between Moscow and Hanoi, once comrades within the Soviet bloc, had curdled into mutual hatred. Throughout the country, but especially in the North, the Vietnamese had come to despise the large resident Russian population for its cheap spending habits and arrogance. Visiting Americans, by contrast, were welcomed with smiles (“Russians with dollars,” we were called.) On the day I visited the old U.S. Embassy in Saigon—the where some of those iconic photos symbolizing American defeat were taken—I discovered government workmen removing a plaque that once commemorated the North’s victory over the “U.S. imperialists.” In the waning days of that epochal year, 1991, the propaganda against American involvement in Southeast Asia was suddenly no longer politically correct. Hanoi’s new message: Yankee Come Back (and bring your investment dollars). Today Vietnam remains nominally communist, but Hanoi knows it is an ideological relic surrounded by Asian capitalist tigers, all of them U.S. allies or dependents (one reason Vietnam was so eager to have Bush visit last November: it wants to be part of that club). The cold war dominoes did fall—but the opposite way.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
They are more delusional than I thought!
It worked great for the million or so that died as a result...
Less people, less global warming.
Oh, that's right, for the most part, they can't.
To this guy, we need not have ever worried about the rise of Al Quaida and global terrorism, because at some point in the future, everyone will realize that Globalism is the way to go, and Nihilism is just a flash in the pan. The millions that died opposing the bloody tyranny of Marxist-Leninist governments need not have gotten so emotional about everything, as everything works out in the end, just use diplomacy!
I will be interested to read further comments on this article, as it will distill thinking about the such leftist blindness to the realities of the Islamist War on the West, and why such idiocy can very well get us all killed.
Sounds like a slightly more articulate john Kerry. “Sure hundreds of thousands may have died horrible deaths, but it is okay, because they prefer Americans to Russians now.”
Also, this guy should talk to some of the Christians in Vietnam and see how they are treated by the “nominally Communist” government of Vietnam.
And being nominally Communist is like being a little pregnant.
Now the MSM is touting their revisionist "loser" history , to pretend that the whole SE Asia debacle did not happen. They minimize the effect of what happened in SE Asia, and myopically ignore what would happen in the ME if America withdrew.
What a bunch of traitorous losers.
I hope President Bush continues to lay it to the MSM and the Dems. In doing so , he indirectly attacks their patriotism, AND that is a very, very, good thing indeed.
The battle for Nov 2008 now has begun. The opening salvos have been fired. May the Republican cause be won in order to secure the future of America, and the tradition of the USA as a beacon of freedom.
President Bush's speech is a corker. If you want to read it, go here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040816-12.html
Yes they do
They want a Global Islamic State.
You can't get this stupid without drinking... a lot...
ask the vietnamese that supported the US how well the pullout worked once the US left!!!
This is Michael Hirsh's one nod to the Millions and Millions dead in the bloody aftermath of American withdrawl. The fact that a few tourists returned and somebody took down a plaque in 1991 balances completely the mountains of human skulls.
This article should be filed away as a pure distillation of American intellectual arrogance, circa 2007.
This is why democRats and lieberals can never be trusted with our security.
So, thirty some years on they are finally trying what it was we wanted them to do in the first place? Seems to me that proves we were right all along.
But it's all good. They were probably pro-life anyway.
I'm the Easter Bunny.
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