Che Guevara is one of the few communist leaders who still has a broad following in the West. Go to any college campus or hip neighborhood and you’ll see plenty of Che T-shirts, Che posters, and even the occasional Che cell phone message. This is extremely unfortunate, since Che was in fact a brutal mass murderer and terrorist, as I explained in this post. Reason editor Nick Gillespie points this out as well, but also cites evidence suggesting that Che worship may be declining:
How resilient is the ghost of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary who ably assisted the Castro brothers’ sadly successful mission to turn Cuba into an island hellhole? His legend survives even a lackluster, long-winded biopic released in 2008 and now just out on DVD.
More important, Che’s legend survives the facts of his own life. Born in 1928 and gunned down in 1967 by drunken Bolivian soldiers, Che rarely missed an opportunity to make life miserable for those who opposed him. During the fight against the Batista regime, Che ordered the summary executions of dozens of real and suspected enemies, becoming the very thing he said revolutionaries must be: a “cold-blooded killing machine.” As a leader in post-Revolution Cuba, Che became known as the “butcher of La Cabaña” prison, where he oversaw hundreds of murders of political prisoners and “counter-revolutionaries.”
When he became the effective czar of the Cuban economy and attempted to create a “new man and woman,” or workers fueled by revolutionary ideals rather than conventional workplace incentives, his plans failed catastrophically and helped make Cuba the economic basket case it remains to this day. Along the way, Che did more than his share to help ban rock and jazz music as “imperialist” forms of expression….
Increasingly, one hopes, Che’s image is becoming openly mocked as the ugly reality of his life outlasts the shiny revolutionary veneer. As Alvaro Vargas Llosa reported five years ago, young Argentines have taken to sporting shirts emblazoned with the putdown, “I have a Che T-Shirt and I don’t know why.” The Australian band The Clap sings of the “Che Guevara T-Shirt Wearer” who has “no idea” of who he is. The Cuban punk band, Porno para Ricardo, which has been arrested for “social dangerousness,” openly declaims the Castro regime and its heroes such as Guevara.
Karl Marx, of all people, once remarked that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. Marx argued that history was the key to understanding the real world, and history is certainly no friend to Che Guevara. If his younger admirers study the historical Che–the one reputed to have declared “I feel my nostrils dilate savoring the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood of the enemy”–they will understand that Che’s original influence was indeed tragic, not just for Cubans but for many others as well. And they just might skip the farce phase, out of deference to the many victims of the butcher of La Cabaña.
I hope Nick is right. But I want to see more evidence before I am convinced that Che worship is really declining. Che wasn’t that important in and of himself. He was a second-rate functionary in a second-rate communist regime and later a fourth-rate guerrilla leader and terrorist who failed dismally in his efforts to spread communism beyond Cuba. Had Che never lived, Cuban communism would have been only marginally less oppressive than it actually was. Ultimately, the Cult of Che is deplorable less because of what it says about attitudes towards him than because it is the most blatant manifestation of our much broader tendency to ignore or downplay communist crimes.
Soronel Haetir says:
What I would be more interested in is this: how many people who have a Che t-shirt actually know anything about the man? It would not surprise me if a significant slice of wearers just picked it up because it looked good, one of the ubiquitous bits of cultural fluff floating around like Andy Warhol artwork.
January 24, 2010, 2:10 amyankee says:
Speaking as a member of the far left*, I have never understood the Che thing. I think you are overstating it; I saw one Che poster in college, and one undergrad with a Che shirt when I was in law school, and the ringtone page you link to says the product is not available. But the phenomenon does exist: people get away with the Che posters and shirts, but someone wearing a shirt with a picture of a functionary from the Batista regime (or some other U.S.-backed military dictatorship like Pinochet’s) would get serious criticism.
It doesn’t make any sense tome; the man was a mass murderer, and we here on the left are not fans of mass murder. I never tried asking any of those people what they liked about Che, so I don’t know what their answer would be.
* the right-wing end of the far left, but the far left nonetheless.
January 24, 2010, 2:26 amorca says:
He must have been something if he still gets the wingnut’s panties in a bunch 43 years after his death.
January 24, 2010, 2:29 amLindsey Abelard says:
It took a long time for Stalin to become as reviled at Hitler. I think the same will happen to Che as well. Give it time. I think the reason why Che was popular so long was because just about every other communist had become reviled. He was the only romantic one left for people to believe he was clean.
Che did not accomplish anything at all following the Cuban revolution. He completely screwed up and was utterly ineffectual in Africa and failed to gain any traction at all in Bolivia. Even the Soviets describe his efforts in Africa as “worthless” and largely ignored him. The Chinese humored him, but thought privately that he was a joke. If Che popularity gets the heave ho, it will be due to this than anything else.
January 24, 2010, 2:31 amredc1c4 says:
here are some *really* cool Che shirts.
January 24, 2010, 3:11 amSancho Panza says:
It helps that he failed. And being brutal’s the point. His appeal is killing people. Like Andreas Baader, he’s a thug. That’s what the kids want. Sex and violence. Apocalypse as a joke.
Being reckless is good. Being mindless is good. Young men are like this. He’s a gangsta rapper on a bike. He does what he wants. That’s what losers like. Pimply teenage boys will envy all that.
And everyone who feels that being middle class and comfortable and complacent is a painful ordeal, will make the reverse of peace and wealth their ideal.
January 24, 2010, 3:14 amRicardo says:
The same people who wear Che t-shirts will, if prompted, almost invariably go off on how the U.S. is the only western industrialized country left that executes people, about the injustice of the Mumia trial, etc. You really cannot be a member of the left in good standing while supporting the death penalty. Yet some insist on wearing the picture of a guy who once presided over mass executions in Cuba. Some might find that a bit… incongruous.
January 24, 2010, 3:26 amJames N. Gibson says:
A quick look at Wickipedia seems to indicate this recent worship of the Che image began in the late 90s. That would match with our recent revival of anything leftist by our newest generation Y. In short, they know little of the real Che and only after they have acquired their first tee shirt do they begin asking who he was. In the end he’ll fade again as the novelty wears-off and people see Hugo’s revolution decline as bad as Cuba.
January 24, 2010, 4:15 amgray says:
Che seems to have been the “hard man” of the Cuban Revolution and his doctrinaire approach to Marxist revolution seems to have made the blood toll after the revolution worse then it might have been.
It is a shame that student progressives don’t idealize Che’s contemporary Camilo Cienfuegos, who while being senior leader in the 26th of July Movement quit the revolution when he saw the direction it was taking. Then his plane crashed mysteriously on his way home. ahem. I have witnessed Cubans spontaneously, without state coercion honouring Camilo by throwing flower in the water.
January 24, 2010, 4:31 amRodger Lodger says:
The kiss of death for a book for me is that it is a campus fad. Ditto student heroes. I can recall when college students thought Mao was the cat’s pajamas. (Incidentally, when does that butcher get taken down?) In the 20th century college campus noise was mostly idiotic. In general, though, today’s activist students are far better politically than the nutty herd from the 60s and 70s. Too bad their latest object of worship, the president, has already fallen from grace — aside from the immediate effects on our country, the result may be an end to political idealism for many.
January 24, 2010, 5:19 am1040 says:
surely that doesn’t explain our cult of reagan?
January 24, 2010, 5:56 amArkady says:
Yeah, and lava lamps are still popular, I understand. Look, I don’t really understand why anyone would get their panties in a bunch over this. Stuff like this is what kids do when they’re in college. Then they graduate, go to work, get married, start raising a family and find out the real import “Silence is argument carried out by other means.”
January 24, 2010, 6:42 amBob_R says:
Oh right. Nothing to see here. Walter Salles (2004) and Steven Soderbergh (2008)direct multimillion dollar hagiographies to a mass murderer and it’s “what kids do when they’re in college.”
January 24, 2010, 7:04 amArkady says:
Well, Bob, you can spend you time looking for the ghost of Che under your bed, but the rest of us have real lives to live. BTW, I’m not aware the Soderbergh’s Che achieved Avatar level profits. But maybe you have better information.
January 24, 2010, 7:18 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
The ghosts of millions of people buried under blood-soaked ground the world over, wish that they had been more vigilant against mass-murdering communism.
Orca, which wingnut exactly is it who you are so pleased to see get upset that you will condone mass murder?
January 24, 2010, 8:54 ammattski says:
You’re so dramatic, Laura.
I have two questions for you-
How many people was Che responsible for murdering?
How many Vietnamese did the US murder in our war against Vietnamese self-determination?
January 24, 2010, 9:04 amPersonFromPorlock says:
I guess the ‘opposite’ of a Che T-shirt would be one with Heinrich Himmler on it: might be interesting to try, just to see who twitches.
Slightly OT: Marx was wrong about history, at least as far as American government is concerned: we do it as farce right from the start.
January 24, 2010, 9:12 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Mattski, go watch “The Killing Fields” and then come back and tell me how dramatic I am. Or read some Solzenitsyn. Or any history of Red China during Mao’s period.
January 24, 2010, 9:15 amSun Tzu's Nephew says:
I have a che shirt (this one): http://www.blackfive.net/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/10/douche.jpg,
And I know exactly what kind of murderous POS he was.
January 24, 2010, 9:16 amOrson Buggeigh says:
For those still harboring any sympathy, however remote for the romantic agenda promised by communism, I suggest spending a few evenings with The Black Book of Communism. Yes, it’s a downer. Nothing romantic like the film Reds or the Che T shirts. Just depressingly complete accounts of how the communist regimes murdered more people than any other.
Mattski makes a point – we are responsible for the deaths of people in war. So, however, were the communists. For the sake of argument, it is possible to believe that had the US been wise enough to stay out of Southeast Asia, things would have been better, and a lot fewer people would have died there. Maybe. The results in North Korea and Cambodia, let alone Mao’s China don’t seem to support that thesis.
January 24, 2010, 9:20 ammattski says:
Laura, I’ve seen the “The Killing Fields.”
In fact, if you study the history of the our intervention in Southeast Asia I do not think you can escape concluding that the Khmer Rouge would never have risen to power had we not visited our holocaust upon Vietnam, destabilizing the entire region.
Would you like some further reading suggestions? How about our earnest efforts at protecting the Havana gambling interests of US-based organized crime syndicates. We would never consider assassination in the service of Mafia interests now would we?
January 24, 2010, 9:29 amDr. Weevil says:
When two different commenters (orca and Arkady) use the “panties in a bunch” slur, it makes me wonder:
(a) Is one of them a sockpuppet of the other?
(b) Are they different people reading from talking points supplied by some third party?
(c) Do defenders of Che have such impoverished vocabularies that they can’t resist repeating the same vulgar slur in the same thread? (Not only vulgar but self-discrediting: has any reader ever found an argument more convincing when it involves accusations of panty-bunching?)
mattski’s reference to “Vietnamese self-determination” is equally, if less obviously, offensive. He can’t say that the U.S. fought a war against Vietnamese ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’, so he uses the weasel word ‘self-determination’ to imply that brutal oppression is somehow acceptable if the oppressors are one’s own countrymen.
January 24, 2010, 9:29 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
We visited our holocaust upon Vietnam?
OK. You go right on thinking I’m dramatic.
January 24, 2010, 9:32 ammattski says:
***Helpful reminder. The thread is about Che and the popularity of his image.
I am genuinely curious just how much mayhem can be laid at Che’s feet. I do not know the answer, but I’m skeptical that it could rival a fraction of the US’s misdeeds.
January 24, 2010, 9:34 ammattski says:
Dr. Weevil, please, just do some reading and educate yourself. That’s all I ask.
If you refuse to read any accounts which offend your self-esteem then that is self-inflicted ignorance. Only you can fix that.
January 24, 2010, 9:37 amDr. Weevil says:
Educate myself how, mattski? Do you want me to learn that ‘self-determination’ is more important than freedom, democracy, and human rights? North Korea has self-determination: all of the oppression is done by North Koreans, but that hasn’t prevented it from being the worst place in the world.
It looks to me like you need to educate yourself. If you don’t know that the number of Vietnamese murdered by Americans is utterly dwarfed by the number murdered by their fellow Vietnamese, then you need to start educating yourself, because you don’t know the first thing about Vietnam.
January 24, 2010, 9:47 amA. Zarkov says:
The answer is: as many as he thought necessary and had the means to. If Che had had the power of a Mao, he would have killed millions.
January 24, 2010, 9:50 amA. Zarkov says:
The “cult of Che” flowed from the adversarial culture that blossomed in the 1960s, and its exploitation by businesses who will sell anything they think people want. Taking a casual walk down 8th Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village area circa 1967, one would see Che posters and tee shirts for sale all over the place. Che was simply an image and a symbol. You didn’t like the Vietnam war, so you went an bought a tee shirt. It was a way of “sticking it to the man” without really taking any chances. No one cared what Che was really like.
January 24, 2010, 10:03 amPedro says:
Being Cuban-American, and baring witness to what Socialism has done to so many South American countries, I’ve always found it incredibly ironic that so many Latin Americans, particularly young ones, tout Guevara as a hero. ‘Miseducation’ I guess.
P
January 24, 2010, 10:07 amhttp://www.whoneedslawyers.com
A. Zarkov says:
A lot less that the North Vietnamese murdered after they took power in the South giving rise to the “boat people.” Things have to be pretty bad for large numbers of people to take to the sea in flimsy crafts to brave nature and pirates. There were no boat people before the fall of Saigon.
January 24, 2010, 10:13 amR.B. Glennie says:
I think the author proceeds from the wrong assumptions.
Leftists do not embrace Ernesto Lynch, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega – and didn’t embrace Stalin, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung in the past – *in spite* of their brutality, but BECAUSE of it:
http://anatomyofculture.blogspot.com/2009/11/outlaws-thugs-dictators-and-ticky-tacky.html
January 24, 2010, 10:17 amcorneille1640 says:
I’m inclined to believe that “communism” didn’t kill those millions; it was opportunistic megalomaniacs who used communism as an excuse or justification. Maybe there is something about the communist ideology that is inherently murderous and totalitarian; at least the historical record suggests so. But the blame belongs with the murderers, and I’m inclined to think that Pol Pot, Stalin, et al., would have committed their murders even if they weren’t communists.
January 24, 2010, 10:36 amcorneille1640 says:
Why do we call him “Che”? It seems like an affectionate name for the guy that his fans like to use, just like people used to call Fidel Castro “Fidel” (of course, now it’s necessary to call him “Fidel” to distinguish him from his brother). Why don’t we just call him “Guevara”?
January 24, 2010, 10:37 ammattski says:
Zarkov, readers familiar with this site know that you are an outlier, a person of extreme views. You provided a non-answer but somehow you seem to think it contains information. Remarkable.
January 24, 2010, 10:38 ampmorem says:
I chalk it up to pro-active necrophilia.
It’s not a good idea to trust anyone who’s into that. One never knows who they’ll take an interest in.
January 24, 2010, 10:48 amFloridan says:
After we get through with Che, can we wonder why a public high school in Jacksonville, Florida, is named after Nathan Bedford Forrest?
January 24, 2010, 10:48 amcorneille1640 says:
As a believer in the aphorism that power corrupts and that absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, I’m inclined to believe that many of us, perhaps myself included, if armed with self-righteous certitude, might do the same. I don’t say this to justify anyone’s actions, only to say that we are not all without sin.
January 24, 2010, 10:48 amgeokstr says:
You forgot Marx himself, who is still revered by many of the professoriat in all the “Studies” departments in most Western universities, and his “theories” form the basis for most of the leftist “isms” and the Black Liberation Theology that our president himself worshipped under for 20 years.
But that’s not true at all for his followers. No matter how many times tens of millions need to be murdered, and billions need to be impoverished and re-educated, in one country after another, the left continues to delude themselves into thinking, “All those other times, they didn’t really do communism. This time we’ll get it right.”
January 24, 2010, 10:52 ammattski says:
Wikipedia puts total Vietnam War deaths at 3-4 million. The sub-category of deaths due to communist consolidation after the fall of Saigon are estimated at 643,000. Subtract that from 3-4 million and get back to me.
January 24, 2010, 10:55 amDave N. says:
Mattski seems to be justifying Che, apparently under the argument that he didn’t kill that many (and compared to Mao, I guess that is true). Who is the outlier here? Defending a totalitarian murderer is repugnant regardless of the number.
January 24, 2010, 10:56 amgeokstr says:
At last something you and I can agree on.
Communism is not just another political system, but one whose promised utopia requires a fundamental transformation of the human psyche towards voluntary sacrifice for the collective. When that pesky human nature refuses to cooperate, well, that’s when those tens of millions of eggs need to be broken. For the good of all, of course.
January 24, 2010, 11:00 amShelbyC says:
You got a defense of Hitler too, Matski?
January 24, 2010, 11:06 amRicardo says:
In order to murder millions of people, you need a totalitarian ideology and weak institutions that can be easily subverted by someone with the will and charisma to become a dictator. If Pol Pot or Stalin had been born and raised in the U.S., perhaps they would have become career criminals, cult leaders or serial killers. Or maybe even white collar crooks ala Bernie Madoff. They would have been marginal and rather pathetic individuals. It was Communism that gave them both the motive and opportunity to transform their own pscyhopathic tendencies into genocide and mass murder.
January 24, 2010, 11:08 amMark Field says:
Then I can’t wait for all the denunciations of Pinochet sure to follow by the commenters here.
Do they have to be totalitarian too, or is just murdering enough? Cuz in that case I have lots of other candidates.
January 24, 2010, 11:09 amgeokstr says:
I doubt it, because the left has convinced itself (by rigging the definitions) that Hitler wasn’t just another offshoot of international socialism.
That way they can revise history and claim Hitler was a right winger, and that the left didn’t really love him too until he invaded their even more beloved USSR.
January 24, 2010, 11:12 amDave N. says:
Mark Field,
I am not defending Pinochet. Are you defending Che?
January 24, 2010, 11:12 amA. Zarkov says:
What’s extreme about thinking Che would have killed far more people if he had had the means to do so? You have no answer so you resort to insults.
January 24, 2010, 11:15 amDr. Weevil says:
So now the U.S. is guilty of all the killings committed by the communists during the Vietnam War, i.e. before 1975? Try actually reading the page you link to, mattski. Your 643,000 does not include the civilians and POWs murdered before April 1975, including “17,000 South Vietnamese officials killed by North Vietnamese Forces (includes Viet Cong), in addition another 49,000 civilians were executed. Another 50,000 refuges were killed as well as 1,260 civilians during Saigon shelling, and another 6,000 civilians were killed in Hue during the Tet Offensive. In addition, around 130 US POWs and 16,000 South Vietnamese POWs were executed.”
That rather dwarfs the estimated 1,500 civilians murdered by American forces at My Lai and other places, a number which would have been far lower if the Communist combatants had followed the Laws of War instead of routinely hiding behind civilians and disguising themselves as civilians. It also dwarfs the estimated 90,000 South Vietnamese and 65,000 North Vietnamese civilians accidentally killed by U.S. troops in the process of killing an estimated 1,100,000 NVA and Viet Cong combatants. (All figures from your link.) Again, the Communists violated the Geneva Convention in numerous ways that increased civilian casualties — e.g. putting antiaircraft guns on hospital roofs, as I recall — and the U.S. still managed to kill seven times as many combatants as civilians. The Communists, on the other hand, murdered civilians and POWs as a matter of policy. Do you not know that, or do you know and approve?
January 24, 2010, 11:23 amRicardo says:
Hitler had Social Democrats, Communists and anyone he sought to label as a “Bolshevik” rounded up very early on in during his rule. Hitler did win over some leftists: he also won over lots of non-leftists (like Austrian Catholics) as well. Trotskyists, of course, loathed Hitler from the beginning. The socialists, leftists and republicans in the Spanish Civil War knew full well that their right-wing enemies were being funded, supplied and aided by Hitler. I don’t know where you are getting your information from that says “the left” in general loved Hitler before 1940.
January 24, 2010, 11:31 amusual suspect says:
It’s extremely funny to read about “communist crimes” without mentioning “crimes of democracy”. Che is a murderer, but JFK who orcestrated the Bay of Pigs invasion is, of course, a saint
January 24, 2010, 11:39 amA. Zarkov says:
As Dr. Weevil points your numeric quotes are deceptive. But your 643,000 figure pertains to killings after the war. What excuse is there for killing people once hostilities have stopped? A better example would be WWII where more German civilians died in the five years after the war than during the war. The expulsion of some 16 million ethnic Germans all over Europe after 1945 led to two million deaths. The Allies were response for these unnecessary deaths. Now perhaps Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin never expected that many to die in the ethnic cleansing they mandated in the Yalta Agreement, but it happened. Why don’t you complain about this atrocity? Is it because Stalin was involved?
January 24, 2010, 11:42 ammattski says:
Not so fast, Dave. I would appreciate it if you would pay attention to what I say and don’t make assumptions.
I haven’t defended Che at all, actually. What I said above is that I don’t know how much mayhem Che was responsible for, but I would like to know.
What I object to is shifting the discussion of a particular individual, in the case the communist Che, to a melodramatic, over-broad discussion of the “evils of communism” which is divorced from the “evils of capitalism” (for lack of a better word.) That is what Laura did above, in a rather lazy and maybe self-righteous comment.
And in the context of trying to temper the anti-communist hysteria which often appears here I think it is useful to look at our sins as well as the sins of others. Had the US not invaded Vietnam there is a good chance that far, far fewer people would have died. 3-4 million is a lot of people.
January 24, 2010, 11:42 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
This was lazy and self-righteous?
January 24, 2010, 11:47 amusual suspect says:
As a rule, mass murders, invasions and atrocities are A-OK, when ordered by democratic leaders (from our side). Those democratic leaders get unlimited respect and praise. On the other hand, similar actions performed by “communists” are terrible crimes and the guys who ordered them are demons from hell.
January 24, 2010, 11:48 amMark Field says:
Nope, not at all. He was a thug.
It’s odd, though, that Prof. Somin never challenges the Pinochet worship on the Right, though I’m pretty confident Pinochet killed more people than Che. Like I say, I’m holding my breath for the denunciations (as opposed to the “not defending”).
January 24, 2010, 11:49 amMartyA says:
Why doesn’t Ben & Jerry’s market a new ice cream flavor, “Che-rry Guevara?” I can see the packaging and the marketing in my mind’s eye.
January 24, 2010, 11:49 amAnd, yes, I do know the reason why they don’t.
Dave N. says:
Mark Field,
I have never seen Pinochet worship on the right. Pinochet: The Musical must have been produced without my knowledge. I can’t even come up with a snarky title to contrast with The Motorcycle Diaries, which is pure Che hagiography.
I have yet to see a Pinochet poster or pin. So, where, exactly is this Pinochet worship you speak of?
January 24, 2010, 12:00 pmLTEC says:
Isn’t the success of the mythology of “Che” to a large extent really the success of graphic design? Without that one iconic image, I doubt anyone today would have heard of Che, or that either of those movies would have been made.
January 24, 2010, 12:02 pmRichard Nieporent says:
MattskI: Zarkov, readers familiar with this site know that you are an outlier, a person of extreme views.
Wow, the pot is calling the kettle black!
January 24, 2010, 12:04 pmA. Zarkov says:
Che killed more people personally than Pinochet who was not a combatant. Quite possibly Pinochet ordered more people killed than Che, but did you ever see anyone wearing a Pinochet tee shirt? How many Pinochet posters do you see in dorm rooms and faculty offices? In fact I’ve never met anyone who worshiped Pinochet, but perhaps I need to get around more.
January 24, 2010, 12:04 pmRigelDog says:
Che personally executed hundreds, and presided over the execution of thousands of men, women and children. That’s more than enough reason to reject the label of “hero.” I would no more condone the wearing of a t-shirt with his image than I would the wearing of a Lt. Calley shirt.
January 24, 2010, 12:06 pmsardonic_sob says:
Where on the political spectrum are you implying that fans of mass murder lie?
January 24, 2010, 12:07 pmDr. Weevil says:
So now the U.S. “invaded” Vietnam? I seem to recall that we were there at the invitation of the South Vietnamese government, and that North Vietnam repeatedly invaded South Vietnam. The only way you can call the U.S. intervention an invasion is to assume that the South Vietnamese government was entirely illegitimate. It was an incompetent, undemocratic, and often brutal government, but less legitimate than the murderous totalitarians in the north? Again, the refugee flows tell us all we need to know about which government the Vietnamese, north and south, found less intolerable.
Would there have been fewer deaths if the U.S. had not supported the South Vietnamese? Perhaps, but there’s no way to know. Nor is total deaths the only reasonable measure. If the U.S. had stayed out of the European side of World War II, and Britain and the U.S.S.R. had surrendered, it would probably have saved lives over all. Hitler would probably have killed 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 Jews, and lots more gypsies and communists and democrats, but think of all the soldiers and sailors who would have survived: 5,500,000 Germans, 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 Russians (well, except for the Jewish ones, I guess), 400,000 Americans, and so on. Of course, saving those lives would have meant consigning an entire continent to slavery, but I suppose mattski would consider that a happy ending, if the casualty count was kept down.
It does seem likely that there would have been far fewer murders if we had won the war, and that Vietnam — like South Korea — would be a democracy today.
Of course, what ‘usual suspect’ writes is utterly false. I am still disappointed that Lt. Calley was not executed for his crimes, and I have seen no one here saying that mass murders or atrocities “are A-OK, when ordered by democratic leaders”. Nor has he offered any evidence that Johnson or Nixon ever ordered any mass murders or atrocities. But what can we say about someone who puts ‘communists’ in quotation marks, as if the North Vietnamese regime and its Viet Cong allies were anything else?
January 24, 2010, 12:09 pmmattski says:
Dr. Weevil,
After the Geneva Accords were signed it was Diem, backed by the US, who subverted the unifying elections called for in the agreement. We believed, accurately, that Ho would have won the elections easily, so we substituted war for democratic elections as called for under the Accords.
As I said above, 3-4 million is a lot of people.
The books that I found most helpful in understanding the Vietnam conflict are these:
A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
About Face by David Hackworth
Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
I don’t agree with many of Chomsky & Herman’s conclusions–they’re too far left for me–but that doesn’t detract from the brilliance of their research, which is quite impressive.
January 24, 2010, 12:09 pmmattski says:
Yes, Dr. Weevil, the US invaded Vietnam.
(Yikes.)
January 24, 2010, 12:11 pmsardonic_sob says:
I really don’t care enough to go look this up and I suspect you’d still get a positive number, but you should subtract the number of NVA and irregular combatants killed from our side, because originally the question was about “murder” and killing an enemy combatant is not murder.
January 24, 2010, 12:13 pmmattski says:
From Wikipedia’s Bernard Fall page:
As an added bonus, if we had refrained from invading in all likelihood nowhere near 3-4 million would have died.
January 24, 2010, 12:25 pmjakecollins says:
Why is the VC still fighting the Cold War? The VC and Che Guerva hipsters are two sides of the same coin.
January 24, 2010, 12:28 pmorca says:
You have to give credit to the Vietnamese Commies for putting an end to Pol Pot’s bloody reign, too.
January 24, 2010, 12:32 pmArthurKirkland says:
Speaking of a tendency to ‘ignore or downplay crimes,’ Professor Somin, here is some material that would be useful for anyone whose libertarian side were to overcome his right-wing side long enough to turn the Che Guevara study into a series:
Che Guevara
Luis Posado Carriles
Saddam Hussein
Oliver North
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
General Idi Amin
Roberto Suazo Cordova
Elliott Abrams
General Hugo Banzer
Ferdinand Marcos
King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz
Anastasio Sozoma Jr.
Asantasio Somozo Sr.
Park Chung Hee
Mobutu Sese Seko
General Efrain Rios Montt
Halie Selassie
General Augusto Pinochet
Alfredo Stroessner
General Jorge Rafael Videla
General Suharto
General Samuel Doe
General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez
Vinicio Cerezo
Turgut Ozal
Roberto D’Aubuisson
General Manuel Noriega
General Humberto Branco
Alfredo Cristiani
George Papadaopoulos
I look forward to coming installments.
January 24, 2010, 12:37 pmChris Travers says:
Che is the moral equivalent of Pinochet….
But I guess Pinochet was our mass murderer so that was OK…..
January 24, 2010, 12:37 pmyankee says:
ArthurKirkland: You forgot Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. But I’ve never seen a Batista t-shirt, nor of any of the other people you mentioned.
January 24, 2010, 12:43 pmMark Field says:
Then you haven’t been paying attention. He gets defended on the internet (at least) all the time. And never once does he get denounced by the Right. Nor does Somoza, nor do lots of others. It’s a clear case of political correctness run rampant — one must denounce just the approved sort of thugs.
It’s damned hard to find anyone these days who’ll defend Stalin or Mao, say, and they get denounced on the left and right alike. But there’s a lot of selective denunciation when it comes to the smaller scale criminals like Che or Pinochet. Somehow those motes in the other guy’s eye look gigantic compared to the beams in one’s own.
These posts undoubtedly make Prof. Somin feel good about himself, but the truth is that there is no “Che cult”. There’s a bunch of ignorant kids who walk around with T-shirts because they think the art is cool and because they vaguely understand that the image is “edgy”. For Prof. Somin to waste as many electrons as he does denouncing Che posters says a lot about him and the attempt by the Right to control the thinking and behavior of others, but nothing about the left.
January 24, 2010, 12:44 pmA. Criminal says:
Panty-bunching is not what it’s cracked up to be.
January 24, 2010, 12:44 pmusual suspect says:
Dr Weevil wrote:
Lt. Calley served only 3.5 years of house arrest and was a single person convicted for My Lai mass murder. As you can see US judges and politicians didn’t see anything wrong in Mai Lai mass murder (right now people in the US can get lifetime sentence for repeated petty theft). Without international publicity it’s likely that Calley would receive a promotion after My Lai
So huge civilian casualties from US army and air force in Vietnam are A-OK, right? As opposed to people killed by Che
January 24, 2010, 12:48 pmMark Field says:
They’re still trying to prove that their demagoguery on that issue was true. It’s like the Lost Cause Southerners after the Civil War.
January 24, 2010, 12:49 pmbyomtov says:
After we get through with Che, can we wonder why a public high school in Jacksonville, Florida, is named after Nathan Bedford Forrest?
Indeed, we might ask about the whole cult of the Confederacy, which is substantially larger than the cult of Guevara, which, when you come down to it, probably has about ten members, all under 25.
January 24, 2010, 12:59 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Not a saint, just a gutless idiot.
January 24, 2010, 1:02 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Not a saint, just a gutless idiot.
I can’t recall anyone defending Pinochet
January 24, 2010, 1:05 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I’m ready to see the end of the cult of the Confederacy. It can’t be consigned to the trash heap of history fast enough to suit me.
January 24, 2010, 1:05 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Got an example of this “pinochet worship”, or are you just FOS?
January 24, 2010, 1:07 pmDr. Weevil says:
yankee:
Don’t exaggerate. I imagine you’ve seen Haile Selassie on a T-shirt. Of course, the Venn diagram of right-wing warmongering Republicans and Rastafarians would have only the tiniest of overlaps, if any.
usual suspect:
Try reading my comment before
answeringreplying to it. According to best estimates at the link mattski provided, the U.S. managed to kill seven times as many enemy combatants as civilians, despite the efforts of the enemy to increase civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. I remember the Calley court-martial well. The pitiful thing is that the left didn’t want him punished either, because they wanted to hang Westmoreland and Nixon instead.mattski:
If you’re going to tell me to do some research, you might want to avoid recommending a book by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Try Guenther Lewy, American in Vietnam instead. I’ve read both, though not lately, and Lewy writes scholarship, while Herman and Chomsky write pseudo-scholarly propaganda. Anyone who recommends their book as a source immediately forfeits any right to be taken seriously.
Mark Field:
January 24, 2010, 1:21 pmLook up the difference between ‘worship’ and ‘defend’. Many on the right do indeed argue that Pinochet was the lesser of two evils in Chile at the time. That’s a long long way from ‘worshipping’ him.
mattski says:
Noise from the bleachers.
January 24, 2010, 1:24 pmmattski says:
Sorry, you’re wrong. Chomsky & Herman specialize in facts, their book is packed with citations from the historical record. You can disagree with their interpretations of those facts, and at times I do. But you cannot dismiss facts, starting with US subversion of the Geneva Accords.
January 24, 2010, 1:28 pmMark Field says:
Diogenes can rest.
January 24, 2010, 1:38 pmA. Zarkov says:
“The Negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.”- Che Guevara
“We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing.” -Che Guevera
“Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians.” – Che Guevara
January 24, 2010, 1:50 pmMark Field says:
Nobody literally “worships” Che. Both uses were metaphor/hyperbole.
January 24, 2010, 1:56 pmDr. Weevil says:
Poor mattski apparently hasn’t heard that Chomsky has been caught many times falsifying and misrepresenting his evidence. (Edward S. Herman was last heard of denying the Serbian massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.) Oh well, there’s no point in arguing with him now. Once someone joins Chomsky’s slave army of evil gnoams, he (and it’s almost always a he) is usually lost forever.
Poor orca thinks that we “have to give credit to the Vietnamese Commies for putting an end to Pol Pot’s bloody reign” without apparently noticing that they helped put him in power in the first place. It would be in very poor taste to congratulate Stalin for liberating Poland from Hitler without mentioning that they had actively helped him conquer Poland just a few years before.
January 24, 2010, 1:59 pmbyomtov says:
Zarkov,
What do those quotes have to do with anything? Similar or worse could as easily, maybe even more easily, be found for William Buckley, who enjoys vastly more respect from admirers than Guevara.
January 24, 2010, 2:07 pmOrin Kerr says:
Mark Field writes:
I agree with the first two sentences, but I suspect Ilya’s interest in the topic likely owes to his having been born and spent his childhood in a communist country.
January 24, 2010, 2:07 pmusual suspect says:
And of course senseless killings of Vietnamise combatants completely negates all civilian mass murders. So your logic is: killing male gooks – unquestionable good, killing female and children gooks is kinda bad, but not really, since we managed to kill more male gooks
January 24, 2010, 2:09 pmAlso extensive use of chemical weapons doesn’t hurt too – agent orange was wonderful in causing 400 000 deaths and disabilities and and 500 000 children with birth defects. But it was all for greater good. We were just idealistic good guys. But Che of course was a horrible monster
Dr. Weevil says:
What kind of creep tries to put racial slurs in someone else’s mouth? A filthy, disgusting creep like ‘usual suspect’, apparently. The same kind of creep who thinks anyone approves of birth defects.
Not to mention a stupid creep: The North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong fought to enslave the population of South Vietnam. Unfortunately, they succeeded, and South Vietnam is still a slave state. Apparently that doesn’t bother ‘usual suspect’. It was no more wrong to kill NVA and VC than to kill German, Italian, and Japanese soldiers in World War II.
January 24, 2010, 2:22 pmAk Mike says:
Prof. Kerr – of course you’re right that there isn’t any cult of Guevara, not of any significance anyway. But it is nevertheless worth remark, that this murdering tyrant is the subject of T-shirts worn in public and,in the last few years, of main stream movies – and I do not recall any howls of outrage from the reviewers.
Imagine walking around with a Somoza T-shirt. Imagine making a favorable movie about Pinochet – don’t you think the reviewers would be horrified? To be fair, the same would be true about Stalin. The question that vexes Prof. Somin is, why does Guevara get a free pass? That’s a legitimate question, and not a case of trying to control the thinking and behavior of others.
January 24, 2010, 2:22 pmDan Lavatan says:
While he was clearly evil, he did manage to take over Cuba with about 12 people (who survived first contact with the enemy).
I always assumed people with his shirt hate communism but are students of military history who admire a well executed strategy coupled with a competent tactical doctrine.
January 24, 2010, 2:29 pmA. Zarkov says:
The quotes have everything to do with the theme of this thread: the cult of Che. How many consumers of Che memorabilia know he made those statements? I suspect somewhere near zero. If this were a William F. Buckley thread then we might want to investigate his quotes too. But it isn’t. Your comment is largely irrelevant to the current context. Images of Che are everywhere: posters, tee shirts, shoes, even bikinis. The people consuming these images think of themselves as “progressive,” which includes a rejection of invidious stereotyping of non-white groups. Surely you can see the irony.
January 24, 2010, 2:31 pmDr. Weevil says:
Careful, Dan:
January 24, 2010, 2:33 pmIf military competence is enough to justify a T-shirt, it might be enough to justify naming a school after someone, in which case people will have to stop complaining about Nathan Bedford Forrest High School.
Sun Tzu's Nephew says:
So, you are FOS. OK, got it.
January 24, 2010, 2:33 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Chomsky wouldn’t know a fact if he tripped over it…..he’s as much of a BS artist as you are (although with better credentials, no doubt).
January 24, 2010, 2:35 pmusual suspect says:
The admiration of Che exists because he was an idealist. He really beleived in his cause (improve life of people through revolution) and risked his life for his ideals. You cannot say that about most politicians, who don’t beleive in anything besides money and power and will not risk their lives for any cause. All that doesn’t mean that Che didn’t kill people or didn’t cause damage. But US presidents and other politicians which are praised and respected also caused deaths of lots of people and massive damag. However they ordered killings from safe offices and were under influence of various special interest groups which were driven by money.
January 24, 2010, 2:37 pmMark Field says:
Yeah, and it’s easy for me — whose childhood was quite privileged in that respect — to shrug these things off. I just get frustrated because threads like this degenerate into mindless bashing.
January 24, 2010, 2:38 pm1040 says:
Why such ardent protest against the work of the invisible hand of the market? Go, buy yourself a Reagan Tee if that catches your fancy, and if you are willing to forget his support of thugs in Latin American, creation of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the funding of Islamicization of Pakistan (just to name a few).
January 24, 2010, 2:41 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
The only lives he risked were those comrades of his that demonstrated insufficent (to Guevara) revolutionary spirit. He’d kill them (or order them killed) and then take their possessions, wives, girlfriends…Read his diaries
He was a sweetheart, no doubt. A stone-cold psychopath interested only in his personal aggrandizement. If he hadn’t been caught and killed by the Bolivians Fidel would no doubt had him disappeared as a threat to the revolution.
January 24, 2010, 2:43 pmA. Zarkov says:
He did, but that does not make him noble or worthy of iconic status. We know from his diaries that he got a rush from shooting people. He killed for pleasure as well as the revolution.
January 24, 2010, 2:43 pmLN says:
Srsly? Do you even know how Vietnam ended up divided into Northern and Southern sections?
These argument have a tendency to end up in arguments about “which set of murderers do you think were better”? The fact of the matter is that America’s hands are very dirty when it comes to Vietnam. That doesn’t mean that everyone else is an angel or right or good. But it should temper some self-righteousness.
The idea that 60,000 Americans died just because we cared so much about the rights of South Vietnamese peasants is absurd.
January 24, 2010, 2:52 pmDr. Weevil says:
Reagan created the Taliban, 1040? Now you’re just making stuff up.
January 24, 2010, 2:53 pmRuss says:
Still waiting for Mark Field or mattski to produce an example of a Pinochet shirt. I’m sure he gets defended by some loons on the Internet, much as there are also white supremacists and lovers of some serial killers on there, but they are a fringe. I challenge you to go to a single college campus or city and find a Pinochet shirt the way you can find a Che shirt.
Looks like you’re trying a diversion that points to bad behavior to justofy other bad behavior. Once, just once, acknowledge that maybe a mass murderer is not someone who should be idolized.
January 24, 2010, 2:53 pmusual suspect says:
South Vietnam was a short lived creature of colonizers. Historically, Vietnam was unified state for a thousand years before the Vietnam War. So the idea of South Vietnam being the slave state of bigger Vietnam doesn’t make any sense. Most of the Vietnamese always thought of Vietnam as a single country
Germany declared war on the US, and Japan attacked the US first. So fighting the attackers is completely justified. On the other hand killing millions of people in a different part of the world who did nothing wrong to the US were justified by “domino theory” and retarded brain-dead crap like that. But we could do that, because we are the good guys. Killing millions of people for no good reason doesn’t tarnish the reputation of the good guys. But when the other side kills people, our blood starts to boil in righteous indignation
January 24, 2010, 2:54 pmOrin Kerr says:
Ak Mike:
I certainly don’t have a problem remarking on it. But I suspect there’s a certain amount of feigned outrage here, sort of a tactical “hey, I think we can score some political points if we pretend we’re really offended” type of reaction. Compare, for example, the general lack of outrage to the Dukes of Hazzard TV show and movies, where the Duke brothers drove a car named the General Lee with a flag of the confederacy on the top. We all sort of realize that there’s a big difference between what the reference is designed to mean and what it really means if you take the historical references seriously.
January 24, 2010, 3:03 pmDr. Weevil says:
Touché, usual suspect: I
misspokemiswrote. I should have said that “all of Vietnam is still a slave state”, unlike Korea, where only half is. I persist in thinking that a country that is half-slave and half-free (like Germany until 1989 and Korea and China to this day) is better off than a country that is all slave (like Vietnam). Apparently you think that national unity is more important than freedom or human rights. If the South had conquered the North in the Civil War and introduced slavery in every state, would you be arguing that that was better than the status quo ante bellum?By the way, you really shouldn’t call the Domino Theory “retarded brain-dead crap”: when South Vietnam fell, it took Laos and Cambodia with it, at the cost of a couple million more lives. If it had fallen ten years earlier, it might well have taken down Thailand, too, and perhaps Malaysia.
January 24, 2010, 3:03 pmmattski says:
Do you have a citation for this?
Better yet, do you have a citation for any falsifications in the volume I mentioned?
Even better yet, do you have a citation for a falsification by Chomsky which is germane to this discussion?
Thanks for keeping it real.
January 24, 2010, 3:03 pmMark Field says:
Still waiting for you or anyone else to show the relevance of this.
Take this up with Dr. Weevil (1:21 comment).
Looks like you missed the comment where I already did that. Is there more I need to denounce to stay in your good graces, Comrade
StalinRuss?By the way, I’m still waiting here with baited breath for anyone to denounce Pinochet. Want to be the first?
January 24, 2010, 3:04 pm1040 says:
whatever keeps you happy, sweetheart. just dont try and find out how osama and zawayhiri, now of al-qaeda, and many who are now in the taliban got their start in the terrorism biz (those days we used to call them freedom fighters). and don’t look at that photo of rummy shaking hands with evil weevil saddam either. best frenemies forever!
January 24, 2010, 3:05 pmOrin Kerr says:
Oh, and I’ll agree that I have never heard anyone on the right make any positive reference to Pinochet. I’m sure there is someone, in the same way there is someone out there who will say something positive about anyone, but I have never encountered it.
January 24, 2010, 3:06 pm1040 says:
the domino theory is just crap. or cardboard, if you like to call it that. even they admitted it in a recent video. although they also claimed they’ve cleaned up their act since.
January 24, 2010, 3:06 pmChris Travers says:
I have seen people defend Pinochet (I seem to recall some posts on this forum some months or even a year or so back).
Actually, I take that back.
What is usually defended is US backing for Pinochet because somehow he was better than the alternative.
And what is worshipped on the right is not Pinochet himself, but the idea that his backing by the US serves as a model for foreign policy.
However I am not sure that justifying US support for a mass murderer is fundamentally different than justifying a mass murderer. It’s like saying “well, I don’t like criminals, but being an accomplice is pretty cool!”
January 24, 2010, 3:07 pmLN says:
Dr. Weevil, your points are very sound, except for the fact that the pro-freedom South did not want national elections to be held. The Americans did not want elections to be held either. Because if they had been held, the Communists would have won.
Hmm.
When is America going to get around to invading China? More than one billion people living in slavery, and all we do is buy their cheap exports.
January 24, 2010, 3:08 pm1040 says:
i am sure the same is true of the dutch. where by dutch, i mean ol’ dutch. ronnie to his friends. not mommie. that’s what he called his wife.
January 24, 2010, 3:08 pmusual suspect says:
A. Zarkov wrote:
Well I’m not saying that he was a saint, or that he didn’t do bad things.
January 24, 2010, 3:08 pmMark Buehner says:
So was Eichmann.
January 24, 2010, 3:15 pm1040 says:
And Osama.
And Dubya.
And they all fought for their ideals, be it fighting from tunnels in inhospitable climes, or defending Texas from Vietnamese digging tunnels to it.
January 24, 2010, 3:17 pmDr. Weevil says:
LN:
January 24, 2010, 3:17 pmAnd why would the Communists have won? Do you think it might have something to do with their habit of killing anyone who opposed them? Have you forgotten the “17,000 South Vietnamese officials killed by North Vietnamese Forces (includes Viet Cong)” from 1957-1975? I went to school with a couple of Vietnamese kids in 1966: their fathers were village chiefs who had fled Vietnam because the Viet Cong were systematically killing non-communist village chiefs. Communists “won” elections all over Eastern Europe in the late ’40s. It takes more than ballot boxes to have a free and fair election: you have to be able to vote for whichever side you want without fear of violence. The fact that Ho Chi Minh already had roughly half the population of Vietnam under his totalitarian thumb in the North means that even a small percentage of the Southern vote would have given him victory. Sorry, but your argument seems singularly naive.
1040 says:
“WE DID NOT LOSE VIETNAM! IT WAS A TIE!”
January 24, 2010, 3:19 pmArthurKirkland says:
I suspect the Fox website offers a shrine to Oliver North, the coward who betrayed the United States and tried to cover himself by smuggling papers in his secretary’s underwear.
January 24, 2010, 3:21 pmMark Buehner says:
Exactly. And that’s why its important to have a consistent scale of judgment, and not to excuse evil deeds because you happen to applaud their alleged intentions.
January 24, 2010, 3:22 pm1040 says:
you won’t find any argument from me on this. exactly why i spit on both reagan’s and che’s graves.
January 24, 2010, 3:26 pmMark Buehner says:
Does the alleged ‘historical integrity’ argument of Vietnam apply if we helped South Vietnam invade the North instead of play defense? Should we encourage South Korea to invade the North? Does historic Israel’s integrity trump Palestinian claims? Or is this claim a bunch of crap to legitimize communist conquest and persecution of opposition?
January 24, 2010, 3:26 pm1040 says:
he is indeed a true hero for taking the fall for the gipper god.
January 24, 2010, 3:28 pmMark Buehner says:
Does Clinton get a pass for dropping bombs on a half dozen countries?
January 24, 2010, 3:29 pmmarkm says:
It has enough members to keep Che T-shirts and posters in mass production – and they certainly aren’t all under 25. Look up 61-year old Lorain County, OH Common Pleas Judge James Burge, who decorates his office with posters of Obama, Guevara, and Thoreau.
January 24, 2010, 3:29 pmLN says:
Dr. Weevil, are you seriously denying that the Geneva Accords stipulated that internationally supervised nationwide free elections were to be held in Vietnam? And that South Vietnam refused to hold such elections? And that the United States was not in favor of such elections either?
The Communists would have won because they were instrumental in kicking colonialists out of the country.
On the other hand, the President of South Vietnam established his power by winning 98.2% of the vote. He was remarkably popular, winning over 600,000 of the 450,000 votes cast in the South Vietnamese capital. So maybe you’re right, and the anti-Communists were really in touch with the people.
January 24, 2010, 3:32 pm1040 says:
uh oh, the theory hit a hitch. and so soon. how sad. what happened to consistent standard of judgment? why does judging reagan require an examination of clinton?
January 24, 2010, 3:33 pmusual suspect says:
Human rights are important but it didn’t look like the US was fighting for human rights in Vietnam. When you use chemical weapons, napalm or simply carpet-bomb villages you are kinda violating human rights of peasants, no?
January 24, 2010, 3:35 pmArthurKirkland says:
Apparently, it is not necessary to admire Oliver North electronically. One could glorify his depravity in person, and maybe even have some of the blood on his hands rub off during a handshake, by attending a CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) event. Bonus: This year’s event is apparently co-sponsored by the John Birch Society.
You can’t make this stuff up.
But you can cherry-pick history to try to mask your political leanings if, for some reason, you wish to be regarded as something other than what you are.
January 24, 2010, 3:35 pmMark Buehner says:
Doesn’t. I’m just making sure everyone gets their turn. Nothing Clinton did can excuse Reagan. But what about Clinton, since we’re asking?
January 24, 2010, 3:35 pm1040 says:
and dont worry mark. look on the bright side. in 20 years, we can all judge purely by absolute standards both pres obama and his support of the “good taliban” and pres petraeus and the sunni terrorists in the middle east, the same idea which his protege mcchrystal is adopting in afpak to fight the “bad taliban” whom reagan funded. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX07j9SDFcc
January 24, 2010, 3:37 pmMark Buehner says:
Hmm. And why was Reagan funding them? How many Afghanis did the Soviets kill by the way? Where does that show up on the balance sheet?
January 24, 2010, 3:39 pm1040 says:
of course immoral in so many ways. for example bombing a pill factory to distract from lewinsky. even if it killed only one person that’s still unforgivable. bosnia was a moral war as was kosovo. but his standing by while rwanda burnt wasn’t.
glad to see you agree reagan is a lyin’ mass murderin sack o’ shit.
January 24, 2010, 3:42 pmDr. Weevil says:
Of course I’m not denying that, LN. I am denying that an actual free election was possible in that place and time. Got that? It’s an a fortiori argument. Even such a relatively small-time thug as Diem was capable of stuffing ballot boxes to steal an election by ‘winning’ more than 98% of the vote. ‘Uncle Ho’ was by any estimate far more ruthless and thuggish than Diem. Ergo, I conclude that any election in which Ho Chi Minh already controlled half the voters was pretty much guaranteed to declare him the winner, no matter what the people of Vietname thought. QED
January 24, 2010, 3:42 pmAk Mike says:
Prof. Kerr – I wouldn’t object to a TV series about college life that showed students wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. They do that. The students could be portrayed positively – wearing such a T-shirt means something about the culture, and only a bit about the individual.
I’ve never seen Dukes of Hazzard, but I assume the show did not directly glorify the Confederacy, apart from showing the bootleggers doing what those people probably do. That’s different from a movie like Che that shows Guevara in a positive light.
I’ll add that I am repelled by the cult of the Confederacy – I recall being disgusted when I saw a statute of a Confederate soldier in Charlottesville, labelled “for those who died in the cause of States Rights.”
You are right in pointing out that what we tend to see and be disturbed by depends on our particular outlook – the comments here are good evidence of that. I think it fair to think, however, that there is an inside the line and an outside the line, and that Guevara should be outside the line. I don’t think Prof. Somin’s outrage is feigned, colored though it may be.
January 24, 2010, 3:43 pmLN says:
Oh, and I missed this:
I went to school with a couple of Vietnamese kids in 1966: their fathers were village chiefs who had fled Vietnam because the Viet Cong were systematically killing non-communist village chiefs.
I am actually Vietnamese; Vietnam’s history is remarkably tragic. But this whole idea that we had to bomb the crap out of Vietnam in the name of human rights does not compute for me.
I do not support Communism. But the Vietnam War was not a battle between murderous totalitarian thugs and freedom-loving peacemakers, no matter how good that makes you feel about yourself. Please learn some history.
January 24, 2010, 3:44 pmMark Buehner says:
Oh dear, and i thought for a minute we were getting somewhere. So now we have ‘moral’ wars in the mix, and not only that but NOT going to war can be immoral as well.
So if Reagan funds the Afghans to defend themselves, he is morally responsible for everything that tangentially occurs for the next 30 years. If Reagan DOESNT fund the Afghans, he is morally responsible for everything that happens in the next 30 years.
I assume that LBJ and Nixon would have been responsible for any genocide or ethnic cleansing in Vietnam had they never send troops there?
Puts men and nations in a pretty difficult spot of being both omniscient and perfect in their reckonings.
January 24, 2010, 3:48 pm1040 says:
Spoken like a true communist! America doesn’t learn history, you twit! AMERICA WRITES IT!
January 24, 2010, 3:48 pmDr. Weevil says:
I can’t locate the passage, and it’s not on the web, but Kingsley Amis somewhere makes cruel fun of the popular phrase “pathetic Nazi”. As best I can recall, he wrote something like this: “There are many adjectives that might be applied to a genuine Nazi, nearly all of them pejorative, but ‘pathetic’ is not one of them.” Similarly, there are many pejorative epithets that can be applied to Oliver North, but Arthur Kirkland shouldn’t call someone with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts “coward” unless (a) he is ready to offer evidence of his own Rambonic guts far beyond such puny measures as that, or (b) he wants to look like an idiot.
January 24, 2010, 3:49 pmLN says:
Well sure, if every vote for Ho Chi Minh was intrinsically illegitimate, then obviously free elections were impossible. If you can’t see that this is a circular argument, I don’t know what to say.
January 24, 2010, 3:50 pm1040 says:
Osama and Zawayhiri are Afghan? Freedom fighters, terrorists, citizens, what’s the diff, anyway?
Why, are you the mindless “war is bad” camp? Must be even easier to have contempt for Reagan then, righto?
January 24, 2010, 3:51 pmOctavian says:
I know my maternal grandmother’s side of the family located in northern Bolivia grew weary of Che Guevara’s arrogance, which is why they disclosed his location to the Bolivan army thereby sealing his fate.
January 24, 2010, 3:58 pmChris Travers says:
Wasn’t it the Carter Administration in 1979 that put up all the “Join the Jihad” posters urging militants to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets?
I always thought Reagan was just continuing Carter’s policies in this regard.
Blowback’s a b***, but you can’t just blame the Republicans.
January 24, 2010, 3:59 pmMark Buehner says:
I’m sorry- YOU must be the keeper of the illusive evidence that the CIA or any other american entity transferred funds or weapons to Osama. Because nobody else has anything but accusations. Of course, the evidence that does exist indicates we were funneling everything through the Pakistanis, but please- produce for us the famous smoking gun that we ever funded Bin Ladin.
No, actually, but i respect that point of view as at least intellectually coherent. I was more waiting to see what YOU considered just wars (and non-wars) and make the point that it really all depends on how you feel about the ideology of those involved (as above). In other words its real easy to blast your ideological opponents and excuse your allies. Silly and juvenile, but common.
January 24, 2010, 3:59 pmArthurKirkland says:
I agree, and the reported circumstances of Prof. Somin’s youth generate sympathy. Childhood in a Communist country could distort one’s view of the left-right continuum. It would explain a blind spot for the excesses and consequences of right-wing policy. Spending one’s youth in a totalitarian country — in which speaking one’s mind could produce devastating consequences — would explain the tendency to create a facade (such as self-proclaimed libertarianism) to obscure genuine positions (such as conservatism).
I don’t know where Prof. Somin was raised, but a number of those regimes were bad enough to warp any child’s thinking, even to the point of causing one to perceive that Che Guevara was far more blameworthy than the Iran-Contra participants, the Shah, or any of the Central-South American death squads (or their sponsors).
January 24, 2010, 3:59 pmLN says:
One more thing, Dr. Weevil: you seem to think that the Communists “systematically” murdering non-Communists is proof of their fundamental illegitimacy.
The Americans dropped over five million tons of bombs on Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Why do you consider that an expression of the true freedom-loving will of the Vietnamese people? It looks like the “systematic” application of force to me. But those bombs probably didn’t discriminate that finely between Communists and non-Communists, and they were dropped in the name of freedom, so they probably were not that bad.
If support for the Communists was based purely on fear and intimidation, then why did America spend two decades bombing Vietnam before leaving the country in defeat?
It saddens me that three decades after the end of the war, there are still people who think America was playing some kind of white-knight role in Vietnam.
And Communism in Vietnam was horrible.
January 24, 2010, 4:00 pm1040 says:
once again, we agree. that is exactly why you are getting so upset at me for pointing out reagan’s mass murder. while also identifying why clinton and che are immoral.
i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
yep :) we all know how much reagan was a continuation of carter. must’ve been born of his deep admiration of the man :)
January 24, 2010, 4:03 pmChris Travers says:
Communism in Vietnam was horrible. But our guy was worse.
That is as good a reason as any to avoid mucking around with other countries in the world just because we are afraid of some other strategic planners in some other country.
January 24, 2010, 4:04 pm1040 says:
wow, “we” were quite the incompetent buffoons, weren’t we? apparently the question of the day is “reagan – dumb chump or just plain evil?”
January 24, 2010, 4:06 pmMark Buehner says:
Define mass murder in Reagans case. Lets talk numbers here.
January 24, 2010, 4:07 pm1040 says:
i’m not. and i always like when people use that word. blowback. cuz the real sucky thing about the taliban is not what they’re doing to the afghans :)
January 24, 2010, 4:07 pm1040 says:
we’re back to numbers now? osama is a saint.
January 24, 2010, 4:08 pmMark Buehner says:
How so? By failing to foresee that helping eject the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan would 30 years later somehow cause planes to fly into buildings in Manhattan because some of the people we helped would link up with homicidal foriegners? Is that rational?
January 24, 2010, 4:10 pmMark Buehner says:
What does that mean? I’m simply trying to understand your pinning Reagan as this homicidal demon compared to any other president of the last century. Did Reagan’s actions kill more people than LBJ?
January 24, 2010, 4:11 pm1040 says:
are we grading on a curve here? che is a saint compared to his contemporaries then too, right?
January 24, 2010, 4:13 pmMark Field says:
Another honest conservative (libertarian?).
We are keeping track here, people. Laura and AkMike have spared your blushes on the Confederacy; who will step up and denounce Pinochet? C’mon, it can’t be that hard.
January 24, 2010, 4:14 pmorca says:
Let’s not forget America armed and trained the Viet Minh to fight the Japanese during WWII.
Like the Taliban, the Viet Minh are an American creation.
January 24, 2010, 4:14 pmKen Arromdee says:
You are misrepresenting free market supporters.
Believers in the market don’t think that a free market is perfect, just that it’s better than having one that isn’t free. Unless you can find some free market supporters who think that the government should make it illegal to sell Che shirts, you have no complaint.
January 24, 2010, 4:15 pmDave N. says:
Mark Buehner,
1040 is a troll. The only thing you can do with trolls is ignore them. They are not interested in rational discussion — merely their preferred talking points.
January 24, 2010, 4:15 pmArthurKirkland says:
I withdraw use of “coward” with respect to Oliver North. I request suggestions for a replacement.
What word should be used to describe a man who betrays his country?
What word should be used to describe a man who disgraces his country and his uniform by funding depraved murderers, against the policy and interests of his country, while being paid by his country?
What word should be used to describe a “man” who attempts to avoid accountability for his conduct by enlisting his secretary to smuggle documents out of a government building in her underpants? (This is my favorite — suggestions, please!)
What word should be used to describe a man who attempts to cover his tracks by attempting to erase evidence of his misconduct from his government computer?
What word should be used to describe a man who attempts to duck personal accountability by lying to his country’s legislature?
What word should be used to describe a man who, instead of taking responsibility for his conduct, hides behind a politically arranged pardon?
A related point: If Prof. Somin’s sense of fairness inclines him to contribute another T-shirt induced scolding, here is an Oliver North t-shirt page. Che betrayed many things, but never the United States of America. I must assume that Prof. Somin’s regard for his adopted nation would cause him to consider Prof. North’s treachery even more thread-worthy than Che Guevara’s.
As Gust Avrakotos (is said to have) aptly said, “We’ll see.”
January 24, 2010, 4:16 pm1040 says:
it’s ok, dave. i see you’ve already realized that reagan is indefensible.
January 24, 2010, 4:20 pm1040 says:
A Patriot. He fell on the sword for His Gott, His President. What could be braver?
January 24, 2010, 4:21 pmMark Field says:
For a nuanced take on it, see Niall Ferguson.
Perhaps it’s generational, but defending Pinochet was quite the rage on the Right in the 80s.
January 24, 2010, 4:22 pmKen Arromdee says:
Actually, there’s a lot of feigned outrage over Confederate flags too. The reason the Dukes of Hazzard is exempt is simple: it was aired years before feigning such outrage was in style. Complaining about it, after years of non-complaints, would make the feigning part much too obvious.
January 24, 2010, 4:24 pmricky says:
“It doesn’t make any sense tome; the man was a mass murderer, and we here on the left are not fans of mass murder.”
Not until you get into power, at least.
January 24, 2010, 4:25 pmDr. Weevil says:
I doubt that mattski is sincere in asking for references on Chomsky’s dishonesty, but here’s one from last week, with enough links to keep him busy for the rest of the day, if he cares to follow them and ponder what he finds: link. Of course, anyone who hasn’t heard that Chomsky’s honesty is (to put it politely) disputed either (a) hasn’t been around the web very long, and should maybe read more and write less, or (b) has taken care to avoid any opinions on the web that might make him reconsider his own opinions.
January 24, 2010, 4:37 pmChris Travers says:
I would have thought the evidence was clear on that one, that while Reagan was a great communicator, he suffered from Alzheimers….. I would look at his cabinet to assess whether they were dumb or evil, though.
The problem is that everyone THOUGHT that it was a GOOD thing to support death squad governments in Latin America, radical terrorists in the Middle East, etc. because somehow this would make the world safe from Communism and so as long as our mass murderers were in charge instead of their mass murderers…….
Like the “Che” worshippers, nobody bothered to stop and think about it.
January 24, 2010, 4:40 pmuberVU - social comments says:
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by VolokhC: Is the Cult of Che Guevara on its Way Out?: Che Guevara is one of the few communist leaders who still has a broad … http://bit.ly/6U3VzM...
January 24, 2010, 4:44 pm1040 says:
well said, chris. i agree with you.
except for this part: he suffered from Alzheimers.
we suffered from his alzheimer’s. and i admit that my original wording was poor, one can indeed be both stupid and evil, just in different aspects.
January 24, 2010, 4:46 pm1040 says:
wherefore art thou, mark? my questions about grading on a curve or about relative crimes applying only in the case of your idols go unanswered despite my myriad pleas. do you not love me?
in any case, for those keeping score at home:
January 24, 2010, 4:48 pmche was a thug who did as much damage as his power allowed. reagan was a thug who did as much damage as his power allowed. they are both admired today, sadly. the admirers of one wear t-shirts. the admnirers of the have far, far more power.
Hugh says:
If I follow your argument, the US is just as bad as the communists. I don’t subscribe to your form of moral relativism. If the US were just as bad as the communists in Cuba, Russia, and China, there would be tens of millions of people killed directly by US forces in this country and in the countries we inluence.
Maybe you want to indict the US because you want to justify your own desire to use this kind of violence to further your own ends.
January 24, 2010, 4:50 pm1040 says:
your sense of humor, dear sir, is quite droll, i must admit. although i do pause in my laughter and wonder if i misunderstand you, and this statement is actually your defense of islamofascism…
January 24, 2010, 4:54 pmCato The Elder says:
Leftists have done this to me many times, especially in debates on the Internet, where they can’t see my face. In fact I’m positive I’ve seen the word “nigger” used more often on Left-leaning sites than on Right-leaning ones in my very diverse forays on the Internet. You might call it a form of method-acting, they have this standard caricature of a Republican in mind and with others present everyone can get lost in the righteousness of denouncing him.
January 24, 2010, 4:59 pmArkady says:
I know it’s very late in the thread, but 1) “getting your panties in a bunch” as a vulgar slur? Hmmmm. Anybody else think that expression is a “vulgar slur” and not just a, perhaps by now hackneyed, way of saying someone is overexcited? Anyway, 2) I wasn’t defending Che at all, merely registering my disbelief in the puissance of the so-called cult of Che among college students and the “hip”. Hell, some of the hippie leftist Maoist firebrands I knew in college ended up as lawyers or bankers, and I’ll bet not a few of them voted for Reagan.
January 24, 2010, 5:00 pm1040 says:
Cato, I agree. I too am positive that I’ve aborted more fetuses of right-leaning women than left-leaning women. We all have our diverse experiences.
January 24, 2010, 5:05 pmjuris imprudent says:
The admiration of Che exists because he was an idealist.
It isn’t that surprising that youngsters foolishly attach themselves to an icon, even one of dubious merit. What is truly sad is the lengths older and presumably wiser people go in order to defend the indefensible.
January 24, 2010, 5:08 pmPaul Horwitz says:
I can’t read 178 comments to see whether someone has made this point. But, um, for better or worse, isn’t it just the case that some people like the T-shirts?
January 24, 2010, 5:08 pmDr. Weevil says:
Arkady can’t understand why telling a man he has his panties in a bunch is a vulgar slur? Implying that a man wears panties rather than jockeys or boxers isn’t questioning his masculinity?
January 24, 2010, 5:16 pmgeokstr says:
BS. Agent Orange’s main ingredient was just dioxin, one of the left’s fave bogeymen, which has never been proven to do anything but give people who inhaled massive doses of the damn stuff a temporary skin rash.
Ending the Agent Orange Myth
Congress and the Veterans Admin caved to a massive wave of publicity brought to you by the same environmental extremists that love Global WhateverThey’reCallingItToday.
Dioxin was the same “noxious” chemical that paid for the Brockovich faux chest with a few hundred million dollars left over, when it was blamed for every reason anyone in Hinkley CA ever felt bad, from halitosis to cancer, to dandruff, to headaches, to general torpor. Of course, the fact that this was impossible for any chemical to do was ignored by the press, who blew this up into a fake crisis, and the utility settled to get out from under the crush of bad publicity.
Where is the reputable study showing these supposed million birth defects and deaths and disabilities? Or is this just a made up number, like the three million homeless or the million plus civilian casualties in Iraq or for that matter, the Himalayan glaciers disappearance in the next 25 years.
Will the left ever take credit for the tens of millions of dark-skinned casualties to malaria for the phony indictment of DDT? Or for the billions of dollars in losses for the Streeping of Alar? Or the obesity caused by the lack of saccharine due to more flawed phony studies?
I am getting sick of these fake environmental disasters pushed by leftist environmentalists, the multi-millionaire trial lawyers, and their Lewinskys in the press.
January 24, 2010, 5:17 pmMark Buehner says:
I think clearly you have to judge intended and unintended consequences quite differently (when people you support commit atrocities after the fact compared to committing them personally). I think clearly you judge people by how much damage the did with the ‘opportunities’ they had- if Che was in charge of the US a LOT more people would be dead. I think you grade on what your actions PREVENT as well. As popular as it is to pretend the Soviets werent spreading violence everywhere they could, the truth is that letting them run rampant across the globe would have cost millions of lives as well.
January 24, 2010, 5:18 pmArkady says:
Seriously, dude, really?
January 24, 2010, 5:21 pmusual suspect says:
My argument goes like that:
If you take a moral stand against the opposite side, because they did some bad things, you also have to take the same stand against people on your own side who commited similar crimes. Otherwise it’s just pure hypocrisy. So if you are saying the communists are bad, because they killed innocent people, you also should say that US politicians are bad because they were involved in the same “activities”. Of course not all US politicians were involed in killings, but the same can be said about the communists.
So you think that killing Vietnamise was perfectly allright, because the number of killed Vietnamise was not as high as some arbitrary number (tens of millions)?
No, sorry. I don’t kill people and don’t order other people to kill. Also I don’t use or advocate violence. So my ends do not depend on historical discussion of who did what
January 24, 2010, 5:23 pmMark Field says:
Seems pretty obvious to me. The point was made earlier, but I can’t blame you for not having read the whole thread to find it; you’re a better person for not having done so.
January 24, 2010, 5:26 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Who else was on the ballot with Ho? Since nobody was, the votes clearly were intrinsically illegitimate. A vote with a choice of one is not a vote Being vietnamese however you have been well indoctrinated to believe differently
January 24, 2010, 5:29 pmCato The Elder says:
I agree with Mark Field and Prof. Kerr. I’m tired of the feigned outrage on both sides on certain pet issues. We all have our myopias, but the difference between Che and Pinochet worshipers and say those who say they worry about Fundamentalist Evangelicals or Islamic terrorists is that the latter actually have projectible power. You’re always going to able to find some nut somewhere. I’m more interested in fighting those with malignant ideologies and plausible means of achieving their goals. I’ve never really read a serious liberal academic who finds the gauche methods of Che and Stalin appealing; they will all readily admit under examination that those characters failed in the cause of social justice. That’s not the problem — the problem is that every historical lesson we’re supposed to have learned from Communist governments is always overly “contextualized” in terms of idiosyncratic cultural and social variables and the broad generalizations about the efficacy of state power which should be drawn are not. (I.e., long-lasting ethnic and social divisions in Mexico derailed Zapata’s land reform, if only there’d been a kinder Stalin) Thus there’s always room for new variations on the same failed idea.
January 24, 2010, 5:30 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Would someone wearing a T-shirt that said “Lynch the black folk” (using a single-word replacement for black folk, of course) be justified because some people, for better or worse, just like to wear it? I could posit other, Godwin-invoking comparisons as well.
You wear a message, you identify with that message and implictly support it. That tens of thousands of mush-headed college students don’t understand what they are supporting simply reflects the poor state of education in the world: The leftists seem to be winning.
January 24, 2010, 5:33 pmChrisTS says:
I’ve said much the same thing in past [demented] threads on Che. Look, that image is very attractive. Combine that with the basic meme of a young man who saw terrible injustice and fought on behalf of the underclass… well, that is probably enough to make any young person’s heart go pitter patter.
No one is going to make a romantic hero out of Himmler, precisely because even the minimal meme is ugly: guy directs the murder of millions of people because of their ethnicity. And, there are no good pics of him:he was physically unattractive, as well as morally reugnant from the get-go.
January 24, 2010, 5:34 pmmattski says:
Look, Dr. Weevil, it’s bush-league for you to question my sincerity. What have I said to justify that remark?
Otoh, you are simply throwing sh*t at the wall and hoping something will stick. You haven’t shown any factual errors in ‘Manufacturing Consent.’ You have, instead, gone ad hominem.
I am well aware that Chomsky is a partisan. I have already stated that I do not accept all of his analysis. I’ll go further and state that it’s my belief that Chomsky has gotten worse in his old age.
But I’m not defending anything Chomsky has said recently. I’m challenging you to make a dent in the facts presented in ‘Manufacturing Consent’ and so far you have failed miserably.
January 24, 2010, 5:34 pmArthurKirkland says:
Fair point. What do you make of the masculinity of someone who tries to spare himself by inducing his secretary to smuggle government documents out of a government building in her panties?
January 24, 2010, 5:38 pmusual suspect says:
Is there any health organization which says that dioxins are not cancirogenic? FDA clearly doesn’t think that dioxins are harmless
http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/ChemicalContaminants/DioxinsPCBs/ucm077432.htm
DDT is useful for fighting malaria, so it saved people’s lives. Agent Orange wasn’t useful for humans at all
January 24, 2010, 5:38 pmChrisTS says:
It never occurred to me that ‘panties in a twist’ (or whatever) was a gender slur.* I just thought it was vulgar insofar as it referenced underwear.
* And, not all of us here are male.
January 24, 2010, 5:40 pmmattski says:
Oh. My. God.
January 24, 2010, 5:43 pmArthurKirkland says:
Defending the indefensible is bad . . . but what about hiring the indefensible? Repeatedly? Shamelessly?
What level of age, experience and wisdom is required to refrain from turning the United States government into a halfway house for war criminals?
January 24, 2010, 5:49 pmDr. Weevil says:
ArthurKirkland:
What do you make of someone who repeatedly insists that Fawn Hall smuggled documents “in her panties” when they were actually in her boots? Sounds a bit of a dirty old man to me.
mattski:
January 24, 2010, 5:51 pmI’m not going to go back and read Manufacturing Consent again – it was tedious enough the first time. I have provided you with a first step towards answering the question of Chomsky’s trustworthiness, a blog-post with numerous useful links. You can use it or not, but don’t pretend you actually want to know the truth if you can’t be bothered to investigate for yourself. I’m tired of people demanding I prove again things that are already well-known to people who have been paying attention. And take a look at Lewy’s America in Vietnam some time to see what actual scholarship looks like.
ArthurKirkland says:
That’s the defense of Oliver North’s masculinity and character? That Ms. Hall later disclaimed the underwear story and substituted footwear in the newer version?
January 24, 2010, 5:55 pmCato The Elder says:
Why are you arguing with Arthur Kirkland? He is just a slightly more elevated troll, I can’t believe you don’t see that Dr. Weevil. I quickly scroll by his non-substantive, anti-American, comment-laden posts.
January 24, 2010, 5:56 pmChrisTS says:
I should have picked up the cue from Mark Field and not continued reading.
I’m just astonished by this thread. I think IS’s concern about Che t-shirts and posters is excessive, at best, but I cannot see how we got from that to this…cesspool of screed, insult, and irrelevance.
Bath time.
January 24, 2010, 5:58 pmMark Buehner says:
Intent, ladies and gentlemen, intent. Calling Agent Orange a chemical weapons implies, hell, assumes it was used to cause cancers decades later. Which is an odd argument. Yes, people are responsible for the consequences of their actions even unintended, but that is NOT equivalent to intentionally poisoning people. Had that been the intention we would have spread agent orange over Hanoi. Or just nuked them and be done with it. We didn’t.
January 24, 2010, 5:59 pmDr. Weevil says:
ArthurKirkland:
January 24, 2010, 6:04 pmI’m not defending North’s masculinity and character, I’m impugning yours. I don’t give a damn about North, and hadn’t given him a thought for months, until you dragged him in to try to divert the discussion.
Mark Buehner says:
And before exploding over dioxin- I’d advise people to look into the Seveso explosion in Italy which dosed a population with many times the levels of dioxin seen anywhere else. No links to cancer were found, although other diseases were.
But its not like this kind of thing hasnt been tremendously over blown and overplayed before until the actual facts come in- Chernobyl, depleted uranium, DDT, etc.
January 24, 2010, 6:05 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Actually, it was in her boots. Clinton’s butt boy stole documents from the National Archives in his underpants.
January 24, 2010, 6:08 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Global warming/Climate Change, Environment, TARP, etc
January 24, 2010, 6:09 pmArthurKirkland says:
Anti-American?
I not only object to that comment, Cato, but I also
(1) find it particularly daft in the context of my disparagement of North, Abrams, Hall and similar traitors who acted against the interests of the United States, lied and stole to cover their crimes against the nation, then hid behind pardoner’s skirts
and
(2) challenge you to denounce the treachery of North, Abrams, Poindexter, Negroponte, Hall and their supporters, else you reveal yourself to be anti-American when convenient to your ideology.
January 24, 2010, 6:22 pmLN says:
Sun Tzu’s Nephew wrote:
Wow you really are a stupid POS. There were never any nationwide elections. The Americans did not want any nationwide elections. Ngo Dinh Diem, who became President of South Vietnam by winning 130% of the vote in Saigon, did not want any nationwide elections.
In which country were you
January 24, 2010, 6:22 pmeducatedindoctrinated? I’m sure it was a very evil one for you to be so absolutely ignorant of history.1040 says:
Anti-American is the “right leaning” people’s panties-in-a-bunch.
January 24, 2010, 6:23 pm1040 says:
let me just point out on behalf of cato, that on my diverse travels on the internet, he encounters such sentiments about vietnamese people much more often on left-leaning sites than right-leaning sites.
January 24, 2010, 6:44 pmmattski says:
Like I say, you’re throwing stuff at the wall hoping something will stick. It’s you who made an unsupported accusation, that the facts presented in ‘Manufacturing Consent’ are unreliable.
I say put up or shut up.
Meanwhile, you haven’t challenged my claim that the US subverted democratic elections called for in the Geneva agreements and chose war instead. And the war we chose took the lives of 3-4 million.
For what?
January 24, 2010, 6:45 pmGrover Gardner says:
Encounter away:
http://tinyurl.com/y3agx6
http://tinyurl.com/ybgauef
http://tinyurl.com/yd27aez
http://tinyurl.com/yxhgk2
http://tinyurl.com/yhrma8c
That’s just a sampling.
January 24, 2010, 6:48 pm1040 says:
kennedy and lbj meant well. it ended evil. and nixon and kissinger prevented it from ending in 68 so they could win the election, so we had some more years of good ol rootin-tootin fightin.
those are three good reasons. each one better than the previous one.
January 24, 2010, 6:50 pmA. Zarkov says:
This thread has effectively self destructed. We should be discussing what supports the “cult of Che” given the true nature of his character and behavior. Instead we get a warmed-over argument about Vietnam War. Why not go to some history blog where the people actually know something about the war instead of recycling old cliches?
For some reason Che’s personal history of sadism, racism, terrorism, and hatred of modernity gets overlooked by most people. Why is that? Why do so many young people harbor such delusion about this monster? Shall we blame parents? The schools? Surely movies like the recent $58 million production Che contributes to the cult. This mixed drama and hagiography received many awards, and a large number of positive reviews. Is it any wonder our children buy the tee shirts?
January 24, 2010, 7:13 pmBrian G. says:
At least those people didn’t have to suffer under 8 years of the Bush/Cheney regime where Constitutional rights were an option, and tax cuts for the rich were the norm.
January 24, 2010, 7:24 pm1040 says:
hey, myths get constructed about some monsters, ours or theirs. that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
zarkov, you did get hollywood and the public schools, but forgot the liberal media. may i suggest using a checklist to avoid omissions in the future?
January 24, 2010, 7:25 pmSun Tzu's Nephew says:
Guvara’s myths were written by him, himself….
January 24, 2010, 7:33 pmorca says:
Part of the problem may be America hasn’t produced many heroes over the past 50 years.
“Heroes” is a term we now use almost exclusively to describe what used to be called “victims.”
January 24, 2010, 7:34 pm24AheadDotCom says:
I will personally spend 100 hours over the next year working to eliminate the Cult of Che, just as long as we can send the Cult of Ayn Rand with him. Deal?
January 24, 2010, 7:49 pmAvid reader, reluctant poster says:
One of my sadder moments came when a colleague turned up at a picnic with a Che shirt on. But she’s all for human rights, nonetheless, and is captivating students with the message.
What’s that Emerson line about a “foolish consistency”?
January 24, 2010, 8:04 pm1040 says:
Well done, Grover! But there is one fatal problem with your links. You forget that cheap tee shirts and defunct ringtone
January 24, 2010, 8:06 pmspeddled on a tacky site are far more important an issue than the urge of those who have the ear of the nation’s powerful to install murderous dictators and to idolize them even when their deeds are known to the world to be inexcusable and heinous.rpt says:
Isn’t Pinochet’s Chile regularly described as an economic miracle made possible by adherence to the principles of Chicago School economics? Didn’t Friedman advise theregime?
January 24, 2010, 8:10 pmArthurKirkland says:
We had Pat Tillman. Until our government squandered his devotion to duty and his life on a fool’s errand, then spat on his memory by lying about it in the service of discredited ideology.
Martin Luther King Jr. qualifies.
Point made.
January 24, 2010, 8:19 pmA. Zarkov says:
I never said my list was exhaustive. I don’t really blame the news media as much as Hollywood and the schools. For the most part Che is very old news, so I wouldn’t expect much coverage. On the other hand, the schools should include a history of the Cuban Revolution and the important characters who played a part. Young girls might not be so anxious to buy Che bathing suits if they knew more about him.
January 24, 2010, 8:46 pmA. Zarkov says:
“Part of the problem may be America hasn’t produced many heroes over the past 50 years.”
January 24, 2010, 8:52 pmHow about Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger? He’s a hero to almost everyone. If you mean war heros, we have a problem because the wars have been contentious.
Dave N. says:
Nixon became President in 1969. I am wondering what kind of time machine he used to prevent the war from ending in 1968.
January 24, 2010, 8:57 pmRicardo says:
The crimes of Pinochet are so well-documented and so well-known that any true defense would come from the lunatic fringe. John Derbyshire comes close but still feels obligated to admit Pinochet’s “faults” [which aside from murder and torture also include looting money from the treasury for his personal benefit]:
As for Friedman, I’ll defend him on this one. If economists were to only offer advice to developing countries that are democratic and have relatively good human rights records, they would be left with a rather small list. India, Philippines, South Africa and …?
January 24, 2010, 9:08 pmMaotszedun says:
I think Che, for many people (including myself) is associated with a revolution against government supported monopolism. I think while U.S. is progressing to corporate dictatorship more an more people will be wearing Che Gevara t-shirts.
January 24, 2010, 9:36 pmusual suspect says:
A. Zarkov
He is not in the same category. What he did was to show extremely high level of professionalism in a difficult situation. He saved his ass and his passengers’ asses. And that was good. About the same can be said about highly skilled surgeons, who save people in very difficult situations. That’s just excellent performance on the job
January 24, 2010, 9:58 pmIn the case of Che, he left the post of a high-ranking official, which provided very comfortable lifestyle, in order to risk his life as a guerilla fighter (with extremely dangerous and uncomfortable lifestyle) against much larger enemy forces. The sacrifice of Che was clearly higher than those of the professionals.
That all doesn’t mean that Che was a saint or that he didn’t do bad things, but it shows extremely high level of dedication to one’s ideals and willingness to reject material comfort and risk his life to fight for his cause
usual suspect says:
Imagine a situation: A powerful US senator relinquishes his post to directly lead soldiers to battle in a different part of the world, with no air support and against more powerful enemy. That’s just impossible to imagine. US politicians would shit their pants just thinking about it
January 24, 2010, 10:08 pmJames N. Gibson says:
Any different then Clinton Aide Sandy Berger removing classified documents from the National Archives stuffed in his pants?
January 24, 2010, 10:17 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Agent Orange is a mixture of the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Dioxin is only present as a contaminant.
January 24, 2010, 10:28 pmrpt says:
Indeed. Along with the rest of the crew. It’s competence.
January 24, 2010, 10:35 pmrpt says:
Yes. Berger was stupid and venal but caused no harm and paid for his misdeeds. No defense for him. North caused much harm, paid no price, and rode his crime to celebrity.
January 24, 2010, 10:38 pmorca says:
Did Sandy Berger sell U.S. anti-tank missiles to Hezbollah, too?
January 24, 2010, 10:38 pmRicardo says:
As Aristotle pointed out, for someone to be considered virtuous he must possess all the virtues, not merely some of them. What you said of Che could just as easily be said of, say, Mohammed Atta or Osama bin Laden. Being brave or sacrificing oneself for a set of ideals means literally nothing if those ideals are corrupt or wicked.
January 24, 2010, 10:40 pmArthurKirkland says:
No excuse for Berger of which I am aware.
The North episode was far worse, however, because the underlying conduct was an immoral, counterproductive offense against the United States of America.
January 24, 2010, 10:41 pmJohn Moore says:
I would suggest LN, who claims to be Vietnamese, study the real history of the war, instead of some version handed to him by leftist college profs. I’m a Vietnam Vet but hardly claim that gives me deep knowledge – but study of the subject provides enlightenment.
The Vietnam war was complex, but one thing is simple: Ho Chi Minh was a brutal totalitarian in the normal communist mode (in fact, he was a charter member of the French Communist party, and spent decades in training in European communism). Among his other noble deeds, he turned over fellow revolutionaries to the French, who eliminated them, thus removing Ho’s personal competition. His “agricultural reforms” killed a huge number of people: commissars had quotas to find that 5% or more of the farmers were land-owners, all of whom were executed. This was a simple way to consolidate power while forcing communization on a farming culture that had zero interest in it. Oh, and all this was before he invaded South Vietnam.
What few know is that the Geneva accords provided for a population self-sorting process: freedom to move to the North or the South. Although the North tried to prevent it, many of its citizens fled to the south to get away from the brutal and bleak communist regime. Hence, by the time of US involvement, South Vietnam was already strongly against the North. Also, the large number of religious in the South opposed atheistic Communism. South Vietnam had a large Catholic population, and many Bhuddists.
The US didn’t enter Vietnam for any simple humanitarian reasons, and those on the left who throw out that straw man should simply stop. We did it as part of the Kennan containment doctrine, although Kennedy hoped to bring about a Democracy (sort of a Bushian approach).
However, our guys (especially Diem, before Kennedy screwed up and had him thrown out resulting in his death), were supported by the populace, even with their corruption and autocratic ways. An individual in South Vietnam had vastly more freedom, economic and political, than one in the North, and they knew it.
Furthermore, in spite of all the calumny heaped upon US troops for our conduct of the war, in fact we had all sorts of restrictions designed to minimize civilian deaths and suffering. The US could have won the war at any time by bombing the dike system of North Vietnam, but avoided this for humanitarian reasons. US troops in the South rarely engaged in atrocities, and most stereotypes are slanderous. The US never carpet bombed population centers, and villages were not bombed with their inhabitants present (the famous photograph of the burned girl is a result of a friendly fire accident by the Vietnamese air force)
The VC was loudly touted by the American left as an indigenous revolutionary movement, but it was created and always controlled by the North. After three idiotic offensives in 1968 (especially Tet), it was effectively destroyed, and the US and SVN were fighting essentially only the Northern invaders (NVA).
BTW, part of the North’s strategy in the disastrous (militarily for them, politically for us) 1968 Tet offensive was to have the people of the “liberated” areas rise up and join them. That idea failed miserably, because nobody wanted to have anything to do with the widely hated Communists. They succeeded in capturing only one city, Hue, and immediately executed 6000 people whose names were on previously prepared lists.
The US prosecution of the war was incompetent until Abrams took over in 1968, and you will find almost all of the histories documenting US atrocities, failures and problems to be about the earlier part of the US involvement. After ’68, the US changed tactics from a non-working force-on-force approach to classic counter-insurgency (sound familiar? It just won the Iraq war). The result was a solid victory by 1972, with 95% of the territory “pacified” (controlled by the people of the South and safe from Communist attacks).
However, the political damage had been done, and a virulently anti-war congress was elected. When Nixon forced the defeat of the North and got the peace agreement in early 1973, the US got agreement from the South to the truce on the conditions that we provide military aid and, in the event of an attack from the North, air power. This was tested by the North, who launched a large scale conventional invasion, and were beaten back by the combination of South Vietnam (ARVN) forces on the ground and US and Vietnamese air power.
However, congress subsequently suspended almost all aid, and forbade the US from any combat air operations in the Vietnamese theater. A year or so after that, the South fell, again to a huge conventional attack from the north. The South ran out of military supplies and ammunition, while the north had been massively resupplied by the Soviet Union. It wasn’t VC guerrillas who took over the South, it was Russian tanks crewed by North Vietnamese.
Once the North took over, they executed many and sent many more to “re-education camps” where many subsequently died. Among those executed or sent to the camps were any remaining effective members of the VC – the North didn’t want any trained revolutionaries around. Some years back, I read an autobiography of a former high ranking VC who survived until the “liberation,” was sent to a camp where starving, emaciated prisoners were forced to clear mine-fields by hand, eventually got out, and became a boat person, making it to the US. It showed the completely typical event of a communist regime consolidating power: the elimination of their comrades who might make effective opposition.
The rest is well known – Cambodia (the Khmer Rouge was created by North Vietnam, after their occupation of eastern Cambodia was resisted by the Lon Nol government) and the boat people.
January 24, 2010, 10:43 pmmattski says:
So what is this all about, Laura?
And I thought it was “the liberals” who were disrespecting Vietnam Vets!
January 24, 2010, 10:46 pmmattski says:
John Moore… you get your history from Chuck Colson’s comic books?
January 24, 2010, 10:55 pmMark Buehner says:
That noise is the goalposts moving. See, Kennedy and LBJ meant well, and we know that because they were democrats. Meanwhile Nixon and Reagan mean ill, and we know that because they were republicans. Nothing circular about that logic.
January 24, 2010, 10:57 pmDr. Weevil says:
I’ve already recommended Lewy’s American in Vietnam here, for an even-handed and very scholarly treatment that shows by contrast what shoddy goods Chomsky has to offer. I thought I should add that ‘like new’ copies are available on Amazon Marketplace for $4.72 + shipping = $8.71. There’s really no excuse not to read it.
January 24, 2010, 11:04 pmjuris imprudent says:
AK sez I suspect the Fox website offers a shrine to Oliver North
Or please do provide us a link. If that should prove to not be possible, perhaps you could tone down the rhetoric, say 50 or 60 decibels?
January 24, 2010, 11:15 pmjukeboxgrad says:
You can buy your Pinochet poster here, and your Pinochet pin here, and your Pinochet t-shirt here.
Grover beat me to it with his excellent list. But here are a few more (a couple of these items overlap with his, but most don’t). There’s this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
I’m sure you’re right about the 80s, but it looks like for some people the 80s haven’t ended. The above citations are from 2009, 2006, 2006, 2002, 1998 and 2007.
It’s nice to know that you think the folks at National Review and Weekly Standard are “loons” and “a fringe.” I’m glad we could find this common ground.
January 24, 2010, 11:17 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Kind of like “ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.” Also kind of like “e pluribus unum.”
================
What a shame that Bush, McCain and lots of other Republicans would encourage trade and friendly relations with a “slave state.”
Numerous examples of the vulgarians at NR “telling a man he has his panties in a bunch” can be found via here.
================
It’s true that we are different. Just not different enough.
================
I would suggest that anyone who is considering taking you seriously should start out by becoming familiar with your track record of repeatedly making false claims and then refusing to take responsibility for doing so (example, example).
January 24, 2010, 11:17 pmjukeboxgrad says:
I think this hagiographic page qualifies as the online equivalent of a shrine.
January 24, 2010, 11:22 pmJoe Photon says:
I have the T-shirt with the slogan:
“Che Guevera was a murderer, and your T-shirt is not cool.”
January 24, 2010, 11:23 pmMark Field says:
Thanks jbg and Grover too.
January 24, 2010, 11:30 pmLN says:
What’s interesting, John Moore, is nothing in your long comment actually contradicts anything that I’ve said. But I guess it’s more important to pick a fight with me because I “claim to be Vietnamese” than with Dr. Weevil or Sun Tzu’s Nephew — it’s OK to be completely ignorant about the Vietnam War as long as you believe that America’s foreign policy actions are primarily motivated by a love of democracy and human rights. Some kinds of ignorance are better than actually knowing the facts.
If the willingness to murder other human beings eliminates one’s moral and political legitimacy, then there is no legitimacy for any party involved in Vietnam. No, American missteps in Vietnam did not make Communism desirable, does not make Communist atrocities acceptable. But your account of Vietnam makes also heavy use of euphemisms. So the really bad atrocities were over by 1968, and millions of tons of bombs were dropped with pinpoint accuracy and the utmost humanitarian concern… well, it just warms my heart.
As for the aftermath of the Vietnam War, America dropped millions of tons of bombs on Cambodia, and there is evidence that the Khmer Rouge used the destruction caused by air strikes as part of their propaganda. It is an interesting realpolitik that is willing to wage war to pursue certain ends but is then content with blaming leftist professors and anti-war protesters for the failure to actually achieve those ends.
Is the study of history just a matter of figuring out who was good and who was bad, and realizing that the good people had no choice but to kill in self-defense, while the bad people were inexplicably evil monsters gripped by terrible ideology? We are reduced to the “True Lies” explanation of American foreign policy: “Have you ever killed anybody?” “Yes, but they were all bad.”
January 24, 2010, 11:34 pmArthurKirkland says:
This was as easy as it is revealing and revolting:
Fox News website: Oliver North’s War Stories homepage.
Fox News website: Oliver North’s biography, with nary a word about funding and training butchers, lying to Congress, using his secretary to smuggle United States government documents, betraying his country, or his convicted-then-pardoned experience in criminal court. Quite the series of omissions for a “news” organization.
Fox News website: Oliver’s North’s
blatheringsblog, with no help for the reader who might wish to know that the Fox correspondent’s record includes an admission of lying to the United States Congress.In his most recent blog entry, Oliver North castigates President Obama for “throwing Uncle Sam under the bus.” From a traitor who disgraced his country and his uniform by acting against his country’s interests, lying about it, enlisting his secretary to help him cover up his misconduct, and generally betraying his nation, the lack of self-awareness is as striking as it is pathetic.
January 24, 2010, 11:50 pmjuris imprudent says:
I guess AK has his own definition of “shrine”, just as he has his own definitions of worship, good and evil.
And remember, if you read it on the internet, it must be true.
January 25, 2010, 12:00 ammethodact says:
January 25, 2010, 12:01 amDr. Weevil says:
I’m supposed to think something is not a vulgar slur because Jonah Goldberg is fond of saying it? If I had a Jonah Goldberg shrine, or T-shirt, or poster, that might be a compelling argument, but I don’t, so it’s not.
jbg’s links are more interesting than he seems to realize:
If you search for ‘Pinochet poster’ on Amazon, you get the message “House and Garden: See all 3 items”. One of the three is a typo: “Mrs. Gifford Pinochet” must be Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, wife of the first head of the Forest Service. The other two are jbg’s movie poster, in two different sizes. The movie is a docudrama that does not seem to be pro-Pinochet, at least to judge from IMDB and the Amazon reviewers.
If you search for ‘Che Guevara poster’ on Amazon, you get the message: “House and Garden: See all 322 items” on most of the results. The first hit is in Movies and TV, where it has a sales rank of #948. (Oddly, the Pinochet movie poster lists no sales rank. I’ve never seen that on an Amazon listing, and wonder whether that means they haven’t sold one yet.)
If you search for ‘Pinochet pin’, you find jbg’s link, which has a rank of 709,866 in Clothing. Whether that means they’ve sold one, or two, or perhaps three, I do not know, but it obviously isn’t selling like the Che posters.
Conclusion: probably most of us have seen someone wearing a Che poster, and I doubt that even a single one of us has seen anyone wearing a Pinochet poster or pin or T-shirt.
January 25, 2010, 12:05 amArthurKirkland says:
If you are going to be anything close to competitive, juris imprudent, you need to keep the gloves up. Protect the chin. Cover your face. Gloves up!
January 25, 2010, 12:06 amJohn Moore says:
No, they aren’t euphemisms. The military use of bombs does not constitute atrocities. There were atrocities, but they were not policy. I’m sorry that you cannot see the clear moral superiority of the US position in Vietnam. The US made mistakes, as happens in all wars. But the US did indeed take considerable care to minimize civilian casualties, unlike what we did in WW-II.
What I find very offensive is the condemnation of the US for its actions in Vietnam. We lost 58,000 soldiers fighting to stop communist imperialism, and had we succeeded, millions of people would be living in much greater freedom than they are today. Our failure to succeed was entirely a result of an extreme anti-war left takeover of our Congress, and their failure to live up to our responsibilities and promises we had made to the South Vietnamese people.
We were not bad. We had some bad people in our army (duh!), but our goals were positive and our methods, given the technology and the enemy, were as humane as possible.
For that trouble, which cost thousands of American lives, we continue to be condemned and treated as if we were no better than the evil monsters we confronted, there and elsewhere in the cold war.
So let me see if I under stand this correctly: you are implying that since a very evil party (Khmer Rouge), and ally of our enemy, was able to use our tactics as propaganda, that we were somehow wrong? Please explain.
No, it is reality. It is what happened. The blame is clear: leftist anti-war ideologues gained control of Congress, ceding SE Asia to the Communists.
What alternative did we have, anyway? Not get involved in the first place, ceding Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and possibly the Philippines to the tender mercies of the Ho Chi Minh’s and Pol Pot’s of the world? Is that what you think we should have done? If not, what’s your problem with US VN war policy?
That is a marvelously cynical way of looking at things. No, the study of history is to understand what happened, and ultimately to understand what that says about the endeavors of man and the nature of mankind. It does, however, reveal moral truths, including the fact that the simple stories told about Vietnam are incorrectly portray the US as wrong and evil.
However, I have not offered, and nobody else has offered your ridiculous “True Lies” straw man. It is offensive.
January 25, 2010, 12:06 amJohn Moore says:
AK, Oliver North is no traitor. Your characterization of him as such is either trolling, or lazy. He acted in what he believed was his nation’s best interest, in a very complicated situation (the multiple Boland amendments, for example). There is no evidence that he had any personal motives in his actions.
So what, exactly, would you define as his “treason?” Be specific.
January 25, 2010, 12:11 amjuris imprudent says:
AK, we do agree that North is a despicable person. I don’t think though that he rates near Pinochet, let alone Che. One might wonder at your motivation for harping on him in a discussion that wasn’t about him.
I remember when he ran for the Senate in Virginia. Same election year as Barry running in DC after his prison term. Ah, those were interesting times.
January 25, 2010, 12:13 amJohn Moore says:
Putting North n the same discussion as Che or Pinochet is absurd. I rather like North. Hmmmph.
January 25, 2010, 12:18 amArthurKirkland says:
I did not follow events closely during the Vietnam War (preoccupied with addition, subtraction, spelling, penmanship).
It would be easier to credit your account, John Moore, if you indicate that the United States’ position with respect to Iraq in recent years has been nothing like that which you describe — “moral superiority,” lack of blameworthiness, high-minded actions frustrated by anti-war factions, justifiable military action — concerning Vietnam.
Thank you.
January 25, 2010, 12:20 amorca says:
Oliver North sold anti-tank missiles to Hezbollah which they used to blow up Israeli tanks when they tried to liberate Lebanon.
January 25, 2010, 12:27 amArthurKirkland says:
Oliver North acted against the law and interests of the United States of America. He arranged arms shipments to foreign interests (one of which had held Americans as hostages, another of which consisted of terrorists) and participated in an arms-for-hostages scheme that violated United States policy. He concealed his actions and lied to Congress about his conduct. He enlisted others to steal and destroy government documents in an effort to hide the truth and save himself. The President of the United States apologized for North’s conduct, after firing him. He was convicted — of, among other things, accepting an illegal and personal payment — before receiving a politically motivated pardon.
It also has been alleged that Oliver North participated in drug trafficking to generate funds for illicit political and military operations. Given the remainder of his record, and information in government records, it is difficult to dismiss those allegations.
January 25, 2010, 12:35 amJohn Moore says:
AK, thanks for admitting you are not familiar with important history. It is not surprising, given your lack of historical knowledge, that your interpretations of the event in Iraq have been so short sighted and confused.
January 25, 2010, 12:37 amJohn Moore says:
Orca, Oliver North traded missiles to Iran which they used to fight Saddam’s tanks during the contemporaneous war. The money was then used to fund the contras, who were fighting a Soviet proxy state in the Americas.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon was three years BEFORE the event. Furthermore, they were sold via ISRAEL.
In the more recent invasion of Lebanon, Israeli tanks were engaged by Russian ATGM’s.
In any case, it is hardly treason.
January 25, 2010, 12:39 amRicardo says:
The first-hand accounts I have read of survivors of the Khmer Rouge all say that the residents of Phnom Penh were told to evacuate the city around the Khmer New Year because the Khmer Rouge had intelligence sources claiming that there was a secret American bombing campaign of the city scheduled for the holiday when people would not be expecting it.
The point is that even the relatively cosmopolitan residents of Phnom Penh had little trouble believing the U.S. would bomb the city back into the stone age on a national holiday. In reality, it was, of course, a falsehood. Not only did people leave the city in droves but many carried all their valuables with them and packed into their cars if they owned one — they were expecting to return. It made looting the middle class by the Khmer Rouge that much easier.
January 25, 2010, 12:40 amorca says:
At the same time Ronnie Raygun and America was officially backing Saddam in his invasion of Iran?
Sure sounds like treason to me.
And it’s interesting to hear that supplying weapons to Hezbollah is no big deal.
I guess when your policies created the Taliban, helping Hezbollah blow up Israelis is no big deal…
January 25, 2010, 12:44 amArthurKirkland says:
I was in elementary school during the Vietnam War, Mr. Moore, so I must rely on others’ accounts.
No longer on yours, however.
January 25, 2010, 12:51 amDave N. says:
The trolls have been out in full force today. Absolutely no knowledge of history — but hey, they sure have their talking points down pat.
January 25, 2010, 1:05 amjukeboxgrad says:
Shrine means “a holy or sacred place, which is dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, daemon or similar figure of awe and respect, at which they are venerated or worshipped.” Here’s another helpful definition: hyperbole means “exaggerated claims not meant to be taken literally.” Except there’s not much exaggeration, especially if you pay attention to the words “hero,” “awe,” “respect” and “venerated.” This shoe actually fits pretty well.
Yes, it would be more convenient if no one mentioned that Republicans have made some odd choices with regard to whom they choose to glorify.
=====================
You can think whatever you like, but if you get your panties in a bunch every time you see the phrase “panties in a bunch,” you’re going to spend a lot of time with your panties in a bunch. Because the phrase is in common usage, by Goldberg and by lots of other people.
Who cares whether or not the movie is “pro-Pinochet?” As far as I can tell, Amazon does not require you to watch the movie before purchasing the poster. The point is that there are apparently people interested in buying the poster, and the poster (despite the presence of the word “dictator” in small print) does not exactly portray him as an ogre or a villain. And this is relevant because dave n said “I have yet to see a Pinochet poster.”
So what? Who cares? Thanks for this classic example of moving the goal posts. dave n et al did not claim that ‘Pinochet merchandise sells poorly compared with Che merchandise.’ The implied claim was that Pinochet merchandise doesn’t exist. Trouble is, that claim is false. And the existence of the merchandise is not a surprise, since various prominent Republicans choose to praise him.
And maybe the Pinochet merchandise would sell better if he was nicer-looking (which is more-or-less what chris said here).
January 25, 2010, 1:21 amjukeboxgrad says:
“Troll” is a good word for someone who implies that Pinochet merchandise doesn’t exist and then refrains from taking responsibility for their error after it’s shown to be an error.
Are you prepared to show support for this unsupported claim? Because history tends to demonstrate that your unsupported claims are unsupportable.
=====================
When you leave behind a trail of false statements, claims about someone else’s alleged “lack of historical knowledge” are nothing more than an unintentional joke.
Which obviously made lots of sense, since we are also pals with Saddam (as orca mentioned). Reagan and Rummy assisted Saddam with lots of useful goodies, like cluster bombs, anthrax and bubonic plague. Too bad we couldn’t figure out which side we wanted to be on.
=====================
January 25, 2010, 1:21 amAs long as we’re talking about great Republican heros like Pinochet and North, it would be a shame to overlook G. Gordon Liddy, McCain’s friend who instructed his listeners on the best way to shoot government agents (link, link).
Bill Stewart in Silicon Valley says:
Good grief, you non-postmodern non-young people, the Che Guevara T-Shirt Image isn’t about a Cult of Che Guevara, any more than Shepard Fairey’s Obey iconography is about a real Cult of Andre The Giant – it’s about the image itself. It’s a 90s/00s hipster-ironic relative of Hello Kitty images, though more of Hello Kitty paraphrenalia sold at Hot Topic than at actual Sanrio stores. In the 1960s, yes, the original Che Guevara image and Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book were actual icons of actual Communists, or at least wannabee commies, and if you want to argue about whether The Motorcycle Diaries is celebrating an evil man, go ahead. But that’s never what the current Che t-shirts were about. They’re not Bob Marley or Jerry Garcia shirts, they’re primarily a graphics meme.
The interesting question will be when Fairey’s amazingly iconic Obama image will have stopped being about the actual Obama and hope stuff and just fade into the cultural stock-image patrimony.
January 25, 2010, 1:52 amMr L says:
jukeboxgrad: “Troll” is a good word for someone who implies that Pinochet merchandise doesn’t exist and then refrains from taking responsibility for their error after it’s shown to be an error.
It seems more trollish to equate the mere existence of Pinochet merchandise with Che’s footprint on political and pop culture.
Especially when the merchandise in question consists of a poster for a BBC docudrama, a button from a seller which appears to generate its inventory by randomly slapping proper nouns and quotes on clothing templates (they’ve got the Stalin ‘million deaths is a statistic’ line on a thong!), and a T-shirt which appears to be aimed more at terminally ironic leftists than right wingers (unless I’m mistaken and fascists are secret fans of Andy Barrie).
January 25, 2010, 2:36 amEvan Thomas says:
I pointed out to someone that his two “heroes,” Che and George Orwell would have hated each other. He didn’t get why.
January 25, 2010, 2:40 amjukeboxgrad says:
Let us know if you can find anyone who tried “to equate the mere existence of Pinochet merchandise with Che’s footprint on political and pop culture.”
I hope you will let us in on the secret and tell us how you can tell that this t-shirt is “aimed more at terminally ironic leftists than right wingers.” And speaking of secrets, I hope you’ll tell us who Andy Barrie is, and the secret connection between him and this t-shirt.
And please make sure to say nothing about the more important issue, which is the praise Pinochet has received from Republicans. And the amnesia regarding that praise.
January 25, 2010, 3:18 am~aardvark says:
That’s “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”–not the other way around.
A typical attempt to make facts fit a theory. The reality is, of course, that the “worship of Che” did not start in the late 90s. One could argue that there was never any worship at all. But whatever JNG means by “worship” started at least in the 1970s, if not the 60s. I’ve seen plenty of Che shirts in local music shops in the early 80s and they’ve been on the shelves for some time.
Nice try. What about Suharto, Marcos, Pinochet, the Shah? What about Portugese and Greek fascist regimes? For that matter, what about Somoza and Batista–the reasons for Castro’s (and Che’s) and Ortega’s existence? No? Nothing? (AK has a longer list, but this will do–and I disagree with some of his choices.) Then, there is my favorite–Franco. Sure, both sides of the Spanish Civil War committed atrocities, but Frankists and falangists were by far the more guilty ones and, on top of that, they remained in power for another 40 years–even today Spanish courts resist clearing the record and digging up the mass graves. Oh, and AFAIK no one on the Left admires the Khmer Rouge.
A line from a 1948 comedy set in post-war Germany, “I’ve kissed a Nazi before. Why not a Republican!” The more things change…
Actually, the invitation came from the French.
Ah, yes! Being Cuban-American, please tell us how many South American countries suffered at the hands of Socialism. Please share with us the number of South American countries that ever became Socialist. Perhaps you are including Chile under Allende?
Shockingly, Zarkov nailed it.
Mark Field gets it too. Somin clearly does not. Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd were all folk heroes in their time, as were many outlaws half a century earlier. I don’t see Somin–or anyone else–denouncing that. There are a couple of reasons why college students (and it is almost entirely college students) have Che posters, t-shirts and berets. First, there is contrarianism, as Mark pointed out. Second, there is some sort of anti-hero romanticism, just like in the folk status (in different time periods) or Bonnie&Clyde, etc., Jesse James, Butch Cassidy (real or fictional). All fought the system and, eventually, died at its hands (however justifiably), which makes for a certain romantic appeal. Third–and I would consider this to be the most controversial of the bunch–Che had a perverse sense of idealism that many college-age people share. The difference is that most of these people will outgrow it, as they will outgrow the Che fashion. On the other hand, it seems the admirers of Nixon, Reagan and McCarty tend to grow into it, rather than out of it.
Well, of course, Reagan did not literally create the Taliban. But it was the support of the Reagan cabinet (and Congress) that created the para-military regime that became the Taliban. Just as Noriega and Saddam Hussein were US puppets (during the Reagan years) before they decided to go it alone.
Interesting comparison. Hitler never killed anyone personally, so, are you suggesting that Che was worse than Hitler?
As for the second part, do you see a lot of Nazi flags and posters in dorm rooms and faculty offices? Does that mean that there are no neo-Nazis on campus?
And if he were the President of the United States, he would not have… what is the point of the counterfactual here, exactly?
January 25, 2010, 3:53 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Is the Cult of Che Guevara on its Way Out? -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Becky Chandler, JPCounihan, tim gier, BILL, Che Guevara and others. Che Guevara said: #che RT @JPCounihan2010RT @beckychr007: The sad and ignorant persistence of the Cult of Che Guevara http://bit.ly/6QSert [...]
January 25, 2010, 4:54 amA. Zarkov says:
As far as I know, Hitler did not enjoy killing people– up close and personal. He, like Stalin and Mao, killed as a bureaucrat kills, from a desk. On the other hand, we know from Che’s diary and from people who knew him, he did like to kill people himself. He got a thrill from pointing a gun at people and pulling the trigger. He thought of himself as a “killing machine.” I suppose in a sense this does make him worse from a psychological standpoint.
Some people seem to regard Che as somehow less evil than Hitler, Stalin and Mao because his overall body count was much smaller. But as far as I’m concerned his low body count only shows he lacked the means to kill on a large scale. Che’s on record as advocating a nuclear attack on the U.S. Castro told Khrushchev to launch his IRBMs from Cuba into the U.S. even though it would mean the destruction of both Cuba and the USSR. Khrushchev regarded Castro as a nut and proceeded to de-escalate the Cuban missile crisis.
Shockingly?
January 25, 2010, 5:40 amA. Zarkov says:
That only shows that Che was bored sitting behind a desk. We know from his diary and from witnesses that Che enjoyed the personal act of killing. That’s why he went into the field. To have remained bored at a desk would have been the real sacrifice. There is nothing heroic about people like Che.
January 25, 2010, 5:53 am1040 says:
whoops. somebody left their sarcasm detector at home today, it looks like. cuz what else can justify your interpretation of this comment, especially when it includes a remark like “it ended evil” :)
January 25, 2010, 6:42 am1040 says:
the reason you, er, wonder is that your knowledge is lacking. especially when i put a date in there for a precise reason. there is evidence that nixon, through john mitchell anna chenault, asked south vietnam to hold out till after the u.s. elections since he would offer them a better deal. see Steven Ambrose, Nixon: Triumph of a Politician, pp. 206-218, for example.
ah, the things i learn about “young girls” on this website…
and a more convincing defence of one’s position was never made…
January 25, 2010, 6:52 ammattski says:
John Moore, you should take that up with Colin Powell. And Robert McNamara… although he’s not with us anymore so that’s not as practical. (But do watch Erroll Morris’s ‘The Fog of War’ as it is an outstanding movie. You’ll learn a lot. If you want to.)
Another idea, re-read this thread and take some cues from your fellow commenters.
aardvark, that is a sharp observation. Well done.
January 25, 2010, 8:03 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Was it your understanding that I was listing mass murderers? Because I wasn’t. Can you read my comment and determine what I was doing?
January 25, 2010, 8:15 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I see nothing in your link that refutes what I said: dioxin is not the major ingredient in Agent Orange, but a contaminant.
My BIL, a Vietnam vet, has non-hodgkins lymphoma. I think it’s very likely that this is a result of his service: either exposure to Agent Orange or something like it, or a virus he picked up in the rainforest. That doesn’t change the fact that Agent Orange isn’t primarily dioxin. It certainly doesn’t mean that our government deliberately inflicted poisons on human beings. Agent Orange was used as a herbicide.
January 25, 2010, 8:20 ammattski says:
Laura, for goodness sake, do you have a PHD in nit-picking?
Agent Orange was brought up on this thread as an example of the atrocities our country inflicted on Vietnam. Are you consciously contributing noise to the discussion, or is it something you do without thinking?
January 25, 2010, 8:50 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Mattski, if you would respond to actual comments, rather than voices in your head, the noise level would diminish considerably.
January 25, 2010, 9:12 amOrson Buggeigh says:
I see the defenders of Che and communism in general are still going on about the murderous thugs supported by the US – without taking my suggestion to compare the death toll in Chile, the Philippines, etc with those of the communists. As I say, check the figures for deaths due to communist governments in The Black Book of Communism and compare to the figures for the right wing governments. There really is no comparison. The communists, including Che, killed many more than the nasty right wing dictatorships we propped up.
Speaking of history, please don’t use anything that Noam Chomsky writes outside his field of linguistics for anything but fire starter. Chomsky has legitimate competence as a linguistic scholar. His work in history is not quite as bad as that of Michael Bellesiles and Ward Churchill, but it’s really crude propaganda, not careful historical scholarship.
January 25, 2010, 9:43 amMCM says:
I laugh whenever I see these “left-wingers idolizing communist leader X” posts by Ilya. It’s like he’s trolling his own readership; the Fox News of blogging, I guess.
January 25, 2010, 9:59 am1040 says:
“we” GOOOOD. “they” BAAAAAD.
January 25, 2010, 10:04 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
1040, is that all the complexity of thought of which you are capable? Really?
January 25, 2010, 10:10 am1040 says:
Would it be more complex and nuanced if I wrote in 6 letter words and said “Intent matters. Our government meant well. Surely, bringing freedom is important? Leftists are anti-american.”?
January 25, 2010, 10:33 amArthurKirkland says:
This ground was covered earlier. We should provide some slack to Prof. Somin; his childhood experience may have deformed his thinking in some respects.
January 25, 2010, 10:39 amMark Field says:
Those damn crickets kept me up all night. You know — the ones whose chirping drowned out the clamor of all those conservatives eager to denounce Pinochet.
January 25, 2010, 10:46 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
No, it would be more complex and nuanced if you would stick to what I actually said and not reduce it to some kind of four-legs-good, two-legs-better mindless chant.
January 25, 2010, 11:09 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
To follow up, using a herbicide to clear out rainforest and then finding out that it is toxic to people is not ideal, not by any means. To characterize using that herbicide as an “atrocit[y] our country inflicted on Vietnam”, to quote Mattski (who accused me of being dramatic) is an inaccuracy. Unless you’re going to define “atrocity” as “something that had unexpected and unintended bad consequences” which will destroy the usefulness of that word to describe such acts as, for instance, the systematic starvation of Ukrainians by Stalin.
January 25, 2010, 11:18 am1040 says:
ahem. the us army knew at the latest by 1967, and maybe even before, that agent orange was mighty dangerous and caused birth defects and cancer. it still continued using it all through 1971. i think “we” GOOOOD, “they” BAAAD is a pretty accurate summary of a characterization of us behavior as “something that had unexpected and unintended bad consequences” .
January 25, 2010, 11:38 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Cite?
January 25, 2010, 11:50 amChris Travers says:
No. It’s because it was the result of an agreement reached with the US government and nobody wanted a confrontation over it.
It’s a variation of the difference between Pinochet and Che. Pinochet’s backing (and hence our role as accomplice in around 3000 deaths) in the Sept. 11 coup is vigorously defended by some because Pinochet was anti-Communist, so the people who support American foreign power defend our role in that. Che is popular with people who feel that the root of most of the evils in Latin America trace to our overthrow of Allende, Arbenz, etc.
Different sides of the same coin, but one supports mass murderers while the other supports mass murderers’ accomplices.
January 25, 2010, 11:55 amTQS says:
Can we correct the record here on this overused cliché? I know it’s in the quote, but still…
This quote is not supposed to be some abstract aphorism of timeless historical wisdom or mysticism, but is a direct, specific comment on the usurpations of power by the two Bonapartes, who each ruled France as dictator and emperor half a century apart.
Marx made the quote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852).
The tragedy was Napoleon I’s, 18th Brumaire VIII (9th November 1799), coup that ended the First French Republic and established the French Consulate and later Empire.
The farce was Louis-Napoleon III’s, 2nd December 1851, coup that ended the Second French Republic and would later establish the Second French Empire. In 1852, this was the subject of Marx’s pamphlet.
The continued use of the clichéd phrase as historical wisdom makes the mistake of giving Marx credit as a wise old master of historical tenancies. All he did was make a sardonic wise crack at the expense of Louis-Napoleon III that the nephew did not measure up to Napoleon I the uncle. It’s an insult of the same nature as Lylod Benston comment to Dan Qualye that he was “no Jack Kennedy”.
The inventor of the travesty to historiography that is ‘materialist conception of history’, does not deserve the acclimation of’”wise historian’.
He is no master, and no wise man or woman is his grasshopper.
January 25, 2010, 12:19 pmDave N. says:
1040,
It is your contention that Nixon, who was a private citizen running for President, had more control over American Vietnman policy than the President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson? Are you actually serious with this claim? Was Nixon also behind the Tet Offensive? You are pathetic.
JBG,
I wrote “I have yet to see a Pinochet poster or pin. So, where, exactly is this Pinochet worship you speak of?” You provided proof that such things exist. It does not disprove I have never seen them — and as other posters have noted, their existence is pretty obscure. But thank you for playing, “I can find links to prove my talking points.”
By the way, I didn’t call anyone in particular a troll. But it is amazing how much certain people squealed when I did.
January 25, 2010, 12:24 pmTQS says:
So when does the Nazi chic start becoming fashionable?
When do the post-modernists start embracing the other “luminaries” in the class of Che, like Reinhard Heydrich?. Both brutal, young, charismatic tyrants who murdered thousands for evil totalitarianism before dying early at the hands of the enemy as “revered” martyrs.
What your talking about is not post-modern posturing by 21st century pousers, but radical chic, a concept first observed, and term coined, by Tom Wolfe all the way back in 1970.
Just because they’re dopey fashionistas doesn’t make them less contemptible for sporting an evil tyrant and mass murderer on their get up.
January 25, 2010, 12:42 pmnotaclue says:
Knowing human nature, I predict that the cult of Che will die out, not because people see through his false image, but because he becomes old-fashioned. One day Che-worship will become “so twenty-teens” that no right-thinking hipster will participate.
January 25, 2010, 12:44 pmTQS says:
Ah, one could indict Sir Walter Raleigh as a traitor to the English people with that kind of thinking.
Of course in 1618, they did behead him. In more civilised times, in a more civilised nation, they give national heroes who commit crimes for their countries cause, Presidential pardons.
January 25, 2010, 1:13 pmOlie North always stood by Uncle Sam. As he stood by the Lebanese hostages whom he freed through the Iranian deals, misguided and a moral hazard as it was. And as he did by all the people of the Americas in the great humanist struggle against communist totalitarianism.
Mark Field says:
Just think — that’s the last time you’ll ever have to write that.
I have no idea what the answer is, but I’d make a small wager that there are more neo-Nazis in the world than there are people wearing Che T-shirts.
January 25, 2010, 1:14 pmjukeboxgrad says:
I didn’t claim that I did “disprove” that you have never seen them. But the implication of your remark, especially in context with the other similar remarks, was that such items just don’t exist.
Then it must have been another dave n who said this:
====================
Here:
====================
notaclue:
What about the cult of Pinochet? Praise for him still persists. Do you see any sign of that abating?
January 25, 2010, 1:15 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
This is your smoking gun?
January 25, 2010, 1:22 pm1040 says:
another stellar defense of your position! good job! keep the winners comin’! i am also glad to confirm that you weren’t actually looking for evidence, given your summary rejection of my providing you an actual book with relevant pages.
thanks for the post, jbg. i was looking for that paragraph too. i don’t remember if this is the same as the tschirley report that rusk is said to have changed before releasing. and of course, not to mention that dow and monsanto, who supplied the chemicals, knew of the danger and had to settle with us veterans.
January 25, 2010, 1:27 pmTQS says:
You mean to say all people whom support the common cause of humanity against communist totalitarianism support Pinochet. He brought peace and prosperity to Chile, and it remains far more prosperous to this day thanks to him. Around 5000 people were killed. But such is civil war, the route out of anarchy, and the ugliness of how Latin American politics has always been waged. We in the Anglo-sphere rightly look down upon it, but extra-judicial murder is the inevitable result of the politics of extreme division, brinkmanship and national collapse, so often waged in the region.
I see that you subscribe to the “magic fairy” theory of the CIA, that they just wave a magic wand and all these bad things happen.
Politics is waged by all society with all their interests and motivations in play. No one wields a magic wand.
Many, if not most, Chileans vehemently rejected Allende and his communism. When democratic methods failed them they turned to the military to effect their politics. It is the Chilean people who determine their own destiny, whether in a ballot box, or with the barrel of a gun. It is they who sustain or reject government through election, revolution or rebellion.
Allende won the first, but lost the second two. And Fidel’s gold AK-47 could not help him against the entire army of the Chilean people. Pinochet would eventually lose it too, but not before leaving his country in much better shape than he inherited it. Allende can not share that accolade.
January 25, 2010, 1:43 pmjukeboxgrad says:
This is your idea of an argument? What’s your point? That the “gooks” should have been grateful for the malformations and stillbirths we were inflicting?
===============
Hey, russ, anything you want to say to tqs? I recall it was you who said this:
January 25, 2010, 1:55 pmTQS says:
ORLY?
I’d wager a rather large amount that you’d be wrong in absolute terms, and the GDP of a small African nation that amongst polite company, or a general survey of admiration between Che and any random Nazi, Che would come out a clear winner.
Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols used to wear a Nazi Swastika t-shirt. There some good photos of him in it with iconic facial expressions. Did it become a beloved fashion icon? Is it ironically worn by 21st century post-modernists? Or do even they find the association too revolting in a way they don’t find Che?
January 25, 2010, 2:05 pmliberty or death says:
Can I get a thread summary plz?
January 25, 2010, 2:07 pmTQS says:
What is the GDP per capita of Chile today compared to its neighbours?
Is it today in a state of civil war as it was under Allende?
Is it today a communist dictatorship like Cuba or Venzuela?
Or is it today a functioning and relativity prosperous democracy?
In the real world every nation is not a liberal democracy governed by the rule of law.
In the real world you have to accept the lesser evil, and understand the opportunity cost of alternatives, such as communist totalitarianism of a Castro or Chavez. Communism is a greater evil than authoritarian government.
As former US secretary to the UN Jeanne Kirkpatrick articulated in her famous doctrine, authoritarian governments are far better than communist totalitarian governments. Authoritarian governments can prevent totalitarianism whilst preserving economic liberty that allows a society to evolve into democracy and prosperity.
Chile today is good evidence of that. South Korea under Syngman Rhee is another good example. By your standards of condemning the authoritarian man of the hour, Pinochet, you would stand in the same shoes as those who would condemn all Koreans to under the communist tyranny experienced to this day by North Koreans, or more locally, to those condemned to this day to the totalitarianism of Cuba or as emerging in Venezuela.
January 25, 2010, 2:19 pmStrict says:
John Moore: “Orca, Oliver North traded missiles to Iran which they used to fight Saddam’s tanks during the contemporaneous war. ”
But John, you do know that Iran was involved in direct conflicts with US military forces during the 1980-1988 war? A part of that first Gulf War is called the Tanker War. One of our major roles was called Operation Earnest Will. Iran was our military enemy.
Selling weapons (via middleman/broker Israel) to our military enemy in the midst of a conflict…I don’t know about legal definitions, but it sounds like treason to me.
January 25, 2010, 2:38 pm1040 says:
to paraphrase another great and honorable leader, “it’s not illegal if you do it on behalf of the prez.”
January 25, 2010, 3:14 pmjukeboxgrad says:
I’m not sure what your point is, but if you curious how far one must look in order to find praise for Nazi ideas, the answer is not very far. It can be easily found here at VC (link, link, link). And likewise regarding praise for Pinochet, thanks to you.
January 25, 2010, 3:17 pm1040 says:
hey now, i’m willing to go along with this pinochet bashing, but i draw the line at nazi bashing. say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, dude, at least it’s an ethos.
January 25, 2010, 3:29 pmLN says:
The real question is, does TQS have any Pinochet t-shirts? Does he belong to a cult that wears such T-shirts?
January 25, 2010, 4:01 pmmattski says:
Mmmmm. Laura, your talent is for diverting a discussion into minutia. I don’t care so much why dioxin was in the Agent Orange we sprayed on Vietnam. I care that we used this deadly poison on a massive scale. I am quite confident that if Vietnam had sprayed 20 million gallons of this material on US forests and cropland you, my dear, would consider it “an atrocity.”
If you didn’t there would be something wrong with you.
January 25, 2010, 4:04 pmMark Field says:
Death is preferable to this thread.
January 25, 2010, 4:46 pmGrover Gardner says:
So when does the Nazi chic start becoming fashionable?
Visit “flyover country” much?
Here in Southern Oregon it’s pretty hard to avoid. No visit to the local swimming hole or popular fishing spot is complete without a cautiously friendly wave to the folks a hundred feet away who are proudly baring their “White Pride” and swastika tatoos. Recently the local paper ran a full-color, front page photo of a grinning construction worker cheering the anticipated completion of a new interstate exchange. Right there on his forearm, for all to see–a beautiful swastika. Of course there were indignant letters and emails, but what’s to be done about something as common as a crewcut or a hunting rifle in these parts?
January 25, 2010, 5:22 pmGrover Gardner says:
Now imagine a modern Cuba under Batista, and we’re good to go.
January 25, 2010, 5:26 pmGrover Gardner says:
…and I would add that I find sharing a fishing spot with someone sporting swastika tatoos a bit more disturbing than rubbing shoulders with a Che t-shirt in Starbucks. But maybe that’s just me.
January 25, 2010, 5:37 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
JBG, please show where I have ever used racially derogatory language. Or apologize. I am not going to put up with your unfounded accusations of racism.
The thing you put up said that 2,4-D was shown to cause problems with mice when administered in large doses. Do you have any idea how many chemicals in daily use cause mouse birth defects when administered in large doses? Do you realize that 2,4-D is still in use in this country? How do we get from this to the atrocity of KNOWINGLY causing widespread birth defects in Vietnam? Did they ask enough questions? Probably not. Did they know that those herbicides, in the amounts used, were going to cause what you are saying they did? You have not shown that.
January 25, 2010, 6:36 pmmattski says:
Laura, you’re in tilt mode.
Have a nice week.
January 25, 2010, 7:11 pmArthurKirkland says:
Boy, am I glad I share no fraction of opinion with this guy.
Tim McVeigh would have loved him, though.
January 25, 2010, 7:11 pmJohn Moore says:
~aardvark takes the cake for historical ignorance:
Add them all up and you get maybe 1% of the deaths caused by Marxist-Leninism. Authoritarian regimes, offensive as they are, really are better than totalitarian regimes, and also usually end sooner. Leftists, who adore totalitarians most of the time, have never understood this, whether about Chile or Iran.
Actually, that’s nonsense. The French were way out of the game by then. In fact, during the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Eisenhower knew he could give the French a resounding victory over the Communist Viet Minh simply with a few bombing missions (the Viet Minh had concentrated virtually all of their forces). He chose not to, primarily because of a desire to see the end of French colonialism.
The invitation came from the government of Diem, which was, by the standards of the time, relatively decent and sort of legitimate (they cheated on the elections, but were popular enough to have won anyway).
Bwahh haa haa
Anyone who has studied the issue knows that the Taliban was set up by the Pakistan ISI (their CIA), as part of the struggle for Afghan dominance with India. Reagan’s aid to the muj predated that. Perhaps you don’t remember the long period after the Russians left Afghanistan, where the Taliban slowly took over the country, while the US was looking elsewhere.
January 25, 2010, 7:12 pmJohn Moore says:
Strict says:
Nice way to oversimplify a complex situation. Iran was our enemy, but we weren’t too fond of Saddam either. So we gave Saddam intelligence info (and that’s all we gave him) and we gave Iran anti-tank missiles that were NOT used in the Naval conflict (hardly a war) that we engaged in with Iran.
You might also note that Israel is an enemy of Iran, yet they agreed to play the middleman. Why? Because the feared Saddam more at the time.
North engaged in some overly clever realpolitik. He did not engage in treason (even selling weapons to the enemy is not, of itself, legally treason). He did not work against what he felt were America’s best interests. Many of us feel that his error was violating byzantine laws set up by a Congress which was very hostile to America’s strategic interests (in Nicaragua), and then, in classic Washington fashion, was engaged in the procedural crimes of trying to avoid prosecution (and trying to avoid harming the cause).
North was and is a patriot. He served his country in combat in Vietnam, and he tried to serve it at the NSC, but screwed up. He serves his country now by countering the kind of rubbish so popular with the leftists and tranzi’s on this board.
January 25, 2010, 7:18 pmJohn Moore says:
Laura, I’m going to return JBG’s ad hominem.
JBG is not worth arguing with. He is an extremist whose arguments are long and tedious, and full of exaggerations and sometimes offense.
Anyone with a lick of sense understands that the Army had no reason to believe that Agent Orange was dangerous. The amount of dioxin was very small. A DOW Chemical spokesman, when AO became controversial, drank a glass of it at a press conference.
Even if AO was known at the time to be a slight risk to humans (and it is clearly nothing more than a very, very slight risk based on Vietnam veteran data), that did not make it wrong to use. After all, high explosives pose more than a slight risk!
But that sort of reasoning is foreign to JBG – he’s out to score points.
I ignore him.
January 25, 2010, 7:21 pmleo marvin says:
Sun Tzu’s Nephew says:
Harold Stassen.
January 25, 2010, 8:31 pmArthurKirkland says:
OK, kids, this one’s about exhausted. Time for the next installment:
‘I wonder why so many lefties seem to harbor an admittedly unstated admiration of Charles Manson — as a libertarian, I find this fascinating’
January 25, 2010, 9:16 pmjukeboxgrad says:
I didn’t claim that you used “racially derogatory language.” I pointed out that McCain did. And his language is relevant because the attitude embodied in his language helps us understand why we were willing drop 19 million gallons of poison on someone else’s country.
In the indiscriminate way that we used it in Vietnam? Please tell us where.
“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees” (link).
“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would … try to use an airplane as a missile” (link).
================
Really? Prove it. You should clean up your past false claims (example, example) before you make new ones.
See here:
Rowe’s letter was also cited by LAT on 5/19/84, but unfortunately that article is behind a paywall.
January 25, 2010, 11:20 pmJohn Moore says:
JBG, the level of dioxin to produce chloracne is orders of magnitude higher than the exposure of anyone from dioxin. You quote does NOT show that they “knew” agent orange was dangerous, but rather that a low level trace contaminant of it was dangerous. It is a typical LAT sort of lie, which you are perpetuating. Of course, the evidence is that dioxin is exceptionally toxic to rats, and remarkably less toxic to humans. But that has already been pointed out to you.
The hysteria over TCDD, caused originally by politically motivated anti-war activists who seized on AO, and adopted by the usual chemical hysterics, has led to a zero tolerance policy on it, to the point where communities with low levels of contamination have been leveled and buried by the federal government. Meanwhile, the people of Seveso did just fine, even though they were literally coated in pure dioxin.
You post is typical of what I have come to expect from you. It is a lie, wrapped in a lie. And with that, I’ll go back to ignoring your rants.
January 25, 2010, 11:28 pmJohn Moore says:
I meant to say “from Agent Orange”
January 25, 2010, 11:40 pmjukeboxgrad says:
Given your track record of making false claims (example, example), only a fool would consider your unsubstantiated claims to be anything other than a waste of innocent electrons. Let us know when you are ready to prove your claim that “a DOW Chemical spokesman, when AO became controversial, drank a glass of it at a press conference.”
Promises, promises. One of many things you frequently say that is not worth taking seriously.
January 25, 2010, 11:40 pmMark Field says:
If no conservative is willing to step up to denounce Pinochet, perhaps I can find a taker to denounce Harold Stassen. Anybody? He had buttons, you know….
January 25, 2010, 11:42 pm~aardvark says:
This is complete nonsense and you know it. The diary comments about killing–and, in fact, killing itself–came from a later period of the Cuban “revolution”. When Che joined the cause, he was quite squeamish and not particularly interested in killing. For that matter, he did not even become a Communist (nor did Fidel) until far into the campaign. The reasons for leaving his family and social position and joining the Cuban cause had nothing to do with killing or Communism.
January 26, 2010, 4:18 amJohn Moore says:
Okay, Pinochet was a bad guy who murdered a bunch of people and ran an authoritarian regime.
But… what leftists who love to hate him forget… in the pantheon of bad guys, he is nothing compared to such left wing idols (at various times) as Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh.
January 26, 2010, 7:25 pmMark Field says:
And the rest is silence.
January 27, 2010, 10:18 amronmossad says:
God I hope so…
http://ronmossad.blogspot.com/2010/02/sanction-of-victim-and-guiltiest-person.html
Che was a total clown and anyone who follows him is a misguided, lost soul desperate for a strong figure to latch onto. All Che had were some brave-sounding quotes, even as “revolutionary” and terrorist he couldn’t get it done. Total loser.
February 21, 2010, 12:11 pm