from USS maine to gulf of tonkin

recently ive heard that what everybody knew to be true, that the whole gulf of tonkin thing was a staged event, was admitted to or something like that.


but the point is that the US government wanted to escalate (actually they wanted to go to war), so to get the people behind them they staged this phoney attack and blamed the north vietnamese.


is a pattern emerging here?


brad

Maybe so.


What I'd like to know is why you and Chris Algert and KJS and certain others seem to focus so exclusively on the bad things done by our own country or by our allies. If the bad things we have done were actually equivalent to others in evil or in volume, I would say that's a fine approach. But that isn't nearly the case. Why don't you report on how many Mao starved to death on purpose, or how many of his own Stalin murdered, or how bad the North Korean government is, or any of the evils we were or are presently fighting against.


I think it's ridiculous to focus so intently on our own flaws when the flaws of others are not only much greater, but have presented and do present much greater dangers to the world. After all, if you want to look out for the world community, and you're looking for bad things which could be fixed or should have been fixed, the place to start is with the very worst things of all. And that's not the US, past or present. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be introspective and ready to change for the better, but it does make me sick when that's the primary focus of some, when much worse is going on out there.


I wish some people would get a little more sense of perspective, especially liberals when it comes to international affairs.


By the way the whole Vietnam problem and the spread of communism could have probably been averted if we had simply not allowed the USSR to develop nuclear weapons when we had great nuclear superiority--the threat of nuking any installations they would have built would have probably worked fine although we might have had to nuke a couple of missile sites in some remote area in Siberia. Allowing one's enemies to arm is foolish to say the least--which is why we must not allow radical Muslim states or rogue dictatorships like Iraq to gain nuclear weapons capability.


brad, I don't think you are a fool or even a complete liberal in such matters, and some of my comments above would better apply to certain others on this forum. I just question your focus a bit.

real quick


1) im not a liberal just on the gun issue alone


2) supposedly we're able to control our government; so supposedly we're somewhat responsible for the actions of our governement


3) the US gave the USSR the nuclear bomb. i dont expect you to believe that , but, assuming its true, what are the implications of that?


4) 'or how bad the North Korean government is, or' well ive posted about how the US government, started by clinton and expanded under bush, is giving n. korea nuclear power plants which (i assume) can be used for them to achieve nuclear weapons capability. youve no doubt heard about how the US gave china all this missile technology (they now have mirvs where they didnt before) and other weapons related technology. now you said, 'Allowing one's enemies to arm is foolish to say the least'. i just dont think you see the big picture here. weve always armed our enemies to the teeth, even the nazis.


also chinese military generals have publicly threatened to nuke the US (over taiwan).


anyway, something to think about.


brad

M,


I think some of us focus on what we have done wrong because we have been taught throughout our lives that we represent what is "good" in the world. We were to be the bright, shinning "city on the hill." The bad things we do don't have to be equivalent; the very fact that we do bad things is disappointing enough because our hopes soar much higher.


John

When I was child, I thought as a child. When I became a man, I put away my childish need for clear distinctions between right and wrong. I learned to live with compromise. I learned to appreciate the scales of justice.

"What I'd like to know is why you and Chris Algert and KJS and certain others seem to focus so exclusively on the bad things done by our own country or by our allies."


I can't speak for brad or Chris or KJS, but for me, it's because I expect so much more of my country. I know Mao and Stalin were brutal murderers; I don't want my country to engage in brutal murder.


By the way, the whole Vietnam problem had nothing to do with the spread of coummunism or the USSR. It had to do with France treating the Vietnamese like expendable slaves and with the United States defending that position and taking it over.


And as far as liberals getting some "perspective" on foreign affairs, it was the liberals who fought the Cold War the hardest. The Truman administration had to drag the Republicans kicking and screaming into the Cold War. It was the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that made the Vietnam War. America would have retreated into isolationism after World War II had the conservatives been running the show.

The best study of Tonkin is Edwin Moise's Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. His conclusion is that there was no attack, but that the incident was not a lie concocted to provide an excuse for escalation; it was a genuine mistake.


There is no question, though, that the U.S. wouldn have found some other excuse to bomb North Vietnam had there been no Tonkin. The incident was indeed similar to the Maine incident in that it was used to stir up the public.


Let me repeat yet again: All politicians are liars and very little they say should be believed.

"also chinese military generals have publicly threatened to nuke the US (over taiwan)."


Correct, they have. And after we deal with the terrorist problem we'll probably have to deal with China.


I should have specified that it was your overall focus, as evidenced by your posts, that struck me as perhaps a bit one-sided. I do know you're not a liberal on many issues and that you especially value the individual rights to free speech and self-defense--which I also do.

Indeed this is correct and a perceptive way to express it.


The problem is that many people who take such things to heart (which is fine and good) also often take it to the extreme in thinking that we may bot need strong defense, or that other governments which are bad are not all that much worse--but many of them are much worse and incredibly so. We need exceptional vigilance and sometimes action to counter the occasional colossal threats posed by outside forces. I'm all for cleaning our own house and trying to be the best we can...but we can't let our guard down in the world arena. I believe that focusing too much on our internal shortcomings can take away vital focus from perceiving and dealing with external threats--and the current and coming external threats are very, very dangerous.

supposedly its a new story brought about by recently declassified documents or something. ill post a link when i find it.


brad

"I believe that focusing too much on our internal shortcomings can take away vital focus from perceiving and dealing with external threats--and the current and coming external threats are very, very dangerous."


Our leaders have always told us that the current and coming external threats are very, very dangerous. In the 1930s and 40s, it was the threat of fascism. In the late 1940s and 1950s, it was communism. In the 1960s, it was Red China's particular brand of communism. Later on it was the threat of subversion in our hemisphere.


This is not to say that some (or even all) of these threats were not real and very, very dangerous. But our leaders have consistently lied about, and been woefully misinformed about, the nature and extent of those threats and this, coupled with insufficient regard to our own internal shortcomings, has frequently led to disaster, both for us and for other peoples.


In my lifetime, simple slogans (The Great Society, Peace with Honor, A bridge to the future, You're either with us or you're against us) have been used by politicians to arouse support for simpe solutions for complex problems. Thus the necessity for focusing on both external threats and internal shortcomings.

Exactly, and my disagreement is not with focusing on both, but rather with focusing almost exclusively on our own shortcomings while neglecting proper assessment of and attention to external threats--as I feel too many liberals are often inclined to do.

You are either (1) confusing trying to justify particular bad acts (e.g., your government's) with ranking all bad acts objectively along some kind of moral scale; or (2) assuming that the bad acts of our government are mere reactions or defenses to even worse acts by other governments. The first is generally pointless because it ignores our responsibilities as a citizens in a democracy. The second is not supported by the facts.


Begin with simple truisms: individuals are responsible for their own bad conduct, and those under their influence and control, more than they are the bad conduct of others. Complaining about bad things done by others when we are guilty of the same, even to a somewhat lesser degree, is hypocritical. Thus, if a neighbor who openly cheated on his wife complained about another neighbor who cheats on his wife more often, you'd think: "people in glass houses ...." It's common sense. We apply the same ethic to foreigners, and dismiss propagandists in states that concentrate only on American evil while ignoring the suffering caused by their own.


Yet the norm for Americans discussing U.S. foreign policy is more like the opposite of what I've described: drawing exclusive attention to others instead of our own government's wrongdoing. This is what you advocate. The attitude is so widespread that those that don't share it are often deemed suspect.


This phenomenon has many causes, but three of the most powerful are:


(1) Ours is a free and historically isolated country. Americans enjoy considerable and even extreme liberties in a relatively democratic country with a history (even an ideology) of isolation from the rest of the world. Unlike Europe, we have no model for imagining why the best things about our nation wouldn't generally manifest themselves in our foreign policy. As a result, foreign policy speeches and discussions are typically framed and limited by assumptions and rhetoric about reasonable, democratic and peaceful intentions and goals. Further, we often insist that other countries adopt such standards, which sounds like we're demanding them to act as good as we already are, an assumption repeatedly endlessly by mainstream commentators. We internalize this kind of thinking, and are therefore flummoxed when we see (on the rare occasions when we see them) allegations of the U.S. invading foreign countries, subsidizing murder and torture, etc.


(2) Real bad guys are out there and they sometimes attack. The worst conduct of the worst countries is worse than every one else's, including ours, and we constantly attempt to justify everything we do in terms of self-defense. Of course, there's always someone worse, especially if we go back in time, as you suggest, to the days of Mao and Stalin. But just as Mao can point to Stalin, and Stalin to Hitler, or an accused murderer to Charles Manson, the existence of greater evil by itself is utterly irrelevant to the case against the accused becasue it excuses nothing.


They way our system tends to make it relevant, however, is by claiming that everything bad we do is a defense against things that are worse. You see this in the rhetoric about our need to be pragamatic, "fight fire with fire," and similar notions. The presence of a grave threat from abroad invoked to justify any action is a historic constant: French interference in "our" hemisphere in the 18th century, British interference in the 19th, German Militarism during WWI, the fscist threat of WWII, the post-war communist threat to take over the world, and now international terrorism. All these things have been served up to justify conquest, mass killing and widespread human rights abuses. Of course, they also have had considerable basis in reality, but they have all been invoked to justify actions which have little to do with defense against them.


(3) Media concentration and bias. Our sources of information are few and dominated by the same interests that dominate the shaping of foreign policy (the public relations tentacles of large industrial corporations, financial instutions and government bureaucracies), and we have little time to research and investigate other sources.


Still, the fact that we live in a democracy and are freer than most to investigate and criticize makes us more repsonsible, not less so. Those of ability that refuse to accept this responsibility merit our contempt.

"....my disagreement is not with focusing on both, but rather with focusing almost exclusively on our own shortcomings while neglecting proper assessment of and attention to external threats--as I feel too many liberals are often inclined to do."


1. The phenomenon to which you refer hardly exists. You can't seriously believe that liberals in Congress, the White House or the media focus much at all "our own shortcomings," unless you mean criticism about the U.S. being too obsessed with human rights and fair play, too lax on it's enemies and similar propaganda.


2. If "too many liberals" that receive mainstream attention do this, it should be child's play to name one. I'd like to see you try without stretching to fringe critics like Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky.

I was actually initially talking about a few who post on this board--but I'm sure there are plenty of others as well.