The Drums of War? Pentagon Provokes New Crisis With China

[gambit]

I thought you would say that. However Lyndon Johnson did not formally declare war against North Vietnam, so the Laws of War does not really apply here formally does it? Because of this later War Powers Resolution was passed by the congress to prevent similar situation from emerging again.

The applicability of the laws of war is independent of whether there exist a piece of paper formalizing for historical records a conflict. By your argument, absent a formal declaration of war by at least one party, ANY and ALL atrocities in this conflict are not morally condemnable.

Trespassing in one's territory is one thing, but bombing one's sovereign territory is totally a different thing.

The trespass was to conduct terrorism against the population of another country. South Viet Nam and the US were allies and interested parties in a conflict. North Viet Nam, China and the Soviet Union were allies and also interested parties in the same conflict. Neither Laos nor Cambodia declared themselves interested parties and therefore each have a responsibility to remove themselves and their territories from the conflict. One country cannot overtly or covertly support one party in a conflict and declare itself neutral and its territory inviolable at the other party.

I don't see how those two can be related to each other.

Of course the rejection of communism by Bui Tin and the treachery of the Viet Minh are related. They are related by YOUR argument that traitors are not to be trusted. By the fact that the Viet Minh colluded with Viet Nam's former colonial master -- France -- via the Ho-Sainteny Agreement, everything the Vietnamese communists do after should be suspect.

 

[CAPTAIN AMERICA]

Yes it makes me sick to think of the tens of millions of people who starved to death because of Chairman Mao's failed policies.

They were my brothers and sisters after all...

So, what point are you trying to make? You do realise that China had market reforms in the 1970's and is now a Capitalist economy?

I am not even Chinese and it turns my stomach, knowing what man kind can do to each and what peoples goverments can do to their own people is why 80 million americans will never give up their guns.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

South Viet Nam and the US were allies and interested parties in a conflict. North Viet Nam, China and the Soviet Union were allies and also interested parties in the same conflict.

So what do you think of "modern Vietnam", given that the "North" eventually won the war?

 

[CAPTAIN AMERICA]

Yes it makes me sick to think of the tens of millions of people who starved to death because of Chairman Mao's failed policies.

They were my brothers and sisters after all...

So, what point are you trying to make? You do realise that China had market reforms in the 1970's and is now a Capitalist economy?

I am not really sure what China is.

 

[huzihaidao12]

So, for the time being not to discuss with you, I totally do not know something, this is the most intense part of the debate on the Chinese BBS.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I am not even Chinese and it turns my stomach, knowing what man kind can do to each and what peoples goverments can do to their own people is why 80 million americans will never give up their guns.

Trust me I feel the same way.

It makes me beyond sick to even think about it.

These are my brothers and sisters, if YOU feel bad about it... imagine how *I* feel!

The tragedy is that if Chairman Mao wasn't there... we might have had a Chinese democracy already and become prosperous like my own home city of Hong Kong.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

I am not really sure what China is.

What do you think we still have a "Control economy"?

No... we embraced Capitalism several decades ago, why do you think our economy is doing so well now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_reform_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

 

[huzihaidao12]

I am not even Chinese and it turns my stomach, knowing what man kind can do to each and what peoples goverments can do to their own people is why 80 million americans will never give up their guns.

No effect, when the American students were expelled, killed by the U.S. military, where nothing happened.

 

[gambit]

So what do you think of "modern Vietnam", given that the "North" eventually won the war?

As a democrat (not Democrat), looking at today's Viet Nam and the irony cannot be more delicious -- That today's Viet Nam is aspiring to be what South Viet Nam was......And as time passed, that irony is not lost on the many veterans who fought against their fellow Viets. They felt that they fought for nothing. Outside the monitoring range of party enforcers, the many NVA/VC vets I spoke with are bitter that the communists lied to the them and to the people and at the incompetence that set the country back decades in comparison to other Asian countries.

So it is irrelevant what I think but in what direction is Viet Nam heading and the fact that Viet Nam is trying to be what South Viet Nam was is a moral indictment against the Vietnamese communists for what they have done.

 

[Brotherhood]

Again, humble advice to my brothers, do not feed those Chinese haters, one well known viet-commie, another Ah3 disguised as so-called American.
They have already made up their mind long before this so-called Chinese bashing party, it simply will get you no where

 

[huzihaidao12]

Well, some things I did not stress (actually not my intention, because I do not want to discuss is this place, because it is complex, more than you can imagine). In fact the Chinese government in a number of policy errors and irresponsibility of some local officials led to a large number of dead people, they should take responsibility, no doubt.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

As a democrat (not Democrat), looking at today's Viet Nam and the irony cannot be more delicious -- That today's Viet Nam is aspiring to be what South Viet Nam was......And as time passed, that irony is not lost on the many veterans who fought against their fellow Viets. They felt that they fought for nothing. Outside the monitoring range of party enforcers, the many NVA/VC vets I spoke with are bitter that the communists lied to the them and to the people and at the incompetence that set the country back decades in comparison to other Asian countries.

So it is irrelevant what I think but in what direction is Viet Nam heading and the fact that Viet Nam is trying to be what South Viet Nam was is a moral indictment against the Vietnamese communists for what they have done.

Have you been back to Vietnam recently?

Communism didn't last very long in the world, it collapsed in the 1990's with the fall of the Soviet union.

The only two nations that can properly be described as "control economies" nowadays are Cuba and North Korea.

Most other nations have embraced the Market Economy. It's not perfect but certainly better than Communism.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Again, humble advice to my brothers, do not feed those Chinese haters, one well known viet-commie, another Ah3 disguised as so-called American.
They have already made up their mind long before this so-called Chinese bashing party, it simply will get you no where

Some people do hate China, which I think is a shame because the "ordinary Chinese people" have nothing to do with such politics, and are innocent in the matter.

Some people hate the current Chinese government, despite the fact that it has raised hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty, who else has done so much for the people of China?

At the end of the day, what really matters is the opinion of the Chinese people towards the Chinese government. Change comes from within.

 

[gambit]

Have you been back to Vietnam recently?

Communism didn't last very long in the world, it collapsed in the 1990's with the fall of the Soviet union.

The only two nations that can properly be described as "control economies" nowadays are Cuba and North Korea.

Most other nations have embraced the Market Economy. It's not perfect but certainly better than Communism.

Yes...We know that communism did not last very long but while it reigned and wherever it reigned its application resulted in misery and backwardness when compared to functional democracies. In the case of Viet Nam, if we examine the country as it is today with all the foreign investments that helped lift the country out of economic despair, we see that we are looking at South Viet Nam and why so many South Vietnamese defended their way of life, imperfect as it was, from an even worse fate -- communism. The argument that the Vietnamese communists was fighting for Vietnamese independence is a distraction. South Viet Nam was independent. As was North Viet Nam independent. So if Viet Nam today is working hard to become like South Viet Nam of yesterday, what was the war about? For what?

Same questions can be asked for China. What was the communist experience for? Independence? No...Because just like how the US view colonialism for Indochina...

Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Summary and Chapter I

I saw Halifax last week and told him quite frankly that it was perfectly true that I had, for over a year, expressed the opinion that Indo-China should not go back to France but that it should be administered by an international trusteeship. France has had the country-thirty million inhabitants for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning.

As a matter of interest, I am wholeheartedly supported in this view by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and by Marshal Stalin. I see no reason to play in with the British Foreign Office in this matter. The only reason they seem to oppose it is that they fear the effect it would have on their own possessions and those of the Dutch. They have never liked the idea of trusteeship because it is, in some instances, aimed at future independence. This is true in the case of Indo-China.

Each case must, of course, stand on its own feet, but the case of IndoChina is perfectly clear. France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indo-China are entitled to something better than that.

Roosevelt died before Indochina, which contained Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, entered UN trusteeship. Plus with the Ho-Sainteny Agreement in 1946 that the Viet Minh placed Viet Nam back under France, Indochina's freedom from warfare never had a start. So if we go by the America's attitude regarding colonialism in Indochina, that mean China's freedom from pre-WWII European colonialism was %99.999 assured. That mean the communist experiment and experience, in China and in Indochina, was unnecessary.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Same questions can be asked for China. What was the communist experience for?

It was a tragic experiment that failed, and killed tens of millions of innocent Chinese people with it.

It is a lesson to the world what Communism means and why we must never go back to it.

As to your question, if only it was so easy to go back and time and erase the many many crimes against humanity that have been perpetrated all over the world.

Deng Xiaoping saved China by implementing market reforms, which lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. This is the reason why our economy is doing so well now, and why we are finally re-emerging after hundreds of years in turmoil.