Apparently, Dr. King thought that the Communist forces we were fighting in SE Asia were the forces of loving brotherhood. Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong were anything but. ‘Tis a shame Dr. King never saw the bloody fruits of our failure in Viet Nam.
From his own admission, his opposition to the war was started by his awareness that the war was diverting funds that he thought should go towards approved minority entitlements.
Ahhh, “Entitlements!” When oil companies, and farmers in Iowa get subsidies from the republicans, it is “funds to protect our way of life and our food supply.” When welfare recipients get the same money, it is an “entitlement.”
I ask you: why was the war fought in Iraq rather than in Sudan where Christians have been massacred for years. Since you’re not going to be thing for yourself, I’ll answer for the rest of us: to protect “american interests” in the Middle East. Some would call that money entitlements. Some would call it welfare. Some would call it theft of the taxpayers income.
We fund dictators in Egypt and Pakistan, and kiss up to dictators in Saudi Arabia. At the same time we are aggressively promoting “democracy” in Iran and Iraq.
We’re hypocrites and liars. And our president does this all in the name of Christian just war. Martin luther king was right. This is a travesty.
I don’t recall GWB ever invoking the Iraq invasion as a “Christian just war”. He might have said that this war was “just”, and I think that the term “crusade” was invoked until the DoD figured out that it had very bad connotations in the Mideast even if used in a Western secular sense. But I believe #2’s last paragraph to be historically unjustified.
Tom: You’ve not heard BUsh repeatedly state that God has called him to this mission?
I’m glad that you found only a minor cosmetic disagreement. I’m assuming that means you don’t challenge the main thrust of my argument: we’re liars and hypocrites.
4+5- I’m not going to get into a deep analysis of why I found [i]all[/i] of 2 to be propaganda. My 3 was just the tip of the iceberg.
But what isn’t propaganda was King’s speech on Vietnam, which has historical importance beyond any facile parallels with the present. Vietnam was instigated by two well intentioned and liberal US presidents who thought that the US could correct decades of French mis/malfeasance in Indochina. All the way from backing Diem and then sacking Diem to the Tet offensive, the US did as it thought best. Even McNamara was well intentioned, both in the way he messed up the US operations in Vietnam and the way he messed up the Dept of Defense for a more protracted time after he left.
But this [i]failure of the best intentioned[/i] is a warning of the strength of the [i]Law of Unintended Consequences[/i]. Things will happen that require even the best intentioned plan to change. King’s address speaks towards the situation the US found itself in during the late 60’s when the basis for the original US intervention became politically intractable. How and why do we change a political decision gone wrong? Thankfully King did not espouse riot and mayhem as the French Left did almost in the same time in 1968. But saying that mistakes have and will be made does not equate to being [i]liars and hypocrites[/i]. It instead means that we need realistic and moral ways to discern what this nation’s values are and to try to change course so that we will uphold them.
I predicted an economic recession on this board about six months ago, and was pooh-poohed. The prevailing theory was that Iraq would be good for our country: getting into further debt to finance a foreign war because we would be seeing to “our overseas interests” and we would invigorate our industrial sector by producing new weapons.
Now we have an economic recession, huge debts, inflation, and thousands of soldiers dying overseas. Apparently stating facts apropos to the topic under discussion is against the new rules. Please elves, don’t kick me out because I can’t think of anything funny about the situation.
I predicted an economic recession on this board about six months ago, and was pooh-poohed. The prevailing theory was that Iraq would be good for our country
Quote, please. I don’t remember anyone at T19 ever saying that the war in Iraq would prevent the U.S. from going into recession.
Now we have an economic recession
No, we don’t. A recession involves 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth. We haven’t even had one yet. Just because the press and various politicians are thowing around that word doesn’t make it accurate.
Now we have…thousands of soldiers dying overseas
Since 2003, yes. In the last six months, the numbers of casualties in Iraq has dropped steadily, as it was dropping even before that. I know that’s bad news for those who are determined to thunder apocalyptically about American foreign policy, but that’s the reality. Live with it–I’m sure our men and women in uniform are doing so.
[i] This thread is heading off topic. Please return to addressing the original post by Kendall. [/i]
Our war in Vietnam wasn’t a failure. If anything, we successfully destroyed its economy. The communists never had a chance at rebuilding it. It still is in ruins, along with plenty of lives.
But without the war, what would have happened? It would have gone bankrupt anyway. If anything, the war just held the resolve of the communists rather than demonstrating anything better. Personally, I think free markets are better than wars at changing societies – including free markets with communist countries.
This is what China is learning.
As far as minority “entitlements:” that’s a pejorative way of looking at it. We can invest in Americans through education or health care, or invest in bombs. As a country, as citizens, we should care for each other. And yes, our bombing of other countries should be second priority to caring for the poor in our own midst.
So what was the fighting in Vietnam all about? We lost and it did not impact very much except we greatly impacted a nation. St. Augustine’s just war theory can not be justified in either case of Vietnam or Iraq (Sec. Powell’s whole case before the UN is embarrassing example of our poor intelligence and could have actually cost us in the War on Terror than if we stuck to Afghanistan) but at least there is oil in latter.
King’s logic, with what we know from the declassified papers of today, is pretty impeccable. Bless those who served, and it’s also our national shame to how we treated those who fought the war. We need to ensure as Christians that we do not allow our government to be aggressors in power plays until it measures up the standard St. Augustine set of ethics.
The Vietnam War wasn’t about Vietnam, but about containing a Communist menace that would have lived for decades longer than it did had it not been so contained. Millions or billions more lives would have been lost or ruined in the process.
It must be wonderful being an elf. You can attach snarky one-liners (“lighten up”) and (“your comment makes no sense”) to the end of other people’s posts–something you censor other people for doing.
Martin Luther King’s reasons for opposing the Vietnam war are as valid and applicable today as they were in the 70’s. The purposeless, senselessly violent war in Vietnam produced inflationary spirals, debt, economic depression and political authoritarianism. The current administration’s policies have produced similar results.
I apologize if that comment is not “light” enough for you, or too difficult for you to understand. I suggest you stick to your job.
Jeffersonian. The Vietnam war destroyed Vietnam, failed to contain the “Communist menace” and presented the US its first ever defeat. Millions or billions of lives would not have been lost if it had not been fought.
Well, Justin, condemning violence is usually subjective.
I’m sure that Dr. King wouldn’t decry the violence visited on the Confederate States of America by the United States of America.
Do we owe the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires an entirely overdue apology?
Shall we also beat our breast about the violence visited upon the Fascist Italians, Nazi Germans, Vichy French, and Imperialist Japanese?
Should we reinstate the previous operators of Abu Grhaib prison, whose practices made American troops look like pikers?
It’s entirely subjective on which violence is politically palatable at the moment.
This week we get to celebrate a gruesome anniversary, one which almost 50 Million americans aren’t here to witness as a result of it. Who in the civil rights community, that claims to succeed Dr. King, will stand up and condemn that violence? Especially since it disproportionately affects the African-American community. Anyone? Anyone….
[blockquote]Jeffersonian. The Vietnam war destroyed Vietnam, failed to contain the “Communist menace†and presented the US its first ever defeat. Millions or billions of lives would not have been lost if it had not been fought. [/blockquote]
You ought to acquaint yourself with the history of Communist tyrannies, Justin, before you blurt such nonsense. Condemning millions to death or lives of slavery because you can plausibly deny you played an active role is hardly a moral, much less Christian, stance.
It always amazes me how most discussions of Vietnam only consider part of the history. For a more complete picture I recommend “The Ten Thousand Day War” and the lengthy PBS series.
We committed to our WW2 ally Ho Chi Minh that we would support self-determination for Vietnam after the war. The Far East branch of the State Department supported this, as they (correctly) saw Ho Chi Minh as an independent nationalist, much like Tito. This view was bolstered by the historic enmity between China and Vietnam. (Recall their serious battles AFTER 1975.)
Unfortunately, our European branch, in a post-WW2 panic over Soviet expansion, felt it was necessary (in the effort to bolster Western Europe as a bulwark aginst the USSR) to support restoration of France’s colony. After France’s failed efforts, we settled for division into North and South. We opposed free elections because we knew Ho/Viet Minh would win.
So the case is pretty clear that the Roosevelt/Truman decision to reverse our WW2 commitment was a mistake. However, it is a separate question as to whether we should have gotten re-involved with Vietnam as we did under JFK/LBJ. I once heard Henry Kissinger suggest that it may have played a necessary role in the larger, successful war against Communism. I don’t think there is any way that could be answered with any certainty.
FWIW, I’m a Vietnam veteran who lost a close childhood friend there. Aside from the Vietnamese people, the greatest victim of the war was the US military, whose members were misused and betrayed. How bizarre and ironic that but for a strange accident of history, LBJ would have died in WW2.
#11 Sorry, but I believe that about as much as I do that Iraq is a war on terror.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” who T. Jefferson meant was tyranny from our own government.
So In 1955, Ho Chi Minh became president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), a Communist-led single party state. The 1954 Geneva Accords required that a national election would be held in 1956 to reunite Vietnam under one government. However, the US knew that if that were allowed to happed he’d win probably 80% of the vote, so this was prevented. In fact most of the war was one against the South Vietnamese people. Our role in “pacification” is quite barbarous – Dr. Ngo Vinh Long has spoken from one who assisted the US Army.
Sorry, the old JFK line does not hold much clout with me any longer. We lost, our troops were evacuated in 1975. Laos fell, Cambodia is a different story, actually Vietnamese rescued them from a madman. Twenty-thousand names are on a wall in DC and no one has shown how being defeated in the jungles of Asia, by a people we where going to bomb back to the stone ages (they really were not that far out of the stone age) did anything to defeat communion!
A MX missile, SDI and using our possible productivity curve to bankrupt the Soviets, then I think a good case could be made. However the Domino theory was a war sales pitch, if true then we should have seen dramatic negative consequence when we lost and evacuated.
MLK’s questions are still haunting, even more so because we did not win our objectives in the war.
Bill 16- I think your comment on FDR and Truman is historically key here, and only explicable in terms of the ideological framework of the that day. Truman in particular was confronting Greek communists who had as much in common with Stalin as oranges do with apples. Yet, as these Greek communists and Soviet communists were both enemies of the British supported monarchy, the US ended up fighting them in a covert war. Then Korea turned from a quaint backwater to a very nasty conflict. So discriminating between good and bad communists, or fascists in the decade before, wasn’t the way US foreign policy was made. Sure it was a mistake, but from that perspective, it was far from clear then that this black-white dichotomy wasn’t true.
#14 Jimbob,
“I’m sure that Dr. King wouldn’t decry the violence visited on the Confederate States of America by the United States of America.” ”
You should answer your own question Jimbob. How would you have ended the brutality of slavery? Perhaps you should condemn slaveowners for not being nonviolent, or the fascist armies. What is certainly true is that when Grant offered Lee’s soldiers some immunity, they didn’t engage in a guerrilla war for years. After WWI, vindictivness preceded WWII. But after WWII, the Marshall Plan, ushering in years of prosperity.
You also deliberately confuse the Hussein with American torturers, insinuating that torture was justified. what happened is that, in the eyes of Arabs, we lost our moral authority. They can’t tell the difference. And we should have known better. Perhaps if we had invested in Iraqi companies rather than our current system of funding second-rate war-profiteers, we would have seen something different, and not made Iran into the authority it now has.
“It’s entirely subjective on which violence is politically palatable at the moment.”
Yes. If you choose not to look hard enough.
As far as celebrating a “gruesome” anniversary, I’m not sure what you are talking about. If it is abortion, as you note – it affects, disproportionately, the African American population. As does the war on drugs and our current system of military recruitment.
Lots of African American women understand what lies in store for their children: prison or war. Because that’s what we pay for, rather than schools and health.
If you want to end abortion, create a health care system for mothers that is comprehensive. And then invest in full employment, especially for men. People choose abortions when they don’t have insurance, and their partners don’t have jobs.
15 Jeffersonian, what brought down the Communist empire wasn’t years of war: if anything, that gave them a moral stance.
What brought them down was technology and the free market. And the desire of their own people for freedom.
Perhaps if we had taken a proactive stance at different points in the history of our relationship with the Soviet Union, we could have seen a different history. Our anti-communist stance, alas, made us vulnerable to people (like Hussein or Osama Bin Laden) who were themselves opportunists, rejecting moderate socialists who wanted to forge an independent path.
Apparently, Dr. King thought that the Communist forces we were fighting in SE Asia were the forces of loving brotherhood. Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong were anything but. ‘Tis a shame Dr. King never saw the bloody fruits of our failure in Viet Nam.
From his own admission, his opposition to the war was started by his awareness that the war was diverting funds that he thought should go towards approved minority entitlements.
Ahhh, “Entitlements!” When oil companies, and farmers in Iowa get subsidies from the republicans, it is “funds to protect our way of life and our food supply.” When welfare recipients get the same money, it is an “entitlement.”
I ask you: why was the war fought in Iraq rather than in Sudan where Christians have been massacred for years. Since you’re not going to be thing for yourself, I’ll answer for the rest of us: to protect “american interests” in the Middle East. Some would call that money entitlements. Some would call it welfare. Some would call it theft of the taxpayers income.
We fund dictators in Egypt and Pakistan, and kiss up to dictators in Saudi Arabia. At the same time we are aggressively promoting “democracy” in Iran and Iraq.
We’re hypocrites and liars. And our president does this all in the name of Christian just war. Martin luther king was right. This is a travesty.
I don’t recall GWB ever invoking the Iraq invasion as a “Christian just war”. He might have said that this war was “just”, and I think that the term “crusade” was invoked until the DoD figured out that it had very bad connotations in the Mideast even if used in a Western secular sense. But I believe #2’s last paragraph to be historically unjustified.
Tom: You’ve not heard BUsh repeatedly state that God has called him to this mission?
I’m glad that you found only a minor cosmetic disagreement. I’m assuming that means you don’t challenge the main thrust of my argument: we’re liars and hypocrites.
[i] justinmartyr: Lighten up, please. [/i]
4+5- I’m not going to get into a deep analysis of why I found [i]all[/i] of 2 to be propaganda. My 3 was just the tip of the iceberg.
But what isn’t propaganda was King’s speech on Vietnam, which has historical importance beyond any facile parallels with the present. Vietnam was instigated by two well intentioned and liberal US presidents who thought that the US could correct decades of French mis/malfeasance in Indochina. All the way from backing Diem and then sacking Diem to the Tet offensive, the US did as it thought best. Even McNamara was well intentioned, both in the way he messed up the US operations in Vietnam and the way he messed up the Dept of Defense for a more protracted time after he left.
But this [i]failure of the best intentioned[/i] is a warning of the strength of the [i]Law of Unintended Consequences[/i]. Things will happen that require even the best intentioned plan to change. King’s address speaks towards the situation the US found itself in during the late 60’s when the basis for the original US intervention became politically intractable. How and why do we change a political decision gone wrong? Thankfully King did not espouse riot and mayhem as the French Left did almost in the same time in 1968. But saying that mistakes have and will be made does not equate to being [i]liars and hypocrites[/i]. It instead means that we need realistic and moral ways to discern what this nation’s values are and to try to change course so that we will uphold them.
I predicted an economic recession on this board about six months ago, and was pooh-poohed. The prevailing theory was that Iraq would be good for our country: getting into further debt to finance a foreign war because we would be seeing to “our overseas interests” and we would invigorate our industrial sector by producing new weapons.
Now we have an economic recession, huge debts, inflation, and thousands of soldiers dying overseas. Apparently stating facts apropos to the topic under discussion is against the new rules. Please elves, don’t kick me out because I can’t think of anything funny about the situation.
Martin Luther King was right.
[i] Your comment makes no sense. [/i]
Re #7
I predicted an economic recession on this board about six months ago, and was pooh-poohed. The prevailing theory was that Iraq would be good for our country
Quote, please. I don’t remember anyone at T19 ever saying that the war in Iraq would prevent the U.S. from going into recession.
Now we have an economic recession
No, we don’t. A recession involves 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth. We haven’t even had one yet. Just because the press and various politicians are thowing around that word doesn’t make it accurate.
Now we have…thousands of soldiers dying overseas
Since 2003, yes. In the last six months, the numbers of casualties in Iraq has dropped steadily, as it was dropping even before that. I know that’s bad news for those who are determined to thunder apocalyptically about American foreign policy, but that’s the reality. Live with it–I’m sure our men and women in uniform are doing so.
[i] This thread is heading off topic. Please return to addressing the original post by Kendall. [/i]
Our war in Vietnam wasn’t a failure. If anything, we successfully destroyed its economy. The communists never had a chance at rebuilding it. It still is in ruins, along with plenty of lives.
But without the war, what would have happened? It would have gone bankrupt anyway. If anything, the war just held the resolve of the communists rather than demonstrating anything better. Personally, I think free markets are better than wars at changing societies – including free markets with communist countries.
This is what China is learning.
As far as minority “entitlements:” that’s a pejorative way of looking at it. We can invest in Americans through education or health care, or invest in bombs. As a country, as citizens, we should care for each other. And yes, our bombing of other countries should be second priority to caring for the poor in our own midst.
And caring for our own poor is a lot cheaper.
So what was the fighting in Vietnam all about? We lost and it did not impact very much except we greatly impacted a nation. St. Augustine’s just war theory can not be justified in either case of Vietnam or Iraq (Sec. Powell’s whole case before the UN is embarrassing example of our poor intelligence and could have actually cost us in the War on Terror than if we stuck to Afghanistan) but at least there is oil in latter.
King’s logic, with what we know from the declassified papers of today, is pretty impeccable. Bless those who served, and it’s also our national shame to how we treated those who fought the war. We need to ensure as Christians that we do not allow our government to be aggressors in power plays until it measures up the standard St. Augustine set of ethics.
The Vietnam War wasn’t about Vietnam, but about containing a Communist menace that would have lived for decades longer than it did had it not been so contained. Millions or billions more lives would have been lost or ruined in the process.
It must be wonderful being an elf. You can attach snarky one-liners (“lighten up”) and (“your comment makes no sense”) to the end of other people’s posts–something you censor other people for doing.
Martin Luther King’s reasons for opposing the Vietnam war are as valid and applicable today as they were in the 70’s. The purposeless, senselessly violent war in Vietnam produced inflationary spirals, debt, economic depression and political authoritarianism. The current administration’s policies have produced similar results.
I apologize if that comment is not “light” enough for you, or too difficult for you to understand. I suggest you stick to your job.
Jeffersonian. The Vietnam war destroyed Vietnam, failed to contain the “Communist menace” and presented the US its first ever defeat. Millions or billions of lives would not have been lost if it had not been fought.
Well, Justin, condemning violence is usually subjective.
I’m sure that Dr. King wouldn’t decry the violence visited on the Confederate States of America by the United States of America.
Do we owe the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires an entirely overdue apology?
Shall we also beat our breast about the violence visited upon the Fascist Italians, Nazi Germans, Vichy French, and Imperialist Japanese?
Should we reinstate the previous operators of Abu Grhaib prison, whose practices made American troops look like pikers?
It’s entirely subjective on which violence is politically palatable at the moment.
This week we get to celebrate a gruesome anniversary, one which almost 50 Million americans aren’t here to witness as a result of it. Who in the civil rights community, that claims to succeed Dr. King, will stand up and condemn that violence? Especially since it disproportionately affects the African-American community. Anyone? Anyone….
[blockquote]Jeffersonian. The Vietnam war destroyed Vietnam, failed to contain the “Communist menace†and presented the US its first ever defeat. Millions or billions of lives would not have been lost if it had not been fought. [/blockquote]
You ought to acquaint yourself with the history of Communist tyrannies, Justin, before you blurt such nonsense. Condemning millions to death or lives of slavery because you can plausibly deny you played an active role is hardly a moral, much less Christian, stance.
It always amazes me how most discussions of Vietnam only consider part of the history. For a more complete picture I recommend “The Ten Thousand Day War” and the lengthy PBS series.
We committed to our WW2 ally Ho Chi Minh that we would support self-determination for Vietnam after the war. The Far East branch of the State Department supported this, as they (correctly) saw Ho Chi Minh as an independent nationalist, much like Tito. This view was bolstered by the historic enmity between China and Vietnam. (Recall their serious battles AFTER 1975.)
Unfortunately, our European branch, in a post-WW2 panic over Soviet expansion, felt it was necessary (in the effort to bolster Western Europe as a bulwark aginst the USSR) to support restoration of France’s colony. After France’s failed efforts, we settled for division into North and South. We opposed free elections because we knew Ho/Viet Minh would win.
So the case is pretty clear that the Roosevelt/Truman decision to reverse our WW2 commitment was a mistake. However, it is a separate question as to whether we should have gotten re-involved with Vietnam as we did under JFK/LBJ. I once heard Henry Kissinger suggest that it may have played a necessary role in the larger, successful war against Communism. I don’t think there is any way that could be answered with any certainty.
FWIW, I’m a Vietnam veteran who lost a close childhood friend there. Aside from the Vietnamese people, the greatest victim of the war was the US military, whose members were misused and betrayed. How bizarre and ironic that but for a strange accident of history, LBJ would have died in WW2.
[i]I suggest you stick to your job.[/i]
Wow! There, but for the grace of God, go I….
#11 Sorry, but I believe that about as much as I do that Iraq is a war on terror.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” who T. Jefferson meant was tyranny from our own government.
So In 1955, Ho Chi Minh became president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), a Communist-led single party state. The 1954 Geneva Accords required that a national election would be held in 1956 to reunite Vietnam under one government. However, the US knew that if that were allowed to happed he’d win probably 80% of the vote, so this was prevented. In fact most of the war was one against the South Vietnamese people. Our role in “pacification” is quite barbarous – Dr. Ngo Vinh Long has spoken from one who assisted the US Army.
Sorry, the old JFK line does not hold much clout with me any longer. We lost, our troops were evacuated in 1975. Laos fell, Cambodia is a different story, actually Vietnamese rescued them from a madman. Twenty-thousand names are on a wall in DC and no one has shown how being defeated in the jungles of Asia, by a people we where going to bomb back to the stone ages (they really were not that far out of the stone age) did anything to defeat communion!
A MX missile, SDI and using our possible productivity curve to bankrupt the Soviets, then I think a good case could be made. However the Domino theory was a war sales pitch, if true then we should have seen dramatic negative consequence when we lost and evacuated.
MLK’s questions are still haunting, even more so because we did not win our objectives in the war.
Bill 16- I think your comment on FDR and Truman is historically key here, and only explicable in terms of the ideological framework of the that day. Truman in particular was confronting Greek communists who had as much in common with Stalin as oranges do with apples. Yet, as these Greek communists and Soviet communists were both enemies of the British supported monarchy, the US ended up fighting them in a covert war. Then Korea turned from a quaint backwater to a very nasty conflict. So discriminating between good and bad communists, or fascists in the decade before, wasn’t the way US foreign policy was made. Sure it was a mistake, but from that perspective, it was far from clear then that this black-white dichotomy wasn’t true.
#14 Jimbob,
“I’m sure that Dr. King wouldn’t decry the violence visited on the Confederate States of America by the United States of America.” ”
You should answer your own question Jimbob. How would you have ended the brutality of slavery? Perhaps you should condemn slaveowners for not being nonviolent, or the fascist armies. What is certainly true is that when Grant offered Lee’s soldiers some immunity, they didn’t engage in a guerrilla war for years. After WWI, vindictivness preceded WWII. But after WWII, the Marshall Plan, ushering in years of prosperity.
You also deliberately confuse the Hussein with American torturers, insinuating that torture was justified. what happened is that, in the eyes of Arabs, we lost our moral authority. They can’t tell the difference. And we should have known better. Perhaps if we had invested in Iraqi companies rather than our current system of funding second-rate war-profiteers, we would have seen something different, and not made Iran into the authority it now has.
“It’s entirely subjective on which violence is politically palatable at the moment.”
Yes. If you choose not to look hard enough.
As far as celebrating a “gruesome” anniversary, I’m not sure what you are talking about. If it is abortion, as you note – it affects, disproportionately, the African American population. As does the war on drugs and our current system of military recruitment.
Lots of African American women understand what lies in store for their children: prison or war. Because that’s what we pay for, rather than schools and health.
If you want to end abortion, create a health care system for mothers that is comprehensive. And then invest in full employment, especially for men. People choose abortions when they don’t have insurance, and their partners don’t have jobs.
15 Jeffersonian, what brought down the Communist empire wasn’t years of war: if anything, that gave them a moral stance.
What brought them down was technology and the free market. And the desire of their own people for freedom.
Perhaps if we had taken a proactive stance at different points in the history of our relationship with the Soviet Union, we could have seen a different history. Our anti-communist stance, alas, made us vulnerable to people (like Hussein or Osama Bin Laden) who were themselves opportunists, rejecting moderate socialists who wanted to forge an independent path.