> reaction is instructive. The press condemned the "Prussians" of Asia for
> their outrageous violation of international law. They were harshly punished
> for the crime of having ended Pol Pot's slaughters, first by a (U.S.-backed)
> Chinese invasion, then by U.S. imposition of extremely harsh sanctions. The
> U.S. recognized the expelled DK as the official government of Cambodia,
> because of its "continuity" with the Pol Pot regime, the State Department
Harshly punished, my foot -- Vietnam was largely autarkic, got its arms from the Soviets and didn't depend on foreign trade for much of anything. I'm doing a little project on Vietnamese culture right now, and it's just amazing, how many times the Chinese Empire tried to invade Vietnam -- and then got its ass kicked, century after century since 986 AD. The 1979 invasion was pretty despicable, but it was a product of internal Chinese power-politics (Deng Xiaoping's grip on power was still incomplete) and a literally millenia-long history of regional imperialism.
The spectacle of the dollar Taliban cashing in the oil Taliban, to borrow Negri's memorable phrase, is just one of those prehistorical things, like rival mobsters rubbing each other out.
-- Dennis