Tom the Exterminator on the Middle East

[Bradford DeLong]

>Michael Pollak wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>>  Did the U.S. really lose the Vietnam war?
>>
>>Yes.  How can you doubt it?  Everything we feared happened.  To put it
>>differently: things could not possibly have worked out worse, and could
>>well have worked out better, if we'd let them hold an election in 1954.
>>Everything it cost us was in vain.  How is that not losing?
>>
>>>  The only revolution of consequence after the U.S. withdrawal was in
>>>  Nicaragua, and that didn't end very well.
>>
>>Yes, but what does one have to do with the other?
>
>Because the U.S., despite having "lost" the war, left Vietnam such a 
>wreck that it discouraged any rude experiments elsewhere.
>
>Doesn't Chomsky make this argument? I think I first got the idea 
>from him, and was persuaded.
>
>Doug

But Japan and West Germany--with what appeared to be a much larger 
share of their social capital destroyed by bombing--grew very, very 
rapidly indeed after the end of World War II. Blaming post-1975 
Vietnamese poverty on the U.S. Air Force rather than on really 
existing socialism seems, to me at least, a *real* stretch...

Brad DeLong