----- Original Message -----
From: "Bradford DeLong" <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>
>
> 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
Doesn't this downplay the importance of an already highly developed level of industrialism in W. Europe that didn't exist in Korea or Vietnam? The Marshall Plan helped finance European recovery and the Dodge Plan helped Japan. How did we help Korea or Vietnam or we destroyed them? Blaming post-1975 poverty primarily on really existing socialism rather than on U.S. aggression seems a greater stretch to me.
John Thornton