----- Original Message ----- From: Peter K. <peterk at enteract.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 9:58 PM Subject: Re: Another CIA Revelation
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> I know this annoys the hell out of people, but Germany and Japan and Italy
> - Afghanistan - were "democratized with bombs."
Depends what you mean by "democratized." What the US and Britain did following the war was to reinstitution the traditional fascists order right back into power. This was done by undermining and basically destroying the left based Resistance movement which was worker and peasant based. The US had no beef with fascism as long as it wasn't conflicting with US interests. That's why the US supported Hitler and Mussolini when they came to power. There are class aspects of WWII which are mostly ignored in the mainstream for obvious reasons....they tell the wrong story. Europe in general was ripe for revolution prior to WWII and afterwards because the business community, by and large, sided with fascism...Its in their bones, sort of speak. Same story in Greece....
Plenty of good books on the topic...try The Politics of War by Kolko, or The Splendid Blond Beast by Christopher Simpson. I don't really know about Japan all than well, but I think the story is basically the same with the US undermining the left based and popular worker lead movement. The US did support labor rights in Japan after the War but moved onto the "reverse course" when the situation started to get out of control. That's why the US supported the Japanese in Korea right before the Korean war broke out, or the French in Vietnam against the will of the overwhelming majority of the population.
Its a long story well documented by plenty scholarship...its pretty much conceded by more the more mainstream historians now, but the usual response is that the US had no choice but to do what it did since the communists-whoever they maybe-were set to take over the world. That's our job.-Tony
Good point about India.
> Bush was being moronic when he included Iran in the axis of evil as well.
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> peace,
> Peter
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