Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> At 1:23 PM -0400 9/27/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
> >I still think Barney Frank had the most succinct statement of the biggest
> >difference between the Vietnam War and more recent conflicts. Ho Chi Minh
> >was on the right side back then.
This is simply arrogant and reveals the rotten core of liberalism. I happened to believe personally that Ho was indeed on the right side in Vietnam, but I _know_ beyond any shadow of a doubt (or any willingness to debate _this_ particular point) that the U.S. has no fucking right to decide what is "right" and "wrong" for other peoples. Nations need to fight out their own civil wars. The defining task of leftists in the U.S. is to fight against U.S. interference in the rest of the world. (I agree with Yoshie's arguments in this post, but I wanted to emphasize this point.)
Marx's arguments, as quoted by Yoshie, appled to Ireland and the British working class whether the leaders of the Irish independence movement were saints or serial killers.
Then there is the not minor empirical point: leaving aside (as a partial exception) WW 2, for 100 years every single intervention by the U.S. in the affairs (domestic or foreign) of other nations has left the world in general and those other nations in particular worse off than before. Afghanistan would have been better off with no foreign interference. Further foreign interference (regadless of how well intentioned, and u.s. interference is never well-intentiones) will not correct earlier horrors but only lead to greater horrors to come.
Carrol