[lbo-talk] Re: Law Student With a History of Taking Left Turns

[Brad DeLong]

>On Saturday, July 19, 2003, at 09:14 PM, Brad DeLong 
><delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>
>>Are you saying that you think that Ho Chi Minh was better than Nguyen
>>Van Thieu, that Mao Zedong was better than Chang Kaishek, and that
>>Kim Il Sung was better than Syngman Rhee?
>>
>>Brad DeLong
>
>Brad, I don't think these are the right questions.... Generally 
>speaking, any attack by one country on another leads to the 
>political system in the country under attack becoming harsher.... 
>It's likely that Afghanistan would have been a much nicer place and 
>wouldn't have ruled by Mullah Omar in 2001 if the Soviet Union 
>hadn't invaded and torn it to shreds. Similar answers can be given 
>to your questions regarding Vietnam, and, to a lesser extent, China 
>and North Korea.
>

Quite frankly, no. Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung did the attacking. To 
say that their regimes would have had more sweetness and light if 
only they hadn't been "attacked" is positively Orwellian.

Ho Chi Minh is different: a Communist-Nationalist leader fighting 
foreign European colonialists and neocolonialists. But I've never 
seen anyone seriously argue that Ho was not a convinced Communist--a 
believer in total state control, collectivized agriculture, and lots 
of other very bad things.

Brad DeLong