>>> 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.
Uh huh. Just to humor me, I ask that you assume that I'm an idiot, and give me a brief summary of the relevant history.
> 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.
Right. And I've never seen anyone seriously argue that Mullah Omar wasn't a convinced Islamist. But my point was that that's not the point -- countries aren't the embodiment of one person. Different people will come to power under different conditions.
Do you see what I mean? If there were still a Soviet Union, someone could say, well, Mullah Omar was a believer in lots of very bad things. In fact, if there still were a Soviet Union, I guarantee lots of people WOULD say that. I suspect in that case you'd think of them as apologists for the Soviet attack on Afghanistan.