[lbo-talk] Obama and the Cult of Personality

[Matthias Wasser]

>
> Without getting into the finer points of international law, about which I
> know
> shockingly little, is not the crux of the "pre-emptive war" concept the
> notion that
> Country X can launch an offensive attack on Country Y even though Country Y
> has
> not attacked Country X and in fact poses no immediate and credible threat to
> the
> security of Country X? And is that not precisely the policy directly put
> into effect by
> the US in Vietnam (and on a far lesser scale in Grenada, Libya, and Panama,
> among
> others) and through subterfuge or by proxy in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, El
> Salvador,
> Nicaragua, a host of frontline states, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Or is
> there something
> beyond a juridical technicality (one that helps to ingratiate the US with
> its core capitalist
> junior partners, to be sure) missing here?
>

Vietnam was the US honoring its obligations to its allies; in most of
the other cases, the States was helping a friendly government to deal
with internal political problems.