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A personal view of U. S. foreign policy

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PART ONE OF FOUR

This essay relates to what I see regarding important aspects of U.S. Foreign Policy based on the facts I have on hand. I find that the more I learn, the more I modify my understanding. Take the following as simply my view at the moment, subject to revision based on additional facts coming to light.

I was attending college when an auto accident caused me to drop out for a semester while I earned more money to continue. This occurred during an early buildup of forces in Vietnam, and I received a draft notice. My uncles served in WWII and my brother served in Korea.

I am no pacifist and am certainly willing to defend what we have here in the U.S. I chose to join the Army, picking a job as a transmitter repairman.  During training I began research into the Vietnam War. What I discovered was highly disturbing. The Vietnamese were fighting for independence from French Colonial rule.

France decided to invade Vietnam in 1857 as a result of an upsurge in French capitalism, which generated the need for overseas markets. By 1887 France had imposed a colonial system of government over Vietnam.

At the end of WWI Ho Chi Minh appeared at the Paris Peace Accords asking for independence from France based on one of U.S. President Wilson’s 14 points that called for each ethnic group to rule itself. But with Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France, serving as one of the three members of the Accords along with Wilson and David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there was no chance Ho’s request would be honored.

In the late 1940s the Vietnamese began a revolt against French rule. By this time the Vietnamese were getting support from Mao’s China.

The U.S. stepped in to support and then replace the French. The explicit reason for this was the fear of international communism’s possible expansion throughout Southeast Asia. This was known as the Domino Theory.

According to this theory, a malignant communism would continue spreading from nation to nation in Southeast Asia. Indeed, President Eisenhower, facing a growing mess that was occurring in Vietnam, was torn as he didn’t want the U.S. to be perceived as opposing nationalism but on the other hand, by the fear of international communism which had pretty well become a religious belief in the upper echelons of our government.

I was personally unimpressed with this view. I have always believed that if the majority of people in a nation want a particular form of government, it is their right to demand it.  Just as it is my neighbor’s right to decide to be a Lutheran or a Catholic, a Democrat or Republican.

I was also persuaded by my experience growing up in Los Angeles during the McCarthy era. The hot headed senator from Wisconsin raised the temperature of a large segment of the U.S. public with demagogic zeal with his infamous list of supposed traitors in the U.S. State Department.

But let’s get real here. Communism is nothing more than an economic system, and a wretchedly deficient one at that. Dismissing it as a miserable idea makes more sense than the “better dead than red” hysteria McCarthy drummed up. And since communism is atheistic, it was very easy to enlist the support of every church in America in his mad effort to convince us of the impending danger.

And the massive murders committed by Joseph Stalin helped to make the case.  But that is an artifact of Stalin’s leadership, not a fundamental tenet of communism. My own personal view is that since it came in response to the excesses of capitalism and scares to death anyone who has accumulated a significant amount of wealth, an exaggerated response was deemed appropriate.

Nail this terrible idea into a coffin.

Sincerely,

Michael Daly

Guest Columnist