[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on New American Imperialism

[C. G. Estabrook]

What brought the Vietnam War to a close was, in order of decreasing importance,

(a) the resistance of the Vietnamese people to the American invasion of South 
Vietnam;

(b) the revolt of the conscript army the US had sent on an imperial mission; and

(c) the conclusion by about 70% of the American public by the late 1960s that 
the war was "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake" (in the words of 
the longitudinal poll by Chicago Council on Foreign Relations).

And with the close of the war the Vietnamese experiment in building an 
economically successful post-colonial society was destroyed.  Since the 
principal US war aim was to prevent that from happening, the US won the war.


On 6/28/10 4:30 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:
> Good point Stuart even if it may be a little optimistic.  It is good to
> understand and respect one's enemies and their capabilities; but it is not so
> good to hope in the face of past history and experience for those who are easily
> deceived to become less so or for those who went along to get along before to
> suddenly see the light and stand up against the machine. It is certainly
> optimistic to assume that the masses will take up arms against the establishment
> and become anything more than "paper tigers" armed with words until their
> personal interests are at stake in a real and immediate way. Should that happen,
> they will become frightened sheep who will follow anyone who appears to offer
> simple answers and courses of action that play to the fears. The tea party
> movement, the Arizona reaction to immigration, the white power movements, etc.
> tend to give evidence to this and serve as potential examples and illustrations
> just as the McCarthyism, the racist, and the anti-immigrant movements of the
> past did.
>
> The almost complete bureaucratization, transformation from an industrialized
> society into a high tech service society, and the corporatization of the U.s.
> and most of the Western world has changed the conditions drastically from what
> existed even in the 1960 so as to alter the possibilities for rebellion and
> revolt of the masses back then which influenced the establishment and brought
> the Viet Nam war to a close. The substantive disregard for the beliefs,
> interests, and desires of masses (or even those who voted for him) by the Obama
> administration with respect to policies, practices, and actions gives ample
> evidence of this change in that we hear all kinds of disparaging comments and
> talk but little actual rebellion by the masses - even the collage age members of
> the public. We certainly do not see the working classes or the poor out on the
> streets disrupting business as usual, refusing to volunteer for service in the
> military establishment, cutting back on their conspicuous consumption and
> consumerism, etc. The fact that they are hurting economically has effectively
> restricted their ability to engage in consumerism and conspicuous consumption;
> but it has not curbed their desire to do so if they were given the capability to
> do so. They complain about losses of jobs to China, Mexico, and other third
> world countries while on their way to shop at Wal-Mart so as to buy cheap
> products produced by low wage workers in those third world countries.
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Stuart Levy" <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
> Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 3:40 PM
> To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
> Cc: <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Chomsky on New American Imperialism
>
>> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 02:35:33PM -0500, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> Of course, it's not an excuse for 'staying' (i.e., continuing to kill
>>> people) or a justification of aggression and occupation to say that that is
>>> the policy of the entire US political establishment. That's what we've
>>> been saying all along, in the face of those who thought Obama would save us
>>> from the Awful McCain (or Palin! or the Teapartiers!) - and so we had to
>>> support him...
>>>
>>> Like Ophelia, we were the more deceived.
>>
>> Right -- it's nothing like an excuse. But it is good for us to understand
>> the dynamics of wars, who gains what from them, and how they're sustained,
>> in order to be able to fit arguments against them.
>>
>> If the strongest thing sustaining our Af/Pak war is US "political necessity",
>> that actually seems encouraging, because a raucous movement saying that
>> it's a war that the American people don't want could change that political fact.
>>
>>>
>>> On 6/28/10 1:58 PM, Stuart Levy wrote:
>>>> ... One comment that surprised me was that, from Obama's point of view,
>>>> Chomsky thinks the dominant reasons for sticking with the war in
>>>> Afghanistan,
>>>> at this point, are domestic ones: backing out would be political suicide.
>>
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