vampirarchist posted:1. lol how can a few thousand sedevacantists be worth chasing after. i mean "go after the one lost sheep" and all that but why do all this out of fear of alienating ultra-traditionalist schismastics
if the church considers it a schism, they have someone on it. part of the whole "i believe in one holy roman and apostolic" etc. i mean they have a team on the Lutherans right now and they are definitely more likely to loop the unauthorized Tridentines back in than them.
but I feel this thread should be about the Vietnam war books not this maybe.
jeffery posted:"The most comprehensive, up-to-date, and balanced account
we have."—Boston Globe. "Superb, balanced in interpretation...
immensely readable and full of new and interesting detail."—George Herring, Univ. of KentuckyWritten by Stanley Karnow, a former Southeast Asian correspondent for "Time" and "Life" magazines, and "The Washington Post,"
hahahaaaa it has come out now in popular media that the CIA essentially ran time magazine for decades. the future is awesome because comedy and tragedy are right around every corner to purvey at your leisure
(page 5)
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http://www.japanfocus.org/-K-Hewison/2590
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On the opening pages Karnow tries to establish the spirit of American intervention at the time which according to Karnow one of "manifest destiny", American exceptionalism and so on...
On page 11 (page 3 of actual text) and we're already off on the wrong foot:
The Vietnam War was a struggle between victims? Not some sort of struggle between, say, classes? Between imperialists and the oppressed?. Notice too the range of opinion allowed for, the war was either a "valid venture" or a "misguided endeavor". At worst the US was simply misguided - not say; genocidal, rapacious, exploitative, malicious, etc etc. Further down on page 11 we are told "the roots of the American intervention in Vietnam were planted and nurtured in what Professor Daniel Bell of Harvard has called America's concept of its own "exceptionalism"". The roots of this conflict, according to Karnow, are not to be found in material circumstances, but in the ideology of the American people and especially their political and intellectual leaders.
Here on page 12 we are quite explicitly told that America had no (or little) commercial interests in Vietnam (actually the paragraph seems to imply USA had no commercial interests in Asia or Africa at all?). At this stage of my Readings idk anything about the economy of Vietnam but as a Marxist (
) I'm skeptical of this claim. Maybe we can come back to this at another time. Here we are informed that America is apparently above the imperialism of the British and other European countries and that Americans are repelled by the very idea of governing other peoples. Later on the same page we're told that the US's aqcuisition of The Phillipines had been "reluctant" and that "Cuba was granted independence"...
Hmmmm waitaminute that doesn't sound right *Makeshift_Swahili pulls a book about Cuba from shelf*. Cuban independence movement had been fighting against the Spanish since 1895... Cuba won independence from Spain with US help/intervention in 1898 (US intervened in 1898, after the sinking of the USS Maine). US troops occupied Cuba from 1898 to 1902, at which point Cuba was made a US protectorate... President McKinley argued that intervention against the Spanish in Cuba was justified because of "the very serious injury to the commerce, trade, and business of our people and by the wanton destruction of property and devastation of the island". Note that various US administrations had tried to purchase Cuba directly from the Spanish multiple times previously. The Platt Amendment which was passed in the US congress in 1901 and added to the Cuban constitution of 1902 (the amendment was initially rejected and then passed by a slim margin by the Cubans) gave the US the " right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government for the protection of life, proprety, and individual liberty " which of course meant that US troops would again be in Cuba in 1906, 1912 and 1917. In 1896 10% of Cuba's total sugar production came from mills that were owned by American capitalists... by 1926 it was 63%. Here's what the US Department Of Commerce had to say about Cuba in 1956:
The only foreign investments of importance are those of the United States. American participation exceeds 90 percent in the telephone and electric services, about 50 percent in public service railways, and roughly 40 percent in raw sugar production. The Cuban branches of United States banks are entrusted with almost one-fourth of all bank deposits...
None of this kind of stuff is acknowledged in Karnow's account of American power. Later he accepts that it would be "a gross distortion to suggest that the US presence abroad was consistently prompted by such benign altruism" (page 13). However, this admission is not in any way expounded on, and he quickly moves to say that "a more prevalent strain in American expansionism was evangelical - as if the United States, fulfilling some sacred responsibility, had been singled out by the divinity for the salvation of the planet". Again Karnow places the root of US intervention in the realm of the ideological - unlike British imperialism which has simple material needs like raw resources and opening up new markets for British goods. Ignored is the fact that many British also saw their empire as the same enlightening force - e.g J.S Mill's "A Few Words on Non-Intervention" or writers like Rudyard Kipling.
Skipping ahead to page 26 for a second:
Here we get a hint that perhaps Americans atrocities were not just a "misguided endeavor" but rather a systemic policy of extermination. Any civilian who is scared of Americans can be killed in standard operating procedure. They are supposedly terrorists while we are simply misguided at worst.
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I think importantly the second half of this chapter is to show the outcome of the implied imperialist narrative of the first half (first half being misguided manifest destiny and then "Vietnam Sydrome" which Karnow argues was finally shaken off after the Gulf War). That is, America had Vietnam's best interests at heart; at worst they were "misguided". So now we can see what happens when America is repelled - the people simply aren't able to govern themselves, communism is a dead-end and lives end up in ruin and so on. I'm interested to read Kolko's book now which I think has a leftist critique of Vietnam after the war towards the end.
^ troops are garbage
^ lol
conec posted:hm i started ch two on saturday i guess. i hav disorganized notes jus hav been too lazy to piece them together nd post sth. am tangled in about four other texts for school atm ~ neway will be posting more sh`d eventually.
no rush, i'm finishing off an Edward Said thingy
conec posted:ch two drifts off a bit and is probably even more anti communist
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here's the first half of the official PAVN history. i'll have the rest up sometime next week
Bablu posted:http://www.docdroid.net/h0dn/victory-in-vietnam-scans-1-247.pdf.htmlhere's the first half of the official PAVN history. i'll have the rest up sometime next week
ur doing god's work ^_^
Makeshift_Swahili posted:no rush, i'm finishing off an Edward Said thingy
Makeshift_Swahili posted:Gerard Chaliand - The Peasants Of North Vietnam
Coincidentally this Edward Said book "Culture & Imperialism" namedrops Gerard Chaliand as a Western anti-imperialist writer who became somewhat disillusioned during the 70s and 80s. No matter hopefully, this particular Chaliand book is from 1968.
Makeshift_Swahili posted:I think importantly the second half of this chapter is to show the outcome of the implied imperialist narrative of the first half (first half being misguided manifest destiny and then "Vietnam Sydrome" which Karnow argues was finally shaken off after the Gulf War). That is, America had Vietnam's best interests at heart; at worst they were "misguided". So now we can see what happens when America is repelled - the people simply aren't able to govern themselves, communism is a dead-end and lives end up in ruin and so on.
"The settler makes history; his life is an epoch, an Odyssey. He is the absolute beginning. 'This land was created by us'; he is the unceasing cause: 'If we leave, all is lost, and the country will go back to the Middle Ages.'" - Fanon
Barbarossa posted:god bless the vietcong. they fucking won against america's rape, murder and torture of their entire country for the better part of a decade. i dont mean to whitewash anything that the vietcong did but holy shit when the biggest strongest richest country in the world decides arbitrarily that you can't be communist Vietnam refused to eat that shit sandwich and served it up to us instead. What I say here is not speculation, it is fact, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people died to make Vietnam what it is today. We used Vietnam as a medium to fight "global communism" and hundreds of thousands died over what the rich and powerful told us to do
anti imperialism can only be fought by a global class conscious proletariat, vietnam is one of the largest manufacturers for US products today, what did national liberation accomplish?
fleights posted:anti imperialism can only be fought by a global class conscious proletariat, vietnam is one of the largest manufacturers for US products today, what did national liberation accomplish?
while it's true that the marxist project has more or less vanished in vietnam—and the same could be said for nearly every country that experienced socialist revolution in the 20th century—you can't discount the significance of two concrete victories: the overthrow of colonial rule and the formation of a unified vietnam. it may not mean much to us, but the events of 1975 represented the culmination of an independence struggle that had endured for centuries.
conec posted:rory
the irony is painful
fleights posted:Barbarossa posted:god bless the vietcong. they fucking won against america's rape, murder and torture of their entire country for the better part of a decade. i dont mean to whitewash anything that the vietcong did but holy shit when the biggest strongest richest country in the world decides arbitrarily that you can't be communist Vietnam refused to eat that shit sandwich and served it up to us instead. What I say here is not speculation, it is fact, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people died to make Vietnam what it is today. We used Vietnam as a medium to fight "global communism" and hundreds of thousands died over what the rich and powerful told us to do
anti imperialism can only be fought by a global class conscious proletariat, vietnam is one of the largest manufacturers for US products today, what did national liberation accomplish?
I think it's a mistake to look at it within the framework of such a rigid binary, where it's either "full utopian communism" or "it's a failure." Such thinking is an easy trap to fall into and I continually see well-meaning leftists disparage movements, people or nations simply because the movement's platform and/or actions did not meet some (subjective) theoretical ideal. How I look at it, anyways, is a gradual process of reforms (not in the liberal sense) where the structures of capitalism are eroded to make space for worker ownership to emerge—which requires close examination of the ideological underpinning those actions, whether they are conservative or revolutionary (i.e. Allende's chile versus Sweeden). As an aside: ironically, that in bringing society closer to socialism, capitalism's functioning becomes more stable as restraints are placed upon the contradictory forces. But, whatever. Like with anything, there are setbacks because not everything goes the way we imagine it. I think, as far as communism is concerned, the fall of the USSR and the mismanagement of it, by some real Fuckers, was a massive setback that lead to regression of the maturation of socialism. That is not to say that historical pockets of resistance are meaningless in some nihilistic or fatalistic outlook because the USSR fell anyways, simply that shit happens and we shouldn't become dismayed because of it.
Also, it does have significance in ways that we may not be able to full grasp or interpret simply because of the limitations of our subjective experience, knowledge, and what not:
fleights posted:Barbarossa posted:god bless the vietcong. they fucking won against america's rape, murder and torture of their entire country for the better part of a decade. i dont mean to whitewash anything that the vietcong did but holy shit when the biggest strongest richest country in the world decides arbitrarily that you can't be communist Vietnam refused to eat that shit sandwich and served it up to us instead. What I say here is not speculation, it is fact, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people died to make Vietnam what it is today. We used Vietnam as a medium to fight "global communism" and hundreds of thousands died over what the rich and powerful told us to do
anti imperialism can only be fought by a global class conscious proletariat, vietnam is one of the largest manufacturers for US products today, what did national liberation accomplish?
anti imperialism can and should be fought by everyone everywhere. so Vietnam is different now than it was in the early 70s, stuff happens. national liberation allowed the vietnamese people to choose their own future, and if that involves making a bunch of bullshit from factories to ship to the United States then power to them.
I will also say that there has been enormous worldwide pressure on all countries to conform to the free market/capitalistic paradigm, and i can hardly blame lil ol vietnam for not upholding the international people's war for the 40+ years following the Vietnam war.
Ho cultivated a reputation for ascetic celibacy during those years, but reality may have been different. One old comrade has claimed that the Russians furnished him with a "wife" in Moscow. A communist official in Hanoi told me in 1981 that Ho had loved a Chinese woman, a doctor, who died before they could marry. And yet another story has it that General Lung Yun, the warlord of Yunnan province, who frequently lodged Ho on his estate in Kunming, arranged a liaison for him with a Chinese woman. Whatever the truth, Ho cultivated the image of himself as Uncle Ho, his passions devoted solely to his national family.
Ho Chi Minh -- devoted leader or sex tourist??
(Btw, I think in different editions of this book might have changed chapter organisation around? all the anti-communist stuff is in chapter 1 for me, even tho conec said it was in chapter 2. chapter 2 is just about french imperialism...)
Ok to start with we have competing European imperialisms in the region... especially Portugeuse early on (16th to 17th century)....
Scarcely a century after their dramatic expansion, the Portuguese began to lose their grasp in Asia, partly because of their avarice, corruption and mismanagement, and partly because their fortunes were declining in Europe. Other European powers raced for Asia's wealth. The Dutch took over the Spice Islands of Indonesia and the English would dominate India. In 1676, the French latecomers to the scene established a station at Pondicherry, on the east coast of India south of Madras. But Europeans made little headway in Vietnam.
(page 57-58)
The small influence at the time included trading, e.g. selling weapons to both sides in the Trinh/Nguyễn war and also the creeping influence of Cathlolic missionaries.
A theme through this chapter is the changing/contradictory attitudes taken towards the catholic missionaries by Vietnamese rulers. Sometimes tolerated for their connection with European merchants/engineers etc, and other times persecuted as being (rightfully) regarded as tools of European imperialism.
One important early figure for French imperialism in Vietnam is Alexandre de Rhodes
(from wiki): "While he was in Vietnam, he wrote the first Vietnamese Catechism and he published the first Portuguese-Latin-Vietnamese dictionary. This dictionary was later used widely by many Vietnamese scholars to create the new Vietnamese alphabet, using the Latin script – still used today and now called Quốc Ngữ (national language)."
(pages 60-61)
So about a century later we get the Tayson rebellion... Vietnam at the time was controlled by the Nguyễn lords in the south and The Trịnh lords in the north...
(page 62)
Nguyen Anh and Pigneau turn to get support from the French government "France agreed to furnish Nguyen Anh with 1,650 French officers and men, weapons, ammunition and transportation. In return Vietnam would give up Tourane and Puolo Condore to France as well as commercial privileges "to the exclusion of all other European nations". (page 63)
Not to harp on Karnow too much but he has a habit of saying un-materialist things, like Pigneau "through the sheer drive of his personality propelled France towards the conquest of Vietnam a hundred years later" (page 55), Karnow actually undermines himself by writing just a couple of paragraphs later:
The riches of the East, real and fabled, tantalized Europe. Travelers like Marco Polo had returned with breathless tales of Burmese temples "covered with gold a full finger thick", and Indian shores whose "sands sparkled and glittered with gems and precious ores." But no Asian treasure matches its pepper, nutmeg, clove and other spices essential to preserve food, especially in the warmer climates of southern Europe. Unlike silks and jewels, which only the affluent could afford, spices were in universal demand, and they yielded profits of a thousandfold or more on European markets
(pages 55-56)
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Ok so the Nguyen Anh / French alliance didn't last long as Louis XVI in the late 1780's was obviously having his own problems in france. Despite withdrawing French support, Pigneau promised to stick with Nguyen Anh and they built up their own troops. in 1799 Pigneau dies of dysentery, and by 1802 Nguyen Anh had crowned himself emperor. Nguyen Anh takes the regnal name Gia Long and doesn't consider himself indebted in any way to France, only Pigneau. He tolerates Christianity and welcomes some European trade, but doesn't give France any privileges over other Western countries. In any case, France is in a pretty weak position at the moment and can't commit to a new imperialist drive for a few decades...
However, Minh Mang, Gia Long's successor, cracked down on Catholic missionaries.
(page 67)
By 1843 (Vietnam now ruled by Minh Mang's successor, Thieu Tri) France deployed a permanent French fleet in Asian waters "to protect, and if necessary to defend, our political and commercial interests" including an incident in 1847 in Tourane (aka Da Nang) where they killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in a wild goose chase for a French missionary (pages 68-70)
Thiea Tri was only in power 6 years before he died, then we have Tu Duc (who is in power for the next ~35 years, an important period of French imperialist expansion in Vietnam) who "decreed that Vietnamese Catholics be branded on the left cheek with the characters ta dao, meaning "infidel," and their properties confiscated" .... "European missionaries were to be drowned and Vietnamese priests cut in half lengthwise" (page 71).
In 1852 we have Louis Napoleon declaring himself emperor and again sparking French imperialist expansion. Tourane was a particular target of interest because it was a "valueable harbor for commerce and a strategic base for war" (page 71). By the mid 1850s the French vioces for intervention become louder, with one of Napoleon III's advisory groups stating "Will we be the only ones without possessions in Asia, where the English, Dutch, Spanish and even Russians are strengthening their positions?" (page 74)
So in 1858 we have the Siege of Tourane which actually did pretty badly incurring much larger casualties than planned, leading to a French evacuation... However "manufacturers and merchants seeking overseas markets, officers and officials yearning for adventure - all raised their voices" (page 76) and France was back at it again in 1861 in Saigon, which it eventually captured. In 1862 "Tu Duc paid an exorbitant price for peace" including giving up the three provinces adjacent to Saigon (this area would be known as Cochinchina), freedom for Catholic priests, and "granted the French the right to forbid Vietnam to cede any part of its territory to another power" (page 76).
20 years later the French took advantage of Tu Ducs death and pushed to gain the rest of Vietnam, splitting it into three administrative areas; Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina, not without difficulties as Tonkin was also sought after by the Chinese (by the end of 1883 France would have 20,000 troops in Tonkin {page 86}).
(page 88)
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