-- On 23 Dec 2003 at 15:07, Tyler Durden wrote:
Ho Chi Min, like Mao, would take guns from anybody in order to get the job done
It is mighty hard to take guns from anybody but Stalin when you are working in Moscow 9 to 5 for Stalin.
. If that meant wearing a Soviet uniform for 15 minutes
He worked behind a desk in Moscow for over ten years in a very senior position, which suggests he joined the KGB as a field agent much earlier. Kind of odd behavior for a nationalist. If you are looking for a nationalist leadership, Stalin's Moscow was not the place to find it.
That US foreign policy in the far east in in Indo-China during most decades of the 20th century was a complete disaster was precisely due to the views you seem to hold.
Containment was a catastrophe from the beginning. The US government should have done what the communists accused us of doing, and provided aid to the resistance in East Germany shortly after Stalin launched the cold war, and aid for the anti communist resistance in China when the true nature of Chinese 'land reform" became apparent. Containment is a strategy that requires one to win or draw every time, at places and times of the enemies choosing. The US army did not win every time, and Vietnam was a bad place and time. With roll back, one could lose some, lose most, or even lose all, and if one launched more wars than the Soviet Union could afford, would still win the overall struggle. Indeed, arguably this was what happened during the second Reagan term. The Soviets were not losing anywhere -- but could not afford it. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Jq9XxD3JlBT5EcJfysZ3Z9MLA4kbYVkDKjq3Wvrf 4Opm3+oP1ir/TfOFhgXW8XuAzWps8FHp6AicowA0O