Larry,
<<I think there is a salient difference. Conservatives tend ot regard rightest authoritarian regimes as the lessor of evils, even though they recognize they may be undesirable. They are frequently regarded as allies of convenience at best, and often as simply handy guys to have around. The left tends to regard leftist governments as desirable- witness the fawning over an aging dictator like Fidel Castro. Mme. Mitterand encapsulated it well when she said, "Ce n'est pas un dictator." I think such blinkered thinking does not generally exist on the right- I personally never heard anyone defend Franco, and the best they could muster about Marcos was he was an anticommunist.>>
Frankly, I'm not sure that US support of any brutal right wing regimes was actually ever in this country's political interest, whether it was in SE Asia or Central or South America, where the majority of the cases probably occurred. The creation of South Vietnam in 1954 in order to prevent Ho from being elected was absurd, and was NOT realpolitik, it was a classic case of "blinkered thinking" which ignored the long history of animosity between Vietnam and China, and was a stupid reaction to what was then called "the loss of China". It and most if not all of our mistakes in that area of the world might have been prevented if all of our "left leaning" scholars of that area had not been purged from the universities at the time by the hardline right.
And our record in central America from the Panama Canal episodes through Somoza through the sordid actions especially in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 80s (not to mention Nicaragua) does not imply brilliant strategy, it was stupid, cynical and brutal, that is all.
I have to cut this short, I'm being called. But I want to add that it is this apparent brutal cynicism of the right (we'll defend me and mine no matter what it does to anyone else) which drives people on the left like me (which is definitely NOT like all people on the so-called left) crazy. It is why Vietnam seemed--and still seems--brutually stupid and wildly crazy, it is why our central and south american adventures are viewed with disgust.
More later, perhaps. |
