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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (12184)	8/28/1998 12:48:00 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

I don't think you are sympathetic to communism, just mistaken about its virulence and capacity to oppress a population and destroy any opposition. The common people couldn't organize to rid themselves of a communist party because the regimes used violence and terror to end any resistance. Secret police, neighborhood spies, arbitrary arrest, these are common techniques they used to control a populace. I think you overstate our support of the French in Indochina. The French were using American aid to fund their military, but at the time of Dien Bien Phu Eisenhower not only didn't supply air support, he pulled out the only American GIs in Indochina, some 200 mechanics. The French knew America had a policy opposing colonialism. Eisenhower pulled support from both the French and British in the Suez Crisis around the same time, for reasons of colonialism. In 1945 we had far bigger problems than Indochina to keep us occupied. Demobilization. The Soviets consolidating puppet regimes in Central Europe. Civil war in Greece. The Berlin Airlift. The Marshall Plan to keep Western Europe from collapsing. Administering Japan. We made our disapproval of colonialism known 20 years earlier with Wilson's 14 Points, and the French were aware of American policy. But the French are very independent, we couldn't rule them, and since we needed their cooperation in Europe we had no real lever to use against them in Asia. No American was going to tell Degaulle what to do.