LEFTIST DENIAL OF A MORE RECENT HOLOCAUST

There are Vietnamese restaurants all over the Western world providing testimony to the holocaust that followed the Communist takeover of Vietnam but many Leftists pretend that the holocaust concerned did not happen

The Nov. 15 edition of the left-wing radio show "Democracy Now" featured former Sen. George McGovern debating whether we withdraw troops from Iraq or increase them.... He was asked by the host, "You were one of the earliest people speaking out against the U.S. attack and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. What happened? How did the U.S. pull out? What were people saying then?"

McGovern's reply was nothing short of delusional. He said, "... they were saying the same thing they're saying about Iraq. We were told all during those long years when I and others were trying to terminate our military involvement in Vietnam, an intervention that the chief architects now say was a dreadful mistake. ...that if we pulled out - maybe it was a mistake to go in, but if we pulled out, there would be a slaughter of people in Vietnam of indescribable dimensions, that Ho Chi Minh and his people would just slaughter everybody in the country that disagreed with him. We also were told that the countries next door would start toppling into communism, if we left Vietnam. None of that happened."

None of this happened? Maybe he should ask - as I have - the "boat people" who fled Vietnam to escape the holocaust that followed the communist conquest of Vietnam, or talk to the Vietnamese refugees who were sentenced to "re-education" camps for five and 10 years. Maybe he should talk to Vietnam War protester and singer Joan Baez, who in 1976 and 1979 protested the human rights atrocities of the Vietnamese communists (and was denounced as a CIA stooge by Jane Fonda's ex-husband Tom Hayden). Indeed, all Sen. McGovern really needs to do is review his own 1978 speech calling for military intervention in Cambodia to stop the communist holocaust. (Leftist icon Noam Chomsky vehemently criticized McGovern for this.) McGovern wanted to use military force to stop the very same holocaust he now denies occurred. Why would they deny?

The answer may be found in a 1995 essay written by the newly elected Virginia senator, Democrat James Webb. A veteran of Vietnam, Webb wrote an essay titled, "Robert McNamara, the Anti-War Left, and the Triumph of Intellectual Dishonesty," for the Fall 1995 edition of Strategic Review. Webb's essay begins with him describing a presentation he made to some business people about Vietnam when the subject of the war was broached. He mentions the then-recently published book about Vietnam by Robert McNamara, the architect of the war.

He states how the war was distorted by the anti-war left then and now. Webb comments, "... there has been a persistent conspiracy of silence that has lasted for decades, accompanied of late by an attempt to leap over the carcasses and the devastation that followed the communist takeover, to simply pretend it did not happen." Webb continues, "Few, if any, of the old anti-war luminaries, Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, George McGovern, Peter Arnett, 'Tom Harkin, Bill or Hillary Clinton ... could find it in themselves to conjure up an apology, or admit they were wrong in judging a communist apparatus that brought Southeast Asia's strongest and most pro-Western culture back into the dark ages, only to haltingly emerge fifteen years later reeking of torture, prison camps, Stalinism and corruption."

The next paragraph mentions McGovern and the motivation for this denial of the communist holocaust. Webb wrote, "The reason ... was stated most honestly and directly to me by George McGovern ... while taping the "CNN Crossfire' show ... the antiwar candidate who had once promised to go to Hanoi on his knees if he were elected President turned to me and announced in his emotionless monotone, 'What you don't understand is that I didn't want us to win that war."' (Emphasis added)

Webb applies this to the entire anti-war movement, "The people who directed the antiwar movement did not care whether McNamara had a workable strategy ... They did not care whether Nixon's Vietnamization program might have worked. They did not care whether the South Vietnamese should have been given an adequate chance to adjust their strategy after the American withdrawal. ... they did not care whether the communists signed a pledge guaranteeing free elections and a peaceful reunification of the country. Quite simply, they wanted the communists to win. Those who were adults during the Vietnam era know this truth full well. Others, however, particularly our children, have seen it glazed over and even denied as the reality of what happened after 1975 became ever more clear." (Emphasis added)

Webb then makes a salient point, "The failure of the media to show these old luminaries and their younger disciples in this true light is important ... . Only by understanding their deeper motivations can future generations comprehend the making and ultimate failure of American policy during that period, and the subsequent refusal of our media elites to speak and write honestly after South Vietnam's fall ... . Vietnam was the first war where a generation's elite not only excused itself from fighting but often openly supported the side that was killing their own countrymen ..."

Genocide authority Professor R.J. Rummel described what occurred in SE Asia as democide. He wrote, "...after the North's victory ... . Hundreds of thousands were murdered - executed outright, or dying in "re-education camps," and in the "new economic zones." ... over a million Vietnamese that risked an awful death on the ocean to escape the communists enslavement (the Boat People), of which perhaps 500,000 never made land again... . Then there was the communist Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia ... Result: about 2,000,000 murdered."

Why is it that McGovern and others who deny the Indochinese communist holocaust are not considered lunatics as they would be if they were denying the holocaust of the Nazis?

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Secret new US spy base in Australia: "Australia's close military alliance with the United States is to be further entrenched with the building of a high-tech communications base in Western Australia. The Federal Government is about to approve the base after three years of secret negotiations with Washington. The Age has been told the base, which will be built on defence land at Geraldton, will provide a crucial link for a new network of military satellites that will help the US's ability to fight wars in the Middle East and Asia. It will be the first big US military installation to be built in Australia in decades, and follows controversies over other big bases such as Pine Gap and North West Cape."

Fallacious Iraq arguments rife: "Warrior chic --the idea that biography trumps policy, that a person's identity proves the validity of their ideas--now dominates our politics, as anyone who listened to the House of Representatives debate the Iraq war this week can attest. On Tuesday the Democrats began the debate over House Concurrent Resolution 63, which says the House supports American forces serving in Iraq but disagrees with President Bush's decision to send additional troops into combat. The Democrats opened with a series of speeches from congressmen who have served in this war and in others--their status as veterans giving them unique perspective on matters of war and peace, and thus, in Democrats' eyes, lending their opposition to Bush's "escalation" of the war greater weight.... A debate on Bush's policy on its merits, engaging with its plusses and minuses, the possibility that it might work, and the possibility it might not, was nowhere to be found."

Anglicans still waffling: "Conservative Anglican archbishops have suffered a rebuff in their efforts to expel the US Episcopal Church over its liberal stance on homosexuality. A report drawn up for church leaders meeting in Tanzania concludes that the US Church has largely met demands for it to conform with orthodox teaching. The crisis began when the US Church decided to ordain an openly-gay bishop. ... Despite the report finding in the Episcopal Church's favour, there is scope for further division at the Tanzania meeting, our correspondent says. Conservative archbishops were due to put forward their plan for a parallel church in the US, under its own bishop, to cater for traditionalists who have broken away from the Episcopal Church."

Terror suspect in Canada ordered freed: "An Egyptian terror suspect who has been waging a weeks-long hunger strike was ordered released Thursday by a judge who said he posed no threat to national security while his case was under review. Mohammad Mahjoub, 46, has spent nearly seven years in a Canadian prison without any charge against him or access to the evidence against him. He was entering his 84th day of a hunger strike Thursday to protest his treatment."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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