And next chapter of the Chicago School of ruining the economics of many SA countries while supporting & creating police states in Chile & Argentina.etc.
And next chapter of the Chicago School of ruining the economics of many SA countries while supporting & creating police states in Chile & Argentina.etc.
One cannot begin to either comprehend or understand anything that happened during AmericaтАЩs involvement in the Southeast Asian wars of the 1960s without understanding that those events did not arise de novo with the election of John F. Kennedy as president in 1960. AmericaтАЩs wars in Southeast Asia were a long time coming. The United States had been effectively at war in Southeast Asia since 1950, and in many ways for much longer than that.
Perhaps the best description of what Americans would bring to the region is the famous line in Graham GreeneтАЩs novel of the First Indochina War, тАЬThe Quiet American,тАЭ in which the novelтАЩs protagonist, cynical British journalist Thomas Fowler - a stand-in for Greene, who wrote the novel from experience - describes the title character, Alden Pyle: тАЬI never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused... impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.тАЭ
At the same time, the Americans who came to Southeast Asia to fight could be compared with another fictional character, the detective Jake Gittes of Chinatown, who only gradually gains the terrible awareness of his own helplessness in the face of the omnipresence of power and abuse, тАЬthe futility of good intentions.тАЭ
John F. Kennedy, who could well be seen as the embodiment of Alden Pyle, and was perhaps more responsible than any other American for the wartime involvement of his country in Southeast Asia, visited South Vietnam as a young congressman on a fact-finding investigation in 1952. After two weeks of meetings with officials and dinner conversations with French colons in Saigon, and after receiving a quick tour of the countryside, he returned to the United States and wrote presciently of the trip in his diary: тАЬWe are more and more becoming colonialists in the minds of the people. Because everyone believes that we control the U.N. and because our wealth is supposedly inexhaustible, we will be damned if we donтАЩt do what the new nations want.тАЭ Ten years later, one could argue he had forgotten every moment of his visit, every sight seen, every conversation engaged in.
TC, you have a vast political, historical and military knowledge of Asia. I do not. But the economic and political realities in SA were 1st scary. And have informed my reading and d growth ever since.
No but I was in SA in 1975 with people that lived it. The people that 'want" insurrection" need have a lived experience in a country going through it or one where the army is ascendant without that civilization order of what we have had...pretty scary reality. Good luck living in a police state thinking you can say or do whatever you want, as we do now under the 1st ammendment protections. Good luck thinking that fantasy survives the revolution.
Certainly sounds like a film I would like to see. I met people fleeing Chile & Argentina in the 1970s when I was in SA. Amazing to realize how the military disappeared so many people and how cavalier so many imbeciles embrace fascism here. They have no idea what a nightmare this is and how lucky they are, now, to be living in a democracy.
And next chapter of the Chicago School of ruining the economics of many SA countries while supporting & creating police states in Chile & Argentina.etc.
have you seen that documentary on The Chicago Boys in Chile?
as my best friend would (and frequently DOES) put it..."Some people have a lot of nerve with their shit."
As I put it in "Going Downtown":
One cannot begin to either comprehend or understand anything that happened during AmericaтАЩs involvement in the Southeast Asian wars of the 1960s without understanding that those events did not arise de novo with the election of John F. Kennedy as president in 1960. AmericaтАЩs wars in Southeast Asia were a long time coming. The United States had been effectively at war in Southeast Asia since 1950, and in many ways for much longer than that.
Perhaps the best description of what Americans would bring to the region is the famous line in Graham GreeneтАЩs novel of the First Indochina War, тАЬThe Quiet American,тАЭ in which the novelтАЩs protagonist, cynical British journalist Thomas Fowler - a stand-in for Greene, who wrote the novel from experience - describes the title character, Alden Pyle: тАЬI never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused... impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.тАЭ
At the same time, the Americans who came to Southeast Asia to fight could be compared with another fictional character, the detective Jake Gittes of Chinatown, who only gradually gains the terrible awareness of his own helplessness in the face of the omnipresence of power and abuse, тАЬthe futility of good intentions.тАЭ
John F. Kennedy, who could well be seen as the embodiment of Alden Pyle, and was perhaps more responsible than any other American for the wartime involvement of his country in Southeast Asia, visited South Vietnam as a young congressman on a fact-finding investigation in 1952. After two weeks of meetings with officials and dinner conversations with French colons in Saigon, and after receiving a quick tour of the countryside, he returned to the United States and wrote presciently of the trip in his diary: тАЬWe are more and more becoming colonialists in the minds of the people. Because everyone believes that we control the U.N. and because our wealth is supposedly inexhaustible, we will be damned if we donтАЩt do what the new nations want.тАЭ Ten years later, one could argue he had forgotten every moment of his visit, every sight seen, every conversation engaged in.
TC, you have a vast political, historical and military knowledge of Asia. I do not. But the economic and political realities in SA were 1st scary. And have informed my reading and d growth ever since.
No but I was in SA in 1975 with people that lived it. The people that 'want" insurrection" need have a lived experience in a country going through it or one where the army is ascendant without that civilization order of what we have had...pretty scary reality. Good luck living in a police state thinking you can say or do whatever you want, as we do now under the 1st ammendment protections. Good luck thinking that fantasy survives the revolution.
Certainly sounds like a film I would like to see. I met people fleeing Chile & Argentina in the 1970s when I was in SA. Amazing to realize how the military disappeared so many people and how cavalier so many imbeciles embrace fascism here. They have no idea what a nightmare this is and how lucky they are, now, to be living in a democracy.