From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Wed Jan 22 2003 - 11:34:21 MST
-----Original Message-----
From: Samantha Atkins
Mike Lorrey wrote:
> --- Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com> wrote:
>
>>Do you believe there is anything like "international law" or
>>that there should be? Do you believe that might makes right
>>between nations or is there some set of standards, whether you
>>call it "international law" or not, on which the actions of
>>nations in regards to one another should be judged?
>
>
> I have found that pacifists who keep harping on the "international law"
> phrase know shockingly little about international law, including
> yourself, and those who I've encouraged to study up on the subject seem
> to have stubbornly chosen to retain their ignorance, including
> yourself.
>
>
"How about answering the friggin question."
----------------
Samantha, I am still curious as to what you thought of the Korean War, and
whether it was 'senseless' in the manner you felt the Vietnam war was. And
if it was (or wasn't) I would wonder what differences you saw between the
Korean War and the Vietnam war exactly that might make you consider one
senseless yet not the other, or both senseless.
To re-iterate
-----Original Message-----
From: Samantha Atkins [mailto:samantha@objectent.com]
"It was a senseless war from the beginning fought in a truly senseless and
horrific way. It doesn't take a great deal of analysis to smell the napalm
or count the number of friends and friends and friends of friends who came
home in body bags or with minds and bodies
twisted and mutilated out of shape or to note that the "for what" was highly
speculative and ill-defined at best. The "international position of the
United States" is laughable when it bankrupts the country for such a
senseless exercise. We the people do precisely what we are supposed to do
when we notice such or notice such brewing again and say "HELL NO"."
Samantha, I presume you are still referring to the Vietnam war with this
statement. I am curious if you consider the Korean war an equally
'senselless' endeavor, and if not, what do you consider the differences
between these two situations. The arguments from the right contend that
these situations are nearly identical, in both cases a communist nation was
receiving heavy support in the form of weapons and supplies from parent
states (both the soviet union and China in both cases), and in both cases
americans were asked to go to a far off country to fight for people and a
culture they barely knew for politically unstable governments that were
fighting the aggressive invasion efforts of known communist despotic
regimes, in both cases poor military decisions were made and in both cases
there were heavy civilian and military causalties. Yet in Korea 'We' won,
and now South Korea has one of the most succefull and prosperous economies
in the world, while the description of North Korea's current state I'll
leave to Liberal author Christopher Hutchins...
"All films, all books, all newspapers and all radio and television
broadcasts are about either the Father or the Son[Kim Jong Il]. Everybody is
a soldier. Everybody is an informer. Everybody is a unit. Everything is
propaganda...Children are drilled to think of Japanese and Americans, in
particular, as monstrous...The old justification for the Stalinist
forced-march system was that at least it led to development. But even in
Pyongyang, the capital city which is reserved for approved citizens, one can
see that this excuse doesn't work. Neither does anything else; the place is
stalled and hungry and subject to constant blackouts. There are no cars on
the streets; there is no construction except of tawdry shrines to the Holy
Family. A very small window of dollar bribery has opened up in recent years,
but there's nothing to buy and no black market. Corruption at the leadership
level is exorbitant, with palaces and limos and (a special obsession of Kim
Jong Il's) megalomaniacal movie projects...I saw people scavenging
individual grains from the fields and washing themselves in open sewers. On
the almost deserted roads, animals do a good deal of the hauling. Domestic
pets are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps most have been eaten, for the fact is
that North Korea is a famine stat...Nobody knows the death toll-the best
guess is between 1.5 and 2 million-but in addition a generation of
physically and mentally stunted children has been "fathered" by the "Dear
Leader." Well-attested rumors of cannibalism have filtered across the border
to China, where a Korean-speaking minority has lately been augmented by
refugees so desperate that they will risk shooting in order to brave the
river. A system where you can't live but you can't leave is the definition
of hell...deserted towns, empty factories, wandering and neglected children
and untilled fields...the country's once productive coal mines have been
allowed to flood, and that there are no pumps that can be brought to bear"
(from -http://www.chosunjournal.com/worst.html)"
Had 'we' lost this conflict, all the people of south korea would be living
under this same horific nighmarish regime. Take a moment to think about
what life in North Korea is actually like.
Now compare this with Vietnam, during the vietnam war the anti-war
protestors gained a majority public support for a variety of reasons, namely
the shocking realization of what war is actually like due to the first time
presence of journalists in the field, coupled with idealogical promulgation
of preconcieved ideas in the face of contradictory evidence, and wide
support of Ho Chi Minh and the communist north from public figures,
celebrities, and academics. Eventually 'they' won out, and the US abandoned
the Indochina region. In the few months following the US withdrawel from
Indochina, more than a million south vietnamese were killed, and then spread
to cambodia, where arguable the worst holocaust in the worlds history took
place, taking the lives of an additional 3 million cambodians.
All throughout this conflict the war proponents predicted these events and
warned of them, and sadly they were right. So what of this effort do you
find 'senseless' exactly? Do you think the situation would have turned out
similar had 'we' (The US and South Vietnam) won and South Vietnam continued
to exist as an independent state, set up a market economy, and prospered,
just as South Korea has? The lives of some 4 - 5 million residents of the
Indochina region would in all likelyhood have been spared from the
slaughter, oppression, and enslavement that they had been forced to endure.
Michael
-----------------
Sisowath Sirik Matak was a high ranking official in the Khmer (Cambodian)
Republic, 1970-75. Two weeks before the fall of Phnom Penh, the capital of
Cambodia, to the communist Khmer Rouge, US Ambassador to Cambodia John
Gunther Dean offered the Premier safe passage to the United States. The
letter below is Sisowath's reply:
Dear Excellency and Friend
I thank you sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me
toward freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for
you, and in particular your great country, I never believed for a moment
that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen
liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about
it.
You leave and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under
this sky. But mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in the
country I love, it is too bad, because we are all born and must die one day.
I have only committed this mistake of believing in you.
Sisowath Sirik Matak
Sisowath Sirik Matak was executed less than a week after the fall of Phnom
Penh.
-----------------
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