DISQUS

Robert Roth · 1 month ago

Thank you, Michael. It's important for us to understand the real purpose of US elites in Vietnam, as elsewhere, and I appreciate your summary of Noam Chomsky's remarks on the subject. As it happens I'm up early this Sunday and working on a short introduction to the topic of US foreign policy since WW II, based on a transcript of a talk by Chomsky given in Boulder, Colorado in 1986, titled "The Right Turn in U.S. International and Security Policy?" and distributed by Alternative Radio. In it Chomsky describes why the foreign policy of the Reagan administration did NOT represent a "right turn," but was rather continuous with US policy since the end of the WW II, as articulated by US State Department and other planners in the late 1940s, namely to maintain US control of a disproportionate share of the world's resources -- referred to as "our" resources, wherever they may be. Reagan waged war to discourage the power of a "bad example" in Central America -- killing hundreds of thousands in the process -- just as Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon had done in Southeast Asia. Thanks again for reminding us. I hope more people will pay attention as time goes by.