Reply #17: Well, I think those are all pretty good points -- yet I have some disagreements

[Time for change]

First, the most important thing you bring up IMO is that to talk so much about our imperialistic history tends to make the Bush junta look like less of an abberation. I didn't mean to make the Bush junta look like less of an aberration, and I DID say that he has taken our dark history to a new level -- and I meant that. Yet, at the same time I think that we would do well to recognize that our country has been involved in some very immoral actions from its inception. We shouldn't believe that it all started with George W. Bush. These things ar not black and white, of course. We've done much bad and much good. George W. Bush and his collaborators have done only bad. Paul Krugman was certainly right that George Bush doesn't believe in our system. I believe that the good majority of our Presidents did believe in it. Yet, many of them succumbed to powerful interests who did not.

Kennedy increased our involvement in Vietnam (He didn't start it, Eisenhower did by preventing the reunification of Vietnam through fair elections), but the degree of involvement under him was minimal compared to what it became. I do feel that it was very wrong to prevent the reunification of Vietnam through election, though I also believe that Eisenhower and Kennedy were good men who thought they were doing the right thing. But they were infected with the arrogant idea that the U.S. has the right to determine the governments of other nations. Kennedy made a mistake with Vietnam, as he did with his invasion of Cuba. Yet, towards the end of his presidency he matured tremendously. He was in the process of establishing peaceful relationships with the USSR, and many believe that he would have pulled out of Vietnam had he not been assassinated. I believe, as many do, that that's perhaps the main reason he was assassinated.

As far as South Vietnam being better off if there was still a South Vietnam today, I have to say that our involvement in Vietnam was terribly destructive. There COULD NOT be a South Vietnam because the people of Vietnam did not want one. Everyone knew that when the elections took place (agreed to in the Geneva Conference agreements when they threw off French rule) they would elect a Communist government. South Vietnam was purely a creation of the U.S. You could say, and many do, that the Vietnam war was not a civil war, rather it was Vietnam vs. the U.S. That's one reason why we massacred so many South Vietnamese. We knew that so many of them were highly sympathetic to the "enemy" that we were fighting.

I didn't include Korea or WW II in this, for the reasons you mention (though I also left out many things that should have been included).