CrusaderFrank
Diamond Member
- May 20, 2009
- 147,704
- 70,942
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- #41
Frank, I don't think its possible to rationally examine the Chinese Civil war and come to the conclusion that the US Government handed Mao China. The "pro-democracy" side, and you have to be very very loose about what it means to be "pro-democracy" to even say that, was incredibly corrupt and inept. Most Chinese didn't care a whit about Communism, they just wanted to be rid of their "democratic" corrupt leadership.
Not only that, the USA blew a shot to gain a powerful ally against Russia thanks to McCarthyism. To say China and Russia are both Communist requires that you use a very very broad definition of communism. Its kinda like saying a housecat and a lion are both cats. Chinese Communism and Russian Communism are two very different things with different historical roots and different ideologies playing into them. We couldn't see the fact that the Chinese hated and despised the Russians, and instead pushed the two together. The Chinese and the Russians have always distrusted each other, evidenced by the sheer amount of hardware these "Communist brothers" have continuously devoted to guarding their shared border.
We repeated that mistake again later when it came to Vietnam. Communism in Vietnam was more about nationalism. The Vietnamese distrusted the Chinese and hated them. It was only when they found themselves at war with the US (again because the US doggedly looked to support a corrupt "democratic" regime) that they allied with China.
The inability to examine rationally what was going on robbed us of the ability to play off Communist factions against each other and extended the Cold War by decades. McCarthyism plays a big role in why that happened.
You really need to read the book, if not the chapter entire chapter "Chungking, 1944" then only the few paragraphs on how Communist spies at State and Treasury handed China to Mao because he was "Democratic" and "Progressive" and was following an "abandonment of any pure Communist program" and would bring Democracy to China "without the need of violent social upheaval" That's our State Department. That's Sol Adler. That's John Stewart Service. They should have had seats alongside the Rosenberg's.
And that's Mao they're talking about, history's biggest mass murderer.
This really is a big fucking deal and it's all been confirmed by Moscow and the FBI records.
You can continue to to tout the "McCarthy was a very bad man" line all day and night, it does not change the facts, he was 100% correct and vastly understated the problem
Frank, I think we're talking at cross purposes. You're talking about the US State Department's reaction to the Chinese Civil War. I'm talking about the actual Chinese Civil War. The sheer scale and scope of that war was so large as to be beyond our control. A Japanese invasion in WWII didn't stop the Chinese Civil War. It merely put the whole thing on pause until they could kick out the outsiders.
Short of an actual invasion of China, that whole thing was outside our ability to meaningfuly impact. We helped drag out the Chinese Civil War. For our efforts we were left unable to exploit the natural distrust between China and Russia. The smart play when faced with multiple opponents that have a distrust of each other is to play up those issues and play them against each other. Part of the result of McCarthyism is that instead of turning the Communists on each other, we encouraged them to work together.
That's the issue I have. Saying we "Gave China to Mao" implies we had control of the situation in China and simply made the wrong choice. We never had China to lose, so saying we lost China is just wrong. The same can be said later about Vietnam as we make essentially the same mistakes there too.
We're not at cross purposes, you choose to remain uneducated on the topic and unwilling to see how the US Government threw its support behind Mao.
Further debate is pointless until you tell me, "yes I read the 'Chungking 1944'" Chapter and have rethought my position on China