Wars Cannot Be Ended
Today is 30 April 2006.
On this day in 1975, it is said that the Vietnam War (more properly, the Indochina Wars) ended.
Hypothesis: Wars cannot be ended, for wars are poisons persisting eternally in the lives of human beings and the very fabric of the planet.
A reckoning. (And most of the following are estimates, because the dead in war are never really more carefully counted than farmers count the seeds sown --- how many sprout, how many perish.)
To begin: 3 million civilians died in the Indochina Wars proper. (Recall: the Indochina Wars began when the French, financed by the United States Empire, attemped to re-conquer Indochina, beginning in 1945.)
At least 1 million Indochinese combatants dead. At least 1.5 million dead by the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, made possible when the CIA (acting on the brilliant schemes of Nixon and Kissinger) facilitated the overthrow of the Cambodian monarchy, resulting in a civil war to the bitter end and a Khmer Rouge victory. Add another 100,000+ dead French and American combatants.
How can one estimate the children who would have been born, had not all those been killed?
Let's say, a minimum of 6 million dead. Let's say, 1 Bloodbath Unit.
Geopolitics.
"If Vietnam falls to the Commies, then falls all of Southeast Asia, then the dominoes fall all the way through Australia, and then the Commies conquer the world."
Didn't work out that way.
Indochina suffered a holocaust for nothing.
Today, the Bush/Republican regime is engaged in a great civil war in Iraq, in a geopolitically critical area.
Oil, for modern "civilization", is life.
Not even close to 1 Bloodbath Unit (yet).
Heed the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Bush/Republican regime may yet have applied a match to the Middle East which will make the Indochina Wars resemble a campfire.
Wars cannot be ended: they can only be never begun.
[Dedicated to Hari Seldon, both of them, and to the memory of John Kenneth Galbraith, who died on Saturday evening, 29 April 2006, as your author was writing this post. All honour.]
On this day in 1975, it is said that the Vietnam War (more properly, the Indochina Wars) ended.
Hypothesis: Wars cannot be ended, for wars are poisons persisting eternally in the lives of human beings and the very fabric of the planet.
A reckoning. (And most of the following are estimates, because the dead in war are never really more carefully counted than farmers count the seeds sown --- how many sprout, how many perish.)
To begin: 3 million civilians died in the Indochina Wars proper. (Recall: the Indochina Wars began when the French, financed by the United States Empire, attemped to re-conquer Indochina, beginning in 1945.)
At least 1 million Indochinese combatants dead. At least 1.5 million dead by the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, made possible when the CIA (acting on the brilliant schemes of Nixon and Kissinger) facilitated the overthrow of the Cambodian monarchy, resulting in a civil war to the bitter end and a Khmer Rouge victory. Add another 100,000+ dead French and American combatants.
How can one estimate the children who would have been born, had not all those been killed?
Let's say, a minimum of 6 million dead. Let's say, 1 Bloodbath Unit.
Geopolitics.
"If Vietnam falls to the Commies, then falls all of Southeast Asia, then the dominoes fall all the way through Australia, and then the Commies conquer the world."
Didn't work out that way.
Indochina suffered a holocaust for nothing.
Today, the Bush/Republican regime is engaged in a great civil war in Iraq, in a geopolitically critical area.
Oil, for modern "civilization", is life.
Not even close to 1 Bloodbath Unit (yet).
Heed the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Bush/Republican regime may yet have applied a match to the Middle East which will make the Indochina Wars resemble a campfire.
Wars cannot be ended: they can only be never begun.
[Dedicated to Hari Seldon, both of them, and to the memory of John Kenneth Galbraith, who died on Saturday evening, 29 April 2006, as your author was writing this post. All honour.]
posted by HH at 9:05 PM
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