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So, it's all America's fault?Reader comment on item: Anarchy, the New Threat Submitted by Kepha Hor (United States), Feb 4, 2012 at 19:33 So, Ianus, if the USA was not meddling, the Uyghur and Han would live in blessed Stalinist-Maoist harmony and brotherhood of nationalities in East Turkistan, and Hui people in Ningxixa, Qinghai, Gansu, and Yunnan would not feel rankled over being forced to raise the "black bug" and seeing parents and uncles killed by Red Guard for daring to pray? And, if the US was so actively backing Pol Pot, how come its diplomats were not allowed direct contact with his people during that 1978-1992 period? And, I suppose, the violence of poor Indonesia in 1965 was all Washington's manipulation, and had nothing to do with Sukarno's longstanding attempt to maintain his own power by playing the Islam Fanatik faction against the Communists against the military? Do you suppose that poor Bung Karno's three-legged stool would've remained perfectly stable when he was always fiddling with it, even while trying to sit on it? And, I suppose, the fissures of Islam Fanatik Aceh, syncretist Java, Christian Ambon and North Sulawesi, and hundreds of languages and tribes, many resentful of Javanese-Sumatran colonization in outlying areas, has nothing to do with the threat of instability in Indonesia? Yes, you're right that Kissinger (most over-rated man, he) and Nixon kissing Mao was disgusting. It was even more disgusting, in those days, to see the shameless puffery of Maoism by the American media following Nixon's visit to China. To return to Cambodia, had you been the US President at a time when Bangkok and Beijing were in rapprochement (largely in response to Soviet-supplied Vietnamese armor sitting 60 miles from downtown Bangkok), would you have backed Hun Sen? Or, would you have settled for a kind of tilted neutrality? After all, from 1975-78 Hun Sen was no less guilty of running the killing fields of Cambodia, and turned to the Vietnamese only because he had a personal falling out with Pol Pot. And, as we all know, without the nefarious Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman, the Polish and Russian peoples would have cocntinued living in the sweet harmony they had enjoyed ever since Bohdan Chmielnicki rode west to peddle his grandmother's pirogi. Also, both peoples would surely have been generous and kindly to the Ashkenazi Jews had not Washington secretly agitated, right? Further, we all know that without the nefarious machinations of Thomas Jefferson, Naopoleon Buonaparte would never have invaded the German states, and thus make sure Europe would be weakened by such rivalry and ripe for American takeover at a later date. I guess the Irish Catholics would never have massacred the Irish Protestants in 1642 had the colonists of the Massachusetts Bay colony not agitated. And I'm sure the ecumenical paradise of Andaluz would never have devolved into Almohads vs. Reconquista had no Chief Podunk of the Algonquins not sent a canoe load of agents provocateurs to bribe each side with beaver hides and quahog clamshells. Submitting....
Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (29) on this item
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