{"id":2709,"date":"2003-03-27T20:39:37","date_gmt":"2003-03-27T15:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alpha.ravikiran.com\/blog\/2003\/03\/27\/swami-vs-swami\/"},"modified":"2003-03-27T20:39:37","modified_gmt":"2003-03-27T15:09:37","slug":"swami-vs-swami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/vintage\/200303\/swami-vs-swami\/","title":{"rendered":"Swami Vs Swami"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have disagreed with Swaminathan Aiyar before, but this time I am in the disagreeable position of having to disagree with either Swami (permalinks don’t work -topmost post)<\/a> or Swami<\/a>, because contrary to what Swami<\/a> says, I think Swami<\/a> makes some valid points. <\/p>\n

He says that Victory changes everything<\/a>
The US went into South Vietnam to contain global communist expansion. Unable to win a decisive victory, it signed a peace agreement with North Vietnam, took its troops back home, and secured Nobel Peace Prizes for the signatories of the accord. Shortly afterwards, North Vietnam violated the peace agreement, invaded and took over South Vietnam. Did anybody (except the Americans) really care that Hanoi’s victory had violated a solemn peace agreement, enshrined in a Nobel Peace Prize? Did anybody hold street demonstrations against unilateral military action, or violation of international law by Hanoi? Not at all. History was rewritten by the victor, and the world fell in line.<\/small><\/cite><\/p>\n

I’ve wondered about that. The US fought in Korea and it fought in Vietnam. <\/p>\n

It was the good guy in Korea . Any reasonable person must admit that by saving South Korea from falling into communist hands (at the cost of 35000 of its soldiers) it provided the world with the starkest illustration of the fact that capitalism is a better system- after all, where else can you find a first world country and a fourth world country separated by nothing but an artificial line?<\/p>\n

It was the bad guy in Vietnam. But by withdrawing from there, it paved the way, not only for the fall of South Vietnam, but also (my knowledge of history gets hazy here) the victory of Pol Pot in Cambodia. <\/p>\n

Could anyone have predicted that intevening in Korea was a ?ood idea, but intervening in Vietnam was a bad idea? My post<\/a> on foreign policy isn’t much help there. Depending on how you interpret it, either the US was either right at both places or wrong at both places, but not right at one place and wrong at the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have disagreed with Swaminathan Aiyar before, but this time I am in the disagreeable position of having to disagree with either Swami (permalinks don’t work -topmost post) or Swami, because contrary to what Swami says, I think Swami makes some valid points. He says that Victory changes everything The US went into South Vietnam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}