Backtalk! Race is an Illusion, Racism is Not
July 22, 2004
After reading my article "Race is an Illusion, Racism is Not," a reader who identified himself only as "US," wrote in to express his objections. Put simply, he objected to the fact that I objected to racism.
I feel compelled to make only one point in rebuttal, to ensure that my views are not misrepresented. I wish to stress that everything I advocate is predicated on individual free will. Needless to say "US" is seriously mistaken when he interprets my opposition to racism as Politically Correct top down social engineering.
I am not an advocate of social engineering. I am the farthest thing from an advocate of social engineering. I categorically oppose the initiation of force, no matter how "worthy" the cause. That is why I have always vehemently opposed "Affirmative Action," even though many of its advocates have good intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I am a market anarchist who believes in voluntary, contractual solutions to all problems, social, economic, and political. Racists are fully within their legal rights to cling to their atavistic views, providing they refrain from initiating force against others. Racists may be morally repugnant, but not everything morally repugnant should be made illegal. Only the initiation of force should be illegal. It is sufficient that progressive minded individuals ostracize and boycott racists.
"US" obviously missed the entire point of my article, which was that scientifically speaking the concept of "race" is nonsense. There are no "races" today. There is only one race, Homo Sapiens. There is no such thing as "being of mixed race" because there is only one race on the planet that one can belong to. Everyone alive today is "racially pure," because everyones' parents were members of the species Homo Sapiens.
This of course does not mean that racism does not exist. Racism exists even though races don't exist, because racism is a false belief. A false belief is a false belief precisely because it has no basis in fact. Racists hate their fellow human beings based on the false belief that some of them "belong to another race." But the simple fact is, there is no other race for anyone to belong to.
Alert readers will probably be able to read between the lines of his letter and draw their own conclusions about where "US" is coming from. If I had to make a wild guess, I would say that the virulently racist, pseudo-scientific beliefs that "US" feels compelled to defend have cruelly victimized "US" in his own life, leaving him with little sense of self-worth apart from his part "Aryan" racial identity. "US" deserves our compassion, not our hatred.
-- Bevin Chu
See:
Race is an Illusion, Racism is Not
Here is what "US" wrote, verbatim, in toto. I have not altered his text in the slightest, except to format it as HTML:
I just read your writing about race. I'm asian and aryan. I'd like to say that maybe you are a little too pro-race mixing. Your comments about what the kkk (and the like) fear, is race mixing and therefore race mixing is the solution. With all due respect sir you are just as wrong as the kkk. You are speaking like a multi cult version of a race supremist.
The truth is the problem isn't race purity or lack thereof. The true issue is soveriegnty. As much as you have the soveriegn right to belive in and practice race mixing, by that same principal, those that prefer race purity have just a much right as you do.
The problem with 'racists' or racialists is that they arent being allowed to enjoy and excercise thier soveriegn right. The solution isnt FORCING them OR thier children by violence or trickery to breed in a way they don't see as being fit and proper for THIER people.
If you force or espouse the forcing of race mixing then you yourself are no better than the people who use the same tactics to enforce NON interacial breeding. So the issue of race isnt an issue of race at all, its an issue of soveriegnty.
Also, china has beautifull history, cultures, art etc etc.....if we force or trick ALL chinese to mix with non chinese........there won't be ANY chinese left. The day we no longer have asians due to war or disease or race mixing or whatever, is a sad day.
Multiculturalism is the death of all cultures. Diversity should be the cellibration of the similarities AND differences of different races/cultures. Right now in africa there are aproximately 100 different UNIQUE dialects that are dieing off. Forced multiculturalism is killing these extremely rare types of speach.
It would be nice if the world was full of robots with no differences or ambitions........NOT. The great part of being alive is being a part of such a fantastically varying reallity. I dont regret being Aryan, nor do I regret being Asian. I do wish however I could have been one or the other fully because lets face it..theres hardly enough time in ones life to master ONE cultural tradition let alone 2 or 3 or 4.
If someone were to ask me what i think i have gained by being "racially mixed", i'd have to answer "probably not much", meaning i'm just another man. If they were to ask what i think ive lost as a result of being racially mixed i'd have to say "culture". I have none. No relgious ties, no social ties, no traditions etc etc. So not only have i missed out on my beautifull Aryan culture, but also my equally beautifull Asian culture. AND because i was not full white or full asian i never fully fit in with either side, though both sides have always done much to accept me.
I listen to my Asian grandmother talk about her childhood. I listen to my Aryan granfather talk about his childhood. I see how they tried to blend cultures in to a culture of its own, and ultimately how this failed. WHY? Simple, there isnt enough time in a day to observe the traditions of your people when you are made up of more than one type of unique people with unique cultural identities.
My point is each race has its ups and downs but if we all breed into a coffee colored slant eyed caucasoid....what kind of pride in heritage, or what kind of culture would we have then? Probably none. A people with no sense of devotion or honor to anything. A people with no ties to thier past, no visions of the future. In my opinion sir that would make us uninteresting, uninventive, culturless, unmotivated, and quit frankly not worth writing history books about.
My intent was not to offend you. Everyone has a right to thier opinion (theres that soveriegnty again). My point was as a mixed person i can understand why not all people would want to be mixed, i also understand that as much as i have a right to live breath and die, so do pure breeds. As much as I have the right to choose who to associate with and how to raise my child, so does a nazi.
We should learn from eachother, work and play together, yes yes i agree. But if someone doesnt prefer the company of a certain race....do we really have the moral authority to criminalize and demonize them for thier difference? I mean do we kill lions because lions have a tendancy to eat lambs? Do we kill lambs because they have a tendancy to shy away from lions? Do we frankenstien them together (aka mix) to "solve" the "problem"?
Also...if the lions and lambs didnt live together....would there even be a problem? Furthermore, what man alive dead or yet to be born has the god like authority of knowledge to determine all of this? So you see in the end on every issue of morallity etc it really isnt a matter of right or wrong, its amtter of the same old thing......agenda.
Race mixers agenda, racial purist agenda, homosexual agenda, non homo agenda, femanist agenda, non femanist agenda, democrat, republican., left, right, middle, neo con...the list of human ism's is staggering. Ultimately though we are all a bunch of dumb monkeys in an amazing exisistance fighting for domination of and preservation of the agendas of ourselves as individuals and sometimes as groups aka tribes aka races aka etcetc.
We should all fight the good fight but we should never kid ourselves or our 'peoples' about the reallity of the agenda. Thanks for the interesting read.
-- "US"
Friday, July 23, 2004
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Race is an Illusion, Racism is Not
Race is an Illusion, Racism is Not
Bevin Chu
July 21, 2004
Executive Summary: Race is an illusion, racism is not. Race is an illusion because all hominid species besides Homo sapiens died out 30,000 years ago. Therefore every human being alive today belongs to the same race. Racism unfortunately, is all too real, because racism lingers in the hearts of men.
A Man of the African Race. Standing behind him, author Spencer Wells, another Man of the African Race
"Racism is not only socially divisive, but also scientifically incorrect. We are all descendants of people who lived in Africa recently. We are all Africans under the skin. "
-- Spencer Wells, Population Geneticist
Out of Africa
Spencer Wells is a disciple of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, famed pioneer of "genetic geography." In 2002 Wells produced a two-hour National Geographic documentary entitled "The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey," in which he demolished the myth of race. Only 60,000 years or 2,000 generations ago, the entire human race consisted of 10,000 black Africans living in central east Africa. Everyone alive today is descended from those individuals. This understanding of man's origin is known as "Out of Africa," and has been confirmed by the scientific evidence.
Atlas of the Human Journey - The Genographic Project
See:
The Genographic Project - Human Migration, Population Genetics, Maps, DNA
Multiregional Continuity
The competing alternative to "Out of Africa" is "Multiregional Continuity." Multiregional Continuity, it must be noted, offers cold comfort to white supremacists. Multiregionalists agree that we are all Africans. Multiregionalists merely believe that man migrated out of Africa one million years ago in the form of Homo erectus, rather than 60,000 years ago in the form of Homo sapiens. Either way, the human race is still the African race, and we are still all Africans under the skin.
Race is an Illusion, Racism is Not
Races don't exist; they cannot be scientifically defined. [Cavalli-Sforza's] stance on race has drawn vicious attacks from white supremacists, but its scientific logic, echoed by most in his field, is difficult to rebut. People tend to fixate on external differences -- skin color, facial features, hair texture -- when in fact these are malleable characteristics that evolve relatively swiftly.
-- Mitchell Leslie, The History of Everyone and Everything, Stanford Magazine
"I know perfectly well that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as race. As a politician I need an idea which enables the order which has hitherto existed on a historic basis to be abolished and an entirely new order enforced and given an intellectual basis. And for this purpose the idea of race serves me well."
-- Adolf Hitler, quoted in John Toland's biography "Adolf Hitler"
Nelson Mandela and Charlize Theron
What do I mean when I say that race is an Illusion? I mean that the lingering perception among non-scientists that Nelson Mandela belongs to one race, while Charlize Theron belongs to another race, is scientifically incorrect.
Modern biology classifies all living organisms according to the Linnaeus system of taxonomy we first encountered in high school:
Kingdom/Phylum/Class/Order/Family/Genus/Species
Every human being alive today belongs to the Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia, Order Primata, Family Hominidae, Genus Homo, Species Sapiens.
Every human being alive today is a member of the same species. That species is Homo sapiens. There is no other hominid species to which one can belong.
For the record, this was not always the case. At one time earth was populated by more than one race. The extinction of Neanderthal man, aka Homo neanderthalensis, changed all that.
Nelson Mandela, as the entire world knows, is African.
But so is Charlize Theron.
I don't mean by nationality. I don't mean merely that Charlize Theron is a South African citizen who holds a South African passport.
I mean genetically. I mean that Charlize Theron's genetic roots go back to Africa, just like Nelson Mandela's. The only difference is Nelson Mandela's ancestors remained in Africa, while Charlize Theron's left Africa 30,000 years ago and settled in western Europe.
The same is true of me. As anyone surfing this website knows, I am Chinese. I therefore am the descendant of black Africans who left Africa 35,000 years ago and settled in eastern Asia.
Those who harbor irrational prejudice toward their fellow human beings in the belief they are "members of another race" are acting out of scientific ignorance. Racists may believe they are directing their hatred at "members of another race," but they aren't. There is no "other race" to direct their hatred at. The racists therefore are directing their hatred at members of their own race.
Ku Klux Klansmen and Neo-Nazis who demean fellow human beings with the contemptuous epithet, "niggers," are themselves the descendants of "niggers." Hell, they are "niggers." They are, in a kind of delicious irony, demeaning themselves.
One is tempted to joke that modern day racists were born too late. Thirty thousand years ago, racists would have had a biological pretext for their racial hatred. Neanderthals were indeed a separate species, i.e., "another race."
Please note that I said racists would have had a pretext for their hatred. I did not say they would have had any justification.
Taiwan Independence Fascism and Ethnic Cleansing
Jet Li, a Man of the African Race, and the late Aliyah, a Woman of the African Race
Romeo Must Die (2000, directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, written by Mitchell Kapner, Eric Bernt)
These findings of modern science, predictably, have so-called "scientific racists'" panties in a bunch. Websites such as Peter Brimelow's VDARE and Jared Taylor's American Renaissance have posted long-winded, self-contradictory rants purporting to "refute" Cavalli-Sforza and Wells.
Unfortunately for these bush league bigots, their "refutations" are in vain. As the quotation from Hitler illustrates, racist demagogues far more charismatic and persuasive than Brimelow and Taylor have already given away the game. Race, as der Furhrer himself admitted in a rare moment of candour, is a political, not scientific construct. Belated efforts by Brimelow and Taylor to apply a scientific gloss to their ugly bigotry are a day late and a dollar short.
That, alas, is not the end of the story.
The sad fact remains that appeals to "racial identity" work. They work because they pander to man's basest, most atavistic instincts.
That was why Adolph Hitler appealed to a fictitious, concocted, ahistorical "Aryan" racial identity.
That is why Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian, and Annette Lu appeal to a fictitious, concocted, ahistorical "Taiwanese" racial identity, and why their appeals have become shriller and more blatant since Chen and Lu's so-called "reelection" on 3/20/2004.
Annette Lu is the Taiwan independence movement's enfant terrible. Lu is notorious for saying out loud what other members of the Taiwan independence nomenklatura are thinking but don't have the guts to make explicit.
Lu recently scapegoated Taiwan's Aborigines, blaming them for overdevelopment, deforestation, soil erosion, and flooding in Taiwan's central mountain range. Aboriginal victims of Tropical Storm Mindulle, Lu declared, deserved no sympathy. They should be shipped off to Central and South America for damaging Taiwan's ecology.
Annette Lu is not the first Taiwan independence leader to play the race card. That distinction belongs to Lee Teng-hui. During the 90s, Lee began suggesting that "mainlanders," so-called, be expelled from Taiwan and sent back to "China," the Taiwan independence Quislings' idiosyncratic term for mainland China.
Annette Lu however, has upped the ante. Lu has recommended that Aborigines be relocated en masse to Central and South America, leaving the island in the hands of those whom Taiwan independence fascists designate as real "Taiwanese," i.e., themselves.
Does the term "ethnic cleansing" ring a bell? It should. It describes perfectly what Lu and her fellow Taiwan independence fascists have in mind for anyone not one of them.
Race: The Final Frontier
"What is race? It is a biologically meaningless category. It is a cultural term that Americans use to describe what a person's ancestry is. But biologically the human species does not have categories. It just has variations as one travels around the world.''
-- Jefferson Fish, psychologist, St. John's University, New York
"Effectively, we're all cousins separated by, at most, a couple of thousand generations. So the next time you're sitting in traffic... try to remember that the driver in front is one of the family."
-- Spencer Wells, Population Geneticist
Frank Gorshin as Bele, and Lou Antonio as Lokai
Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 70: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (1969, created by Gene Roddenberry )
Synopsis: Bele and Lokai, alien humanoids from the planet Cheron, are mortal enemies. Their hatred for each other leaves Captain Kirk bewildered. Bele and Lokai, after all, look the same. Each is black on one side and white on the other. What reason, Kirk asks, could they have to hate each other? An indignant Bele snarls: "Are you blind? We're nothing alike! I'm black on my right side and white on my left side. He's white on his right side and black on his left side!" When the Starship Enterprise arrives at Cheron, they discover a lifeless planet, annihilated by racial armageddon. Bele and Lokai however have learned nothing. They beam down to Cheron, fighting each other to the death.
Heavy-handed? Preachy? Didactic?
Perhaps. But if any morality tale ever deserved to be told, loudly and repeatedly, this is it.
Consider the following horrific crimes committed long after that Star Trek episode first aired in 1969.
On December 7, 1993, black racist Colin Ferguson boarded a Long Island Rail Road commuter train, drew his 9mm semi-automatic pistol and began shooting white and Asian passengers. By the time three male passengers managed to tackle him, Ferguson had shot 25 people, killing six and seriously wounding 19.
On June 7, 1998, white racists Lawrence Russell Brewer, John William King, and Shawn Allen Berry chained black hitchhiker James Byrd Jr. to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles down a rural Jasper, Texas dirt road. By the time their truck rolled to a halt, Byrd's head and one arm had been torn from his body.
The Star Trek episode "Let This Be Your Final Battlefield" was set in Stardate: 5730.2. Let us pray that when Stardate 5730.2 eventually rolls around, the human race is no longer behaving like Bele and Lokai, or Ferguson, Brewer, King, and Berry.
Bevin Chu
July 21, 2004
Executive Summary: Race is an illusion, racism is not. Race is an illusion because all hominid species besides Homo sapiens died out 30,000 years ago. Therefore every human being alive today belongs to the same race. Racism unfortunately, is all too real, because racism lingers in the hearts of men.
A Man of the African Race. Standing behind him, author Spencer Wells, another Man of the African Race
"Racism is not only socially divisive, but also scientifically incorrect. We are all descendants of people who lived in Africa recently. We are all Africans under the skin. "
-- Spencer Wells, Population Geneticist
Out of Africa
Spencer Wells is a disciple of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, famed pioneer of "genetic geography." In 2002 Wells produced a two-hour National Geographic documentary entitled "The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey," in which he demolished the myth of race. Only 60,000 years or 2,000 generations ago, the entire human race consisted of 10,000 black Africans living in central east Africa. Everyone alive today is descended from those individuals. This understanding of man's origin is known as "Out of Africa," and has been confirmed by the scientific evidence.
Atlas of the Human Journey - The Genographic Project
See:
The Genographic Project - Human Migration, Population Genetics, Maps, DNA
Multiregional Continuity
The competing alternative to "Out of Africa" is "Multiregional Continuity." Multiregional Continuity, it must be noted, offers cold comfort to white supremacists. Multiregionalists agree that we are all Africans. Multiregionalists merely believe that man migrated out of Africa one million years ago in the form of Homo erectus, rather than 60,000 years ago in the form of Homo sapiens. Either way, the human race is still the African race, and we are still all Africans under the skin.
Race is an Illusion, Racism is Not
Races don't exist; they cannot be scientifically defined. [Cavalli-Sforza's] stance on race has drawn vicious attacks from white supremacists, but its scientific logic, echoed by most in his field, is difficult to rebut. People tend to fixate on external differences -- skin color, facial features, hair texture -- when in fact these are malleable characteristics that evolve relatively swiftly.
-- Mitchell Leslie, The History of Everyone and Everything, Stanford Magazine
"I know perfectly well that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as race. As a politician I need an idea which enables the order which has hitherto existed on a historic basis to be abolished and an entirely new order enforced and given an intellectual basis. And for this purpose the idea of race serves me well."
-- Adolf Hitler, quoted in John Toland's biography "Adolf Hitler"
Nelson Mandela and Charlize Theron
What do I mean when I say that race is an Illusion? I mean that the lingering perception among non-scientists that Nelson Mandela belongs to one race, while Charlize Theron belongs to another race, is scientifically incorrect.
Modern biology classifies all living organisms according to the Linnaeus system of taxonomy we first encountered in high school:
Kingdom/Phylum/Class/Order/Family/Genus/Species
Every human being alive today belongs to the Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia, Order Primata, Family Hominidae, Genus Homo, Species Sapiens.
Every human being alive today is a member of the same species. That species is Homo sapiens. There is no other hominid species to which one can belong.
For the record, this was not always the case. At one time earth was populated by more than one race. The extinction of Neanderthal man, aka Homo neanderthalensis, changed all that.
Nelson Mandela, as the entire world knows, is African.
But so is Charlize Theron.
I don't mean by nationality. I don't mean merely that Charlize Theron is a South African citizen who holds a South African passport.
I mean genetically. I mean that Charlize Theron's genetic roots go back to Africa, just like Nelson Mandela's. The only difference is Nelson Mandela's ancestors remained in Africa, while Charlize Theron's left Africa 30,000 years ago and settled in western Europe.
The same is true of me. As anyone surfing this website knows, I am Chinese. I therefore am the descendant of black Africans who left Africa 35,000 years ago and settled in eastern Asia.
Those who harbor irrational prejudice toward their fellow human beings in the belief they are "members of another race" are acting out of scientific ignorance. Racists may believe they are directing their hatred at "members of another race," but they aren't. There is no "other race" to direct their hatred at. The racists therefore are directing their hatred at members of their own race.
Ku Klux Klansmen and Neo-Nazis who demean fellow human beings with the contemptuous epithet, "niggers," are themselves the descendants of "niggers." Hell, they are "niggers." They are, in a kind of delicious irony, demeaning themselves.
One is tempted to joke that modern day racists were born too late. Thirty thousand years ago, racists would have had a biological pretext for their racial hatred. Neanderthals were indeed a separate species, i.e., "another race."
Please note that I said racists would have had a pretext for their hatred. I did not say they would have had any justification.
Taiwan Independence Fascism and Ethnic Cleansing
Jet Li, a Man of the African Race, and the late Aliyah, a Woman of the African Race
Romeo Must Die (2000, directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, written by Mitchell Kapner, Eric Bernt)
These findings of modern science, predictably, have so-called "scientific racists'" panties in a bunch. Websites such as Peter Brimelow's VDARE and Jared Taylor's American Renaissance have posted long-winded, self-contradictory rants purporting to "refute" Cavalli-Sforza and Wells.
Unfortunately for these bush league bigots, their "refutations" are in vain. As the quotation from Hitler illustrates, racist demagogues far more charismatic and persuasive than Brimelow and Taylor have already given away the game. Race, as der Furhrer himself admitted in a rare moment of candour, is a political, not scientific construct. Belated efforts by Brimelow and Taylor to apply a scientific gloss to their ugly bigotry are a day late and a dollar short.
That, alas, is not the end of the story.
The sad fact remains that appeals to "racial identity" work. They work because they pander to man's basest, most atavistic instincts.
That was why Adolph Hitler appealed to a fictitious, concocted, ahistorical "Aryan" racial identity.
That is why Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian, and Annette Lu appeal to a fictitious, concocted, ahistorical "Taiwanese" racial identity, and why their appeals have become shriller and more blatant since Chen and Lu's so-called "reelection" on 3/20/2004.
Annette Lu is the Taiwan independence movement's enfant terrible. Lu is notorious for saying out loud what other members of the Taiwan independence nomenklatura are thinking but don't have the guts to make explicit.
Lu recently scapegoated Taiwan's Aborigines, blaming them for overdevelopment, deforestation, soil erosion, and flooding in Taiwan's central mountain range. Aboriginal victims of Tropical Storm Mindulle, Lu declared, deserved no sympathy. They should be shipped off to Central and South America for damaging Taiwan's ecology.
Annette Lu is not the first Taiwan independence leader to play the race card. That distinction belongs to Lee Teng-hui. During the 90s, Lee began suggesting that "mainlanders," so-called, be expelled from Taiwan and sent back to "China," the Taiwan independence Quislings' idiosyncratic term for mainland China.
Annette Lu however, has upped the ante. Lu has recommended that Aborigines be relocated en masse to Central and South America, leaving the island in the hands of those whom Taiwan independence fascists designate as real "Taiwanese," i.e., themselves.
Does the term "ethnic cleansing" ring a bell? It should. It describes perfectly what Lu and her fellow Taiwan independence fascists have in mind for anyone not one of them.
Race: The Final Frontier
"What is race? It is a biologically meaningless category. It is a cultural term that Americans use to describe what a person's ancestry is. But biologically the human species does not have categories. It just has variations as one travels around the world.''
-- Jefferson Fish, psychologist, St. John's University, New York
"Effectively, we're all cousins separated by, at most, a couple of thousand generations. So the next time you're sitting in traffic... try to remember that the driver in front is one of the family."
-- Spencer Wells, Population Geneticist
Frank Gorshin as Bele, and Lou Antonio as Lokai
Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 70: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (1969, created by Gene Roddenberry )
Synopsis: Bele and Lokai, alien humanoids from the planet Cheron, are mortal enemies. Their hatred for each other leaves Captain Kirk bewildered. Bele and Lokai, after all, look the same. Each is black on one side and white on the other. What reason, Kirk asks, could they have to hate each other? An indignant Bele snarls: "Are you blind? We're nothing alike! I'm black on my right side and white on my left side. He's white on his right side and black on his left side!" When the Starship Enterprise arrives at Cheron, they discover a lifeless planet, annihilated by racial armageddon. Bele and Lokai however have learned nothing. They beam down to Cheron, fighting each other to the death.
Heavy-handed? Preachy? Didactic?
Perhaps. But if any morality tale ever deserved to be told, loudly and repeatedly, this is it.
Consider the following horrific crimes committed long after that Star Trek episode first aired in 1969.
On December 7, 1993, black racist Colin Ferguson boarded a Long Island Rail Road commuter train, drew his 9mm semi-automatic pistol and began shooting white and Asian passengers. By the time three male passengers managed to tackle him, Ferguson had shot 25 people, killing six and seriously wounding 19.
On June 7, 1998, white racists Lawrence Russell Brewer, John William King, and Shawn Allen Berry chained black hitchhiker James Byrd Jr. to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles down a rural Jasper, Texas dirt road. By the time their truck rolled to a halt, Byrd's head and one arm had been torn from his body.
The Star Trek episode "Let This Be Your Final Battlefield" was set in Stardate: 5730.2. Let us pray that when Stardate 5730.2 eventually rolls around, the human race is no longer behaving like Bele and Lokai, or Ferguson, Brewer, King, and Berry.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Neocons and the Forgotten Lesson of Vietnam
Neocons and the Forgotten Lesson of Vietnam
Bevin Chu
June 30, 2004
Executive Summary: The Christian Science Monitor has posted a highly informative introduction to neoconservativism at its website. Included is a 10 question Neocon Quiz that lets readers determine whether they are neoconservatives. Question 2 asks whether the US was right to intervene in Vietnam. Question 3 asks whether the US should intervene in China. Quite inexplicably, the multiple choice answers suggested for China differ dramatically from the multiple choice answers for Vietnam. This discrepancy raises a disturbing question. Have Americans already forgotten the lesson of Vietnam?
Neocon Quiz Question 2
The US campaign in Vietnam was...
[ ] A disaster. What threat did Vietnam pose to American security? More than 50,000 US troops died in support of a theory about "dominoes."
[ ] A failure. The American objective was strategically and morally bankrupt.
[ ] A quagmire. The US had the right strategy - it was important to contain communist expansion into Asia - but executed the wrong tactics. High casualty rates and low public support put the US in an unwinnable war.
[ ] A hard-won victory. US forces paid a high - but necessary - price to contain Communism in Southeast Asia.
Neocon Quiz Question 3
What type of relationship should the US form with China?
[ ] The US must hedge China's rise to great-power status. The policy of preemption includes China, and US military leaders must strategically contain China's armed forces, while US policymakers maintain America's economic preeminence. Above all else, China must not be encouraged to think it can challenge America's superpower status.
[ ] China's bullying - of Tibet, Falun Gong, and Taiwan - is atrocious. America's "normalization" of trade with China has allowed it to continue its human rights abuses, while costing countless American jobs. The US must not sacrifice its moral high ground at the altar of trade.
[ ] China presents great potential dangers - and rewards - to American interests in the 21st century. While the US must affirm China's progressive steps and opening economy, it cannot ignore its repressive human rights behavior, trade violations, and bullying of Taiwan. Ultimately, opening China to American goods and services spreads American values that will influence China for the better.
[ ] The US should neither appease nor aggravate China. China is a bellicose regional power and its human-rights record is appalling. But it doesn't threaten US interests. The US must stop giving China preferential trade treatment and do more to protect American jobs, but it needn't contain or confront China.
See:
Empire builders, Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power, Neocon quiz - Are you a neoconservative? Take this quiz to find out
Vietnam Redux
"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."
-- Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense to JFK and LBJ and chief architect of the Vietnam War
I assume you noticed the discrepancy between the two sets of multiple choice answers?
I assume the discrepancy made as little sense to you as it did to me?
Three of the four multiple choice answers for Vietnam rightly characterized US intervention in Vietnam as an unmitigated catastrophe, as a "disaster," a "failure," or a "quagmire."
Three of the four multiple choice answers for China, on the other hand, characterized potentially apocalyptic US military coercion of mainland China as Doing the Right Thing, as "strategic," or "moral," or an "influence for the better."
Even the one multiple choice answer that explicitly rejected military intervention against mainland China, the one least Sinophobic, characterized China as "bellicose" and maintained that China's "human rights record is appalling."
The obvious question is: "Why?"
When Will They Ever Learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
-- Pete Seeger, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"
Why did the answers suggested for China differ so radically from the answers suggested for Vietnam?
Two possibilities come to mind.
One, the editors of the Christian Science Monitor who formulated the quiz know that neocons have forgotten the lesson of Vietnam and are testing for it.
Two, the editors of the Christian Science Monitor have themselves forgotten the lesson of Vietnam. Both they and the neocon chickenhawks in charge of Bush administration China policy are deluded enough to believe "That was then, this is now," and therefore "This time, it's different."
But is it different? Or is it deja vu all over again?
In 1975, after a decade long struggle, Vietnam defeated America's vaunted military machine, albeit at an appalling cost in Vietnamese lives. Four years later, in 1979, mainland China, in a bloody but short and decisive campaign, defeated Vietnam. In other words, mainland China defeated the nation that defeated the US.
Vietnam never possessed intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching America's population centers. Mainland China, which to its credit has forsworn the first use of nuclear weapons, possesses a second strike deterrent capability. Vietnam's current population numbers a "mere" 82 million. Mainland China's population numbers 1.3 billion.
If the US campaign against Vietnam proved to be a "disaster/failure/quagmire," why wouldn't a US campaign against a far larger, far better armed China be a far worse "disaster/failure/quagmire?"
Wouldn't any US strategic planner in his right mind be more "prudent" about bullying China? Wouldn't he, or she -- not forgetting Condi Rice -- think twice before backing China into a corner, forcing it to defend its territorial integrity?
What threat does a free-market China eager to engage in peaceful trade with America pose to American security? How many US troops will die in support of a theory about a nonexistent "China Threat?" Why isn't the neocon objective of "preventive" military aggression against China "strategically and morally bankrupt?"
Will Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reenact every mistake of his predecessor Robert McNamara? Will Rumsfeld confess, 30 years from today, that "We of the Bush II administration who participated in the decisions on China acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong."
As a perennial optimist, I prefer to see a glass half full. Dubya's obsessive search for monsters to destroy unfortunately, makes it impossible to see anything but a glass completely empty. The neocon inmates in charge of the Bush II foreign policy asylum have forgotten the lesson of Vietnam, assuming they ever understood it in the first place.
For the record, the lesson of Vietnam was this: Unless a foreign nation invades your territory and murders your citizens, leave it alone!
Neocon imperialists consider such a severely constrained foreign policy unthinkable, even outrageous. That's because Neocon advocates of Pax Americana, unlike America's Founding Fathers, have never understood traditional American values, specifically the timeless and enduring value of political noninterference combined with economic engagement.
Speak of the Devil
"Pile on the brown man's burden, compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly he dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom, don't hesitate to shoot."
-- "The Brown Man's Burden" by Henry Labouchere, February 25, 1899 a satirical response to the publication of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" in McClure's Magazine
"Only great conceit could inspire a dream of armed world hegemony. The ideology of benevolent American empire and global democracy dresses up a voracious appetite for power. It signifies the ascent to power of a new kind of American, one profoundly at odds with that older type who aspired to modesty and self-restraint."
-- Claes Ryn, Professor of Political Science, Catholic University
No sooner did I post this op ed piece, than I came across this chilling news report, confirming my worst fears:
US plans huge show of force in Pacific, by Ching Cheong
The Straits Times Interactive, June 30, 2004
Seven aircraft carriers to move within striking distance of China; Taiwan forces slated to join in drill
HONG KONG - The United States is planning a massive show of force in the Pacific Ocean near China to register a point with Beijing. In an exercise codenamed Operation Summer Pulse 04, it is expected to arrange for an unprecedented seven aircraft carrier strike groups (CSGs) to rendezvous in waters a safe distance away from the Chinese coastline - but still within striking distance - after mid-July.
This will be the first time in US naval history that it sends seven of its 12 CSGs to just one region. Clearly, given Beijing's repeated warning that it will use force, as a last resort and whatever the cost, to stop Taiwanese independence, the US feels it needs to send Beijing a message.
The US usually despatches one CSG to a trouble spot as a reminder of its presence. It did so several times in the past when tension was high in the Taiwan Strait. It sends two to indicate serious concern, as was the case when China test-fired missiles over the strait in 1996. In a combat situation, it deploys three to four, which was what it did in the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the recent Iraqi war. But never before has it sent in peace time seven CSGs to the same theatre.
The implications for China are grave. This means that if China has to wage war over Taiwan, it has to be able to land and seize control of the island within the first 30 days. Otherwise, under the FRP, six CSGs may well arrive to join in the battle.
"All this leaves China with no choice but to start and end the war with lightning speed" said a Chinese military source.
Politically, Summer Pulse is likely to be seen by many Chinese as naked intimidation.
"This is gunboat diplomacy in the 21st century," the source remarked, adding that it would remind the Chinese people of their century-long deep humiliation by Western powers - and put Sino-US relations at peril.
Just When You Thought It was Safe to Come Out of the Fallout Shelter
"After the Soviets, who I thought were a real threat, collapsed, I expected a much greater demobilization, a pullback of American troops, a real peace dividend, a re-orienting of federal expenditures to domestic needs. Instead, our government turned at once to find a replacement enemy: China, drugs, terrorism, instability. Anything to justify this huge apparatus of the Cold War structure."
-- Chalmers Johnson, LA Weekly - Dissing the Republic To Save It
Just when you thought you were being overly pessimistic, just when you decided "Even Dubya isn't that stupid," you come across a bombshell like Summer Pulse and wonder "Who's advising George W. Bush on China? General Jack D. Ripper?"
The Bush II administration alas, has no shortage of latter day Jack D. Rippers. To see who they are and how they dictate US policy, see the pages below.
See:
Empire builders, Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power, Key Figures
Spheres of influence, Neoconservative think tanks, periodicals, and key documents, Top neocon think tanks
Bevin Chu
June 30, 2004
Executive Summary: The Christian Science Monitor has posted a highly informative introduction to neoconservativism at its website. Included is a 10 question Neocon Quiz that lets readers determine whether they are neoconservatives. Question 2 asks whether the US was right to intervene in Vietnam. Question 3 asks whether the US should intervene in China. Quite inexplicably, the multiple choice answers suggested for China differ dramatically from the multiple choice answers for Vietnam. This discrepancy raises a disturbing question. Have Americans already forgotten the lesson of Vietnam?
Neocon Quiz Question 2
The US campaign in Vietnam was...
[ ] A disaster. What threat did Vietnam pose to American security? More than 50,000 US troops died in support of a theory about "dominoes."
[ ] A failure. The American objective was strategically and morally bankrupt.
[ ] A quagmire. The US had the right strategy - it was important to contain communist expansion into Asia - but executed the wrong tactics. High casualty rates and low public support put the US in an unwinnable war.
[ ] A hard-won victory. US forces paid a high - but necessary - price to contain Communism in Southeast Asia.
Neocon Quiz Question 3
What type of relationship should the US form with China?
[ ] The US must hedge China's rise to great-power status. The policy of preemption includes China, and US military leaders must strategically contain China's armed forces, while US policymakers maintain America's economic preeminence. Above all else, China must not be encouraged to think it can challenge America's superpower status.
[ ] China's bullying - of Tibet, Falun Gong, and Taiwan - is atrocious. America's "normalization" of trade with China has allowed it to continue its human rights abuses, while costing countless American jobs. The US must not sacrifice its moral high ground at the altar of trade.
[ ] China presents great potential dangers - and rewards - to American interests in the 21st century. While the US must affirm China's progressive steps and opening economy, it cannot ignore its repressive human rights behavior, trade violations, and bullying of Taiwan. Ultimately, opening China to American goods and services spreads American values that will influence China for the better.
[ ] The US should neither appease nor aggravate China. China is a bellicose regional power and its human-rights record is appalling. But it doesn't threaten US interests. The US must stop giving China preferential trade treatment and do more to protect American jobs, but it needn't contain or confront China.
See:
Empire builders, Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power, Neocon quiz - Are you a neoconservative? Take this quiz to find out
Vietnam Redux
"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."
-- Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense to JFK and LBJ and chief architect of the Vietnam War
I assume you noticed the discrepancy between the two sets of multiple choice answers?
I assume the discrepancy made as little sense to you as it did to me?
Three of the four multiple choice answers for Vietnam rightly characterized US intervention in Vietnam as an unmitigated catastrophe, as a "disaster," a "failure," or a "quagmire."
Three of the four multiple choice answers for China, on the other hand, characterized potentially apocalyptic US military coercion of mainland China as Doing the Right Thing, as "strategic," or "moral," or an "influence for the better."
Even the one multiple choice answer that explicitly rejected military intervention against mainland China, the one least Sinophobic, characterized China as "bellicose" and maintained that China's "human rights record is appalling."
The obvious question is: "Why?"
When Will They Ever Learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
-- Pete Seeger, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"
Why did the answers suggested for China differ so radically from the answers suggested for Vietnam?
Two possibilities come to mind.
One, the editors of the Christian Science Monitor who formulated the quiz know that neocons have forgotten the lesson of Vietnam and are testing for it.
Two, the editors of the Christian Science Monitor have themselves forgotten the lesson of Vietnam. Both they and the neocon chickenhawks in charge of Bush administration China policy are deluded enough to believe "That was then, this is now," and therefore "This time, it's different."
But is it different? Or is it deja vu all over again?
In 1975, after a decade long struggle, Vietnam defeated America's vaunted military machine, albeit at an appalling cost in Vietnamese lives. Four years later, in 1979, mainland China, in a bloody but short and decisive campaign, defeated Vietnam. In other words, mainland China defeated the nation that defeated the US.
Vietnam never possessed intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching America's population centers. Mainland China, which to its credit has forsworn the first use of nuclear weapons, possesses a second strike deterrent capability. Vietnam's current population numbers a "mere" 82 million. Mainland China's population numbers 1.3 billion.
If the US campaign against Vietnam proved to be a "disaster/failure/quagmire," why wouldn't a US campaign against a far larger, far better armed China be a far worse "disaster/failure/quagmire?"
Wouldn't any US strategic planner in his right mind be more "prudent" about bullying China? Wouldn't he, or she -- not forgetting Condi Rice -- think twice before backing China into a corner, forcing it to defend its territorial integrity?
What threat does a free-market China eager to engage in peaceful trade with America pose to American security? How many US troops will die in support of a theory about a nonexistent "China Threat?" Why isn't the neocon objective of "preventive" military aggression against China "strategically and morally bankrupt?"
Will Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reenact every mistake of his predecessor Robert McNamara? Will Rumsfeld confess, 30 years from today, that "We of the Bush II administration who participated in the decisions on China acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong."
As a perennial optimist, I prefer to see a glass half full. Dubya's obsessive search for monsters to destroy unfortunately, makes it impossible to see anything but a glass completely empty. The neocon inmates in charge of the Bush II foreign policy asylum have forgotten the lesson of Vietnam, assuming they ever understood it in the first place.
For the record, the lesson of Vietnam was this: Unless a foreign nation invades your territory and murders your citizens, leave it alone!
Neocon imperialists consider such a severely constrained foreign policy unthinkable, even outrageous. That's because Neocon advocates of Pax Americana, unlike America's Founding Fathers, have never understood traditional American values, specifically the timeless and enduring value of political noninterference combined with economic engagement.
Speak of the Devil
"Pile on the brown man's burden, compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly he dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom, don't hesitate to shoot."
-- "The Brown Man's Burden" by Henry Labouchere, February 25, 1899 a satirical response to the publication of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" in McClure's Magazine
"Only great conceit could inspire a dream of armed world hegemony. The ideology of benevolent American empire and global democracy dresses up a voracious appetite for power. It signifies the ascent to power of a new kind of American, one profoundly at odds with that older type who aspired to modesty and self-restraint."
-- Claes Ryn, Professor of Political Science, Catholic University
No sooner did I post this op ed piece, than I came across this chilling news report, confirming my worst fears:
US plans huge show of force in Pacific, by Ching Cheong
The Straits Times Interactive, June 30, 2004
Seven aircraft carriers to move within striking distance of China; Taiwan forces slated to join in drill
HONG KONG - The United States is planning a massive show of force in the Pacific Ocean near China to register a point with Beijing. In an exercise codenamed Operation Summer Pulse 04, it is expected to arrange for an unprecedented seven aircraft carrier strike groups (CSGs) to rendezvous in waters a safe distance away from the Chinese coastline - but still within striking distance - after mid-July.
This will be the first time in US naval history that it sends seven of its 12 CSGs to just one region. Clearly, given Beijing's repeated warning that it will use force, as a last resort and whatever the cost, to stop Taiwanese independence, the US feels it needs to send Beijing a message.
The US usually despatches one CSG to a trouble spot as a reminder of its presence. It did so several times in the past when tension was high in the Taiwan Strait. It sends two to indicate serious concern, as was the case when China test-fired missiles over the strait in 1996. In a combat situation, it deploys three to four, which was what it did in the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the recent Iraqi war. But never before has it sent in peace time seven CSGs to the same theatre.
The implications for China are grave. This means that if China has to wage war over Taiwan, it has to be able to land and seize control of the island within the first 30 days. Otherwise, under the FRP, six CSGs may well arrive to join in the battle.
"All this leaves China with no choice but to start and end the war with lightning speed" said a Chinese military source.
Politically, Summer Pulse is likely to be seen by many Chinese as naked intimidation.
"This is gunboat diplomacy in the 21st century," the source remarked, adding that it would remind the Chinese people of their century-long deep humiliation by Western powers - and put Sino-US relations at peril.
Just When You Thought It was Safe to Come Out of the Fallout Shelter
"After the Soviets, who I thought were a real threat, collapsed, I expected a much greater demobilization, a pullback of American troops, a real peace dividend, a re-orienting of federal expenditures to domestic needs. Instead, our government turned at once to find a replacement enemy: China, drugs, terrorism, instability. Anything to justify this huge apparatus of the Cold War structure."
-- Chalmers Johnson, LA Weekly - Dissing the Republic To Save It
Just when you thought you were being overly pessimistic, just when you decided "Even Dubya isn't that stupid," you come across a bombshell like Summer Pulse and wonder "Who's advising George W. Bush on China? General Jack D. Ripper?"
The Bush II administration alas, has no shortage of latter day Jack D. Rippers. To see who they are and how they dictate US policy, see the pages below.
See:
Empire builders, Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power, Key Figures
Spheres of influence, Neoconservative think tanks, periodicals, and key documents, Top neocon think tanks
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