Leftists should learn from history
Leftists Should Learn From History
By Daniel G. Jennings
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it says the old truism. A prime example is the American Left or peace movement which is once more attacking those waging a war without addressing the real cause of the war.
During the Vietnam, War the Left blamed the American war effort and those who supported it for the conflict while placing the true war mongers; the Vietnamese Communists, on a pedestal. It was Ho Chi Minh and his heirs and their moronic drive for absolute power that started the Vietnam War and drove them to destroy their own country. The Communist drive for absolute control pushed the Communists to wage a total war that nearly destroyed Vietnam and dragged in the United States.
The United States was perfectly willing to live in peace with the Vietnamese Communists and let them run their little banana republic around Hanoi. The Communists wouldn’t settle for anything but total control and waged a twenty year war for that goal. A war that cost several million lives but ultimately proved meaningless. Faced with cold hard reality, the Vietnamese Communists have quietly abandoned the ideology of Marx and Ho for capitalism and made peace with the USA.
The Left couldn’t recognize the evil of Communism or even the fact that the enemy America was fighting in Vietnam was Communist. In their historical accounts leftists call the enemy nationalists or say that they were fighting to defend Vietnam’s traditional culture. Two claims that are a complete denial of obvious and well-documented historical fact.
Nor could the Left realize that Communism was the cause of the Cold War. Throughout that conflict and particularly in the 1980s, Leftists blamed American Cold Warriors for the Cold War. They claimed that the Soviet Union and its allies were only responding to American provocation. A claim that was complete nonsense, it was the militaristic state created by Lenin and Stalin that launched and waged the Cold War. The Soviet military industrial complex in its insatiable drive for expansion drove the Cold War.
When the Soviet Union collapsed and disarmed itself the Cold War came to an end. The United States quickly disarmed and demobilized much of its vast war machine. Super Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan - portrayed as a war mongering cowboy by the Left -signed groundbreaking disarmament treaties with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Left still doesn’t get it in their historical accounts they still blame American anticommunists for the Cold War.
Today, the Left is once again condemning American backers of wars while ignoring the real cause of the war. The wars are the War on Terror and the Iraq War and the cause of both those conflicts is the dependence of the United States and other countries on an increasingly scarce resource: oil.
Just as their parents refused to acknowledge Communism as the true cause of the Cold War and the conflict in Vietnam. Today’s Leftists refuse to recognize that dependence on oil drives the War in Iraq and the war on Terror. Oil money is financing Al Qaeda and other anti American extremist groups. Oil money props up the archaic monarchies in the Persian Gulf that promote extremist variants of Islam that fuel terrorism and block democratic reform in the Middle East. Oil money drives the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by financing the Palestinian “cause.” Oil money is financing the insurgency in Iraq, as long as insurgents are running amuck sabotaging Iraq’s infrastructure and keeping Iraqi oil off the market the price of oil will keep going up.
If this wasn’t bad enough, oil drives instability in other parts of the world including Nigeria, Indonesia, Angola and Venezuela. As oil prices go up, instability will increase and spread and wars for oil will start everywhere. In particular India and China could be drawn into such conflicts, Chinese construction companies and drilling crews are now working in the Middle East, the People’s Liberation Army can’t be far behind.
The self-appointed apostles of peace ignore the oil crisis. Just as their parents got hip for Ho, the modern leftists drive to the peace rally in their SUV with the No War for Oil sticker on its bumper. At the peace rally they listen to speakers who tell that neoconservatives in the Bush Administration were responsible for the war and that oil played no part. It is no coincidence that these leftists backed presidential candidate John Kerry who once called Communism an imaginary enemy and proposed dumping America’s strategic oil reserve on the market as a means of driving down oil prices.
Until we address oil dependence and reduce it by turning to realistic measures such as electric powered railroads and mass transit, oil dependence and the instability and war it causes will increase. Just as Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War by attacking its true cause: Communism. Unfortunately, the leftists won’t address oil dependence they’ll be too busy looking for the imaginary conspiracy of evil warmongering neoconservatives in the White House basement that caused the war and the high oil prices to do something about oil dependence.
So I suppose it will be up to the Republicans to address oil dependence just as it was Republicans who were forced to address the real cause of the Cold War. Hopefully, history will repeat itself in that instance too.
By Daniel G. Jennings
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it says the old truism. A prime example is the American Left or peace movement which is once more attacking those waging a war without addressing the real cause of the war.
During the Vietnam, War the Left blamed the American war effort and those who supported it for the conflict while placing the true war mongers; the Vietnamese Communists, on a pedestal. It was Ho Chi Minh and his heirs and their moronic drive for absolute power that started the Vietnam War and drove them to destroy their own country. The Communist drive for absolute control pushed the Communists to wage a total war that nearly destroyed Vietnam and dragged in the United States.
The United States was perfectly willing to live in peace with the Vietnamese Communists and let them run their little banana republic around Hanoi. The Communists wouldn’t settle for anything but total control and waged a twenty year war for that goal. A war that cost several million lives but ultimately proved meaningless. Faced with cold hard reality, the Vietnamese Communists have quietly abandoned the ideology of Marx and Ho for capitalism and made peace with the USA.
The Left couldn’t recognize the evil of Communism or even the fact that the enemy America was fighting in Vietnam was Communist. In their historical accounts leftists call the enemy nationalists or say that they were fighting to defend Vietnam’s traditional culture. Two claims that are a complete denial of obvious and well-documented historical fact.
Nor could the Left realize that Communism was the cause of the Cold War. Throughout that conflict and particularly in the 1980s, Leftists blamed American Cold Warriors for the Cold War. They claimed that the Soviet Union and its allies were only responding to American provocation. A claim that was complete nonsense, it was the militaristic state created by Lenin and Stalin that launched and waged the Cold War. The Soviet military industrial complex in its insatiable drive for expansion drove the Cold War.
When the Soviet Union collapsed and disarmed itself the Cold War came to an end. The United States quickly disarmed and demobilized much of its vast war machine. Super Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan - portrayed as a war mongering cowboy by the Left -signed groundbreaking disarmament treaties with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Left still doesn’t get it in their historical accounts they still blame American anticommunists for the Cold War.
Today, the Left is once again condemning American backers of wars while ignoring the real cause of the war. The wars are the War on Terror and the Iraq War and the cause of both those conflicts is the dependence of the United States and other countries on an increasingly scarce resource: oil.
Just as their parents refused to acknowledge Communism as the true cause of the Cold War and the conflict in Vietnam. Today’s Leftists refuse to recognize that dependence on oil drives the War in Iraq and the war on Terror. Oil money is financing Al Qaeda and other anti American extremist groups. Oil money props up the archaic monarchies in the Persian Gulf that promote extremist variants of Islam that fuel terrorism and block democratic reform in the Middle East. Oil money drives the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by financing the Palestinian “cause.” Oil money is financing the insurgency in Iraq, as long as insurgents are running amuck sabotaging Iraq’s infrastructure and keeping Iraqi oil off the market the price of oil will keep going up.
If this wasn’t bad enough, oil drives instability in other parts of the world including Nigeria, Indonesia, Angola and Venezuela. As oil prices go up, instability will increase and spread and wars for oil will start everywhere. In particular India and China could be drawn into such conflicts, Chinese construction companies and drilling crews are now working in the Middle East, the People’s Liberation Army can’t be far behind.
The self-appointed apostles of peace ignore the oil crisis. Just as their parents got hip for Ho, the modern leftists drive to the peace rally in their SUV with the No War for Oil sticker on its bumper. At the peace rally they listen to speakers who tell that neoconservatives in the Bush Administration were responsible for the war and that oil played no part. It is no coincidence that these leftists backed presidential candidate John Kerry who once called Communism an imaginary enemy and proposed dumping America’s strategic oil reserve on the market as a means of driving down oil prices.
Until we address oil dependence and reduce it by turning to realistic measures such as electric powered railroads and mass transit, oil dependence and the instability and war it causes will increase. Just as Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War by attacking its true cause: Communism. Unfortunately, the leftists won’t address oil dependence they’ll be too busy looking for the imaginary conspiracy of evil warmongering neoconservatives in the White House basement that caused the war and the high oil prices to do something about oil dependence.
So I suppose it will be up to the Republicans to address oil dependence just as it was Republicans who were forced to address the real cause of the Cold War. Hopefully, history will repeat itself in that instance too.
posted by great one at 5:31 PM
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