They Helped Us During the Vietnam War, Then We Dumped Them
As you know, the French helped us during the Revolutionary War. Without them, we might’ve lost the war and become just another British colony. 230 years later we've turned against France with a vengeance, just because of a disagreement over Iraq. The French have pretty much been reduced to a caricature — a bunch of finicky wine-sipping surrender monkeys.
The Hmong (a mountain tribe from Southeast Asia) have gotten a much shorter grace period. They fought on America’s side during the Vietnam War. They were ferocious fighters who made a huge difference to our troops. And now they're being kept out of the United States because they might be “terrorists.”
Because of the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, the Hmong are technically categorized as “terrorists” because of their secret war against the Laotian Communists almost 40 years ago.
The director of a Hmong advocacy group said “Thousands of Hmong veterans and family members are threatened with potential deportation down the road. And there is a clear and present danger they cannot be naturalized in a timely manner.”
Another spokesperson said “Clearly, it’s absurd that people who fought with us — people who have received special exemptions from the law precisely for that conduct — should be barred from coming to the U.S. as refugees as a result of that conduct.”
Ready, all together now: They hate us for our freedom.
Labels: Hmong, Laos, Patriot Act, Real ID Act, Vietnam
posted by Tom Harper @ 12:04 AM
12 Comments:
Re. France, it seems to me our relations with that country in recent years are an example of what happens when another country's government decides not to obey their American masters. They don't agree with our approach or with what we are demanding they do, and therefore they are viewed as a problem. This is particularly the case with the way in which the Bush administration seems to operate. Sure, I do like to blame just about everything on the Bush administration as a matter of course, but poor foreign relations, not just with France but with most of the rest of the world, have gotten worse since 2000. Nowadays it isn't just our leaders' perceived need to react in a punitive manner to those who wish to disagree with our hegemonic worldview, but added to that, it's our administration's need to create new enemies... Deciding that the Hmong might be "terrorists" reeks of the Bush tendency to manufacture as many enemies as possible so there will be more nations/groups/entities to fight and defeat, or more ways to elevate the levels of fear within the general public.
Forget history, who cares about that...! Bush doesn't, unless he is giving lip service in the press to books about Algeria, or maybe stuff written by religious war advocatesfrom the early 20th century... stuff he may or may not have read, or maybe had others read to him. I doubt that he feels his administration owes the French anything, but rather that they owe our government their obedience because of our status as the "only world superpower". Thus, we see all the crap like "Freedom Fries", etc.
In its quest for absolute power, not just here but around the world, the Bush administration proves it is absolutely corrupt.
Snave: Yeah, our government's really pushing things too far when it comes to alienating and ostracizing our allies just because of a disagreement. France is easy to make a caricature out of since they're already stereotyped as a bunch of finicky wine-tasters. But I don't their attitudes toward American world hegemony are much different than the rest of the world. Spain has a much higher percentage of people who are against America's occupation of Iraq. But since they're stereotyped as being hot-tempered and macho, it's harder to paint them as a bunch of sissies like we do with the French.
The Hmong sure got a nice thank you for helping us in the Vietnam war. If this is how we thank our allies, I don't know who's gonna help us during our next invasion.
That makes complete logical sense to the wingnut authoritarians.
The Vanity Press posted this brilliant analogy from a book on authoritarian personality:
Overall, the authoritarians had lots of trouble simply thinking straight....They particularly had trouble figuring out that an inference or deduction was wrong. To illustrate, suppose they had gotten the following syllogism:
All fish live in the sea.
Sharks live in the sea.
Therefore, sharks are fish.
The conclusion does not follow, but high RWAs [Right-Wing Authoritarians] would be more likely to say the reasoning is correct than most people would. If you ask them why it seems right, they would likely tell you, "Because sharks are fish." In other words, they thought the reasoning was sound because they agreed with the last statement. If the conclusion is right, they figure, then the reasoning must have been right. Or to put it another way, they don't "get it" that the reasoning matters--especially on a reasoning test.
#
Wingnuts are incapable of discerning friend and foe. Hence often times they prosecute their friends and aid their enemies.
why are we so backwards?
PoliShifter: Yup, that's a good illustration of the "reasoning" that so many rightwingers use. Try to argue using logic or cause and effect, and you might as well be speaking Swahili.
And wingnuts do indeed persecute their allies and aid their enemies.
Lefty: Good question. If you find out let me know.
What an absolute mess! I can't even say anymore on this because I'm so annoyed.
Ricardo: Absolute mess is right. Any law that has this many unintended consequences can't be good.
Shafting our friends is almost a tradition now.
It's a powerful lesson for those who might consider cooperating with us. Not to mention, of course, how we've essentially given a bunch of Afghanistan back to the Taliban. The Afghanis got the "quick learner" course on what happens to those who cooperate with us.
amazing how we treat the refugees that WE create..
Jolly Roger: I remember that from the 1991 Gulf War. Bush 41 encouraged the Kurds and other ethnic groups to fight with us and help us oust Saddam Hussein. Then, as soon as Hussein withdrew from Kuwait, we declared victory and left. All these people who risked their lives to help us were left to face Hussein's wrath and vengeance.
Mike: Yup, that's about it. Devastate their homeland in a war, and then tell them to fuck off if they try to come here.
Yeah, but the MEK are still cool though.
Prague Twin: I hate to look dumb, but is MEK the Iranian group that's either terrorists or American allies, depending on who you ask?
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