[Marxism] The perfect spy

[Walter Lippmann]

Magnificent! Another set of surprises from Vietnam, which reflect the
all-too-familiar underestimation by some of those pesky foreign and 
frequently darker-skinned peoples who aren't like us, are they?

It's a widely-practiced human characteristic, that we love to believe
our own bullshit. We often bullshit ourselves. I like to think that
I can eat all that food and somehow NOT be overweight. That's one of
the ways I like to bullshit MYSELF. Perfectionism, as was eloquently
pointed out by the reactionary Winston Churchill, "spells paralysis".
He certainly was right about that. Each of us has our own forms of
self-bullshitology. 

Ho Chi Minh explained once to a reporter from the U.S. how and why
the Vietnamese would win. He said something like: "You will kill ten
of us and we will kill one of you, but you will tire first." Further:
underestimating people with whom we disagree can be at once fatal in
life, as it can be in politics.

Should revolutionary leaders, confronting powerful and thoroughly
unscrupulous opponents, such as the regime in Washington and its
compliant media, act completely and above above-board about their
thinking, their tactics and their strategy? In other words, should
they put all their cards on the table? That would reflect a rather
naive approach. Who, after all, could stand to profit most from 
such a naive behavior? 

This is NOT to say that in 1958 that Fidel Castro had everything all
figured out. I don't know that and cannot assume it. But can the idea 
that Fidel did know who he was dealing with, and that he did take a
few necessary political precautions, be completely ruled out?

If we assume that Fidel Castro was serious about overthrowing the
U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had come to power by
overthrowing parliamentary democracy and then promptly receiving full
recognition and support by Washington, at the height of the Cold War
and during the Korean War, certain strategic and tactical implications 
might be considered. A sample of his approach is provided below.

What, in the final analysis, is the goal of the struggle? To prove
that one was right, and that justice was on our side, though alas,
we died honorably in the, unfortunately, ultimately futile effort?

Or is the goal of the struggle to win?


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California

====================================================================
Why, in Vietnam, Women Are at Top Of Corporate Heap
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2007-July/015066.html
====================================================================
The charming man who explained Vietnam to Americans 
was working for the other side.

The Incredible Double Life of
Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter
and Vietnamese Communist Agent
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2007-July/015169.html
====================================================================

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with
certain unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."

This immortal statement appeared in the Declaration of Independence
of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, it
means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the
peoples have a right to live and to be happy and free.

With these words, Ho Chi Minh began a 1945 speech to a massive crowd
of citizens and revolutionaries in Saigon. By the end of the speech,
Vietnam had declared its independence from France, and a new era of
struggle had begun.

Most Americans have a desperately foggy concept of the Vietnam war, a
swampy brew distilled from chunks of pop culture like Rambo,
Apocalypse Now and Forrest Gump. Small Asian men, driven by some
unknown, insane hatred, lob grenades into American tents. Female
suicide bombers blow up American choppers on the ground. Waves of
poorly armed peasant soldiers throw themselves against superior
American defenses and die by the dozen. 'Nam was hell.

In the haze of general amnesia about the war's actual events, many
Americans forget that there was a single man largely responsible for
the incredibly defiant Vietnamese resistance to American forces. When
he was born as the son of rural scholar of the Confucian tradition,
he was named Nguyen Sinh Cung. When he grew older, he took the name
Nguyen Tat Thanh. His first revolutionary name was Nguyen Ai Quoc
(Nguyen the Patriot), and his second — the one that stuck — was Ho
Chi Minh, a name adopted while he posed as an itinerant Chinese
journalist.

Author William J. Duiker, a recent emeritus of Penn State's history
department, spent 30 years researching his book, "Ho Chi Minh: A
Life." The effort shows. "Ho Chi Minh" is exhaustively sourced, and
it painstakingly charts Ho's subtle navigation through the Byzantine
passageways of international revolutionary politics. FULL:
http://www.flakmag.com/books/hochi.html
====================================================================

Military Review
Command & General Staff College
Fort Leavenwoth, Kansas
November-December 2002 

Voices from the Sierra Maestra: 
Fidel Castro's Revolutionary Propaganda
Major Russell J. Hampsey, U.S. Army

U.S. decisionmakers. Castro had to convince U.S. decisionmakers that
the movement was not communist. He had to persuade them to stop
shipping small arms and planes to Cuba, and he wanted to dissuade
them from intervening in the Revolution.

Castro's programs with regard to the U.S. press, concerning the
movement's political goals, also served to affect U.S.
decisionmakers. Castro's public rejection of communism was reflected
in correspondence, dated 7 December 1957, between the U.S. Department
of State and U.S. American Embassy policy officer Wayne Smith. Smith
wrote: "The Cuban Government accuses Castro of being a communist, but
has not produced evidence to substantiate the charge." Castro's
campaign of distancing himself from communism was reaching his
intended audience.

Castro, no stranger to Cuban history, was well aware that the United
States believed it had a legitimate reason to intervene in Cuban
politics. He had to maintain a delicate balance of fighting against a
demonstrably illegitimate dictator, while simultaneously not
offending the United States enough to cause intervention in Cuban
affairs. Part of the program to reduce the chances of U.S.
intervention was the anticommunist rhetoric he spouted.

FULL:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuban-rebels/voices.htm
==================================================================

FIDEL CASTRO: INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW ST. GEORGE
Look Magazine, February 4, 1958 (excerpts)

ST. GEORGE: You say you will burn Cuba's entire sugar crop. The
island's economic life depends on it. What can you gain by this?

CASTRO: Our intent is to burn the harvest to the last stalk,
including my own family's large sugar-cane farm here in Oriente
Province. It is a hard step. But it is a legitimate act of war. From
sugar taxes, Batista buys bombs and arms, pays his newly doubled
army. Only their bayonets now keep him in power. Once before, Cubans
burned their cane, razed their very towns, to wrest freedom from
Spain. During your revolution, didn't the American colonists throw
tea into Boston Harbor as a legitimate defense measure?

ST. GEORGE: What do you rebels want, besides toppling Batista? And
what of reports you will nationalize all foreign investments in Cuba?

CASTRO: First, we must overthrow the dictatorship, forced on us by
the military coup d'état in 1952 when Batista saw he would lose any
free election. Next, we'll set up a provisional government, whose
heads are to be elected by some 60 Cuban civic bodies, like the
Lions, Rotarians, groups of lawyers and doctors, religious
organizations. Within a year, this caretaker regime would hold a
truly honest election. In a manifesto issued last July, we called for
the temporary government to free immediately all political prisoners,
restore freedom of the press, reestablish constitutional rights.

We must eventually root out the fearful corruption that has plagued
Cuba so long; set up an adequately paid civil service beyond the
reach of politics and nepotism; wage a war against illiteracy, which
runs as high as 49 per cent in rural areas; speed industrialization,
and thus create new jobs. For in this little nation of six million, a
million work only four months a year, under an antiquated, one-crop
economy.

Our 26th of July Movement has never called for nationalizing foreign
investments, though in my twenties I personally advocated public
ownership of Cuba's public utilities. Nationalization can never be as
rewarding as the right kind of private investment, domestic and
foreign, aimed at diversifying our economy. I know revolution sounds
like hitter medicine to many businessmen. But after the first shock,
they will find it a boon—no more thieving tax collectors, no
plundcrini army chieftains or bribe-hungry officials to bleed them
white. Our revolution is as much a moral as a political one.

ST.GEORGE: Will you run for President? And have you thought of
negotiating a compromise with Batista, who has promised he will not
run in the next Presidential elections?

CASTRO: Under our constitution, I am far too young to be a candidate.
As for Batista, did President Roosevelt think of compromising with
Hitler just before D-day?

ST.GEORGE: Charges have been made that your movement is
Communist-inspired. What about this?

CASTRO: This is absolutely false. Every American newsman who has come
here at great personal peril—Herbert Matthews of the New York Times,
two CBS reporters and yourself—has said this is false. Our Cuban
support comes from all classes of society. The middle class is
strongly united in its support of our movement. We even have many
wealthy sympathizers. Merchants, industrial executives, young people,
workers are sick of the gangsterism that rules Cuba. Actually, the
Cuban Communists, as your journalist John Gunther once reported, have
never opposed Batista, for whom they have seemed to feel a closer
kinship.

FULL:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-02-04-1958.html

==============================================================
Washington Post, Sunday, July 22, 2007; BW04
Agent Provocateur
The charming man who explained Vietnam to Americans 
was working for the other side.
----------------------------------
The Incredible Double Life of
Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter
and Vietnamese Communist Agent

By Larry Berman
Smithsonian/Collins 328 pp. $25.95
FULL:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2007-July/015169.html

================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer - photographer - activist
http://www.walterlippmann.com
================================