Of course, it wasn’t a total victory for the US. Our larger goal
was to reincorporate Indochina into the US-dominated global
system, and that has not yet been achieved.
But our basic goal—the crucial one, the one that really counted—
was to destroy the virus, and we did achieve that. Vietnam is a
basket case, and the US is doing what it can to keep it that way. In
October 1991, the US once again overrode the strenuous objections
of its allies in Europe and Japan, and renewed the embargo and
sanctions against Vietnam. T he T hird World must learn that no one
dare raise their head. T he global enforcer will persecute them
relentlessly if they commit this unspeakable crime.
The Gulf War
T he Gulf War illustrated the same guiding principles, as we see
clearly if we lift the veil of propaganda.
W hen Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, the UN Security
Council immediately condemned Iraq and imposed severe sanctions
on it. W hy was the UN response so prompt and so unprecedently
firm? T he US government-media alliance had a standard answer.
First, it told us that Iraq’s aggression was a unique crime, and
thus merited a uniquely harsh reaction. “America stands where it
always has—against aggression, against those who would use force
to replace the rule of law”—so we were informed by [the first]
President Bush, the invader of Panama and the only head of state
condemned by the World Court for the “unlawful use of force” (in
the Court’s ruling on the US attack against Nicaragua). T he media
and the educated classes dutifully repeated the lines spelled out for
them by their Leader, collapsing in awe at the magnificence of his
high principles.
Second, these same authorities proclaimed—in a litany—that the
UN was now at last functioning as it was designed to do. T hey
claimed that this was impossible before the end of the Cold War,
when the UN was rendered ineffective by Soviet disruption and the
shrill anti-W estern rhetoric of the T hird W orld.
Neither of these claims can withstand even a moment’s scrutiny.
T he US wasn’t upholding any high principle in the Gulf, nor was any