U.S. INTERVENTION IN INDO-CHINA
Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Philippines
If not on the American continent, maybe it was somewhere in Indo-China that Americans were fighting for freedom and democracy?
I start with Burma, where the information is placed conveniently to hand by John Pilger’s straightforward and honest account broadcast on British TV in May 1996. Burma is the best contemporary example of American desire to prevent democracy in Indo-China. In this case, the US (at the head of the Western Alliance as usual) are quite clearly funding, arming and training the forces of a military dictatorship to prevent an elected government from taking power to end military rule. Meanwhile we see American businessmen looking the other way while child slavery builds their new tourist attractions for them. US military aid pays the Burmese generals to maintain order of this kind.
The obvious examples of American intentions to pervert the course of self-determination are Vietnam and Cambodia which are included later. Burma is highlighted to demonstrate that American interference is not localised to the few countries in Indo-China that have been bombed into near oblivion. It is present everywhere that the people have not won the right to self-determination. Vietnam also has the disadvantage of invoking atrocities past. Burma is happening as I write this which further emphasises the fact that at no mythical point over the last fifty years has American policy become more benign. In this sense, the ghost of Vietnam is still with us. The napalm may have eased but the subjugation has not. Progress is illusion until real progress is made.