*wasn't unpopular." Rhee was a terrible leader

Putin33 is a historical revisionist, and he's roughly on par with the former Iraqi Minister of Information.

Yes, the USSR was all for self-determination. This is why they forced Eastern Europe to adopt Communist dictatorships, and enforced that with the Brezhnev Doctrine.

I'm sure all the Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians saw the Soviet Union as supporting self-determination.

And the USSR/Russia has always been a beacon of truth and light. Which is why Eastern Europe fell all over itself after 1991 to join NATO, to ensure the Russians wouldn't be back.

Your black is white viewpoint is just bad as the jackasses in my own country who don't believe the US has ever done anything wrong. The British got the same crap back when they were dominant. I'm sure the Romans got the same rap. I personally hope I'm around for after the US falls from dominance, so I can see people in the world get all nostalgic for the good old days.

+1 Jack

"Putin, are you serious. One nation invaded another, and we went in to stop the aggressor. Its that simple. I'm not arguing that it wasn't mostly US forces or that the regime in the south was unpopular, but you can't say that we were the bad guys there"

Read Bruce Cumings - Origins of the Korean War Vol. I & II. It annihilates this pernicious myth of North Korean 'aggression' in 1950. The fact of the matter is there
were border incidents on both sides leading right up to 25 June 1950, and that the Rhee government had been planning an invasion and was de-mining the border in order to do so. The invasion by the North was a pre-emptive strike.

And this was not "one nation attacking another" but a case of clear-cut civil war, in which the Democratic North, with support from a good chunk of the population in the South, wanted to get rid of the foreign imposed Rhee regime and reunify the peninsula.

Thanks to the UN, Korea has been in a state of near-siege ever since.

So there was no North Korean aggression.... which is why the North Korean army was well equipped with Russian tanks and supplies, and the South Korean "army" was underequipped and undertrained.... because the US was conspiring to have that shitty little army invade.

And there was no aggression when the North invaded the South. That was totally cool. And if you expect anybody with even a passing understanding of history to believe Kim il Sung was popularly elected....

I suggest you go look at a satellite view of the two Koreas, and see where the government you say was "popularly elected" has gotten them...

(hint.... the North is roughly as well lit as the depths of Siberia... not exactly a ringing endorsement of Juche).

And today, the South is democratic, prosperous, and developed. And the North is a Stalinist shithole. I think the proof is in the pudding, my rather confused friend.

"Yes, the USSR was all for self-determination. This is why they forced Eastern Europe to adopt Communist dictatorships, and enforced that with the Brezhnev Doctrine."

Who is the revisionist? Countries in East-Central Europe had communist revolutions because the communists were the only ones fighting the fascists, while the conservative governments who had been in power before actively collaborated with the Axis powers. You can cry for the oppressed fascists and Jew-killers all you want, but I won't. The Hungarians, more than anyone else, were responsible for Czechoslovak crisis that started the whole thing. They deserve the same kind of war-guilt the Germans feel. The Poles and Baltics were liberated from the Nazi yoke by the Soviets. I know they have parades saluting the Waffen SS these days, but that's the truth. It isn't "revisionist".

"nd the USSR/Russia has always been a beacon of truth and light. Which is why Eastern Europe fell all over itself after 1991 to join NATO, to ensure the Russians wouldn't be back."

And those post-Communist governments have so much legitimacy, which is why they barely get 20% of the population to the polls to vote, and why a high percentage of them express nostalgia for the days of socialism. It's supposedly a wonder that people who were brought to power with western money are falling over themselves to scramble for whatever goodies and golden baubles the west holds over their heads.

"The British got the same crap back when they were dominant. I'm sure the Romans got the same rap."

Ah yes, the British and Romans get a bum rap. It was so much better when the Indians were experiencing famine every 10 years or when the Boers were herded into concentration camps, or when the Romans were annihilating Carthage. There is a reason why all fascists worshipped the Roman Empire, adopted their iconography, salutes, even religion.



I'm sure all the Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians saw the Soviet Union as supporting self-determination.

And the USSR/Russia has always been a beacon of truth and light. Which is why Eastern Europe fell all over itself after 1991 to join NATO, to ensure the Russians wouldn't be back.

"And today, the South is democratic, prosperous, and developed. And the North is a Stalinist shithole. I think the proof is in the pudding, my rather confused friend."

And how did the South got to being "prosperous and developed"? Or does that not figure in your analysis. It just appeared out of the sky, perhaps. Because God loves capitalism and the West or something.

No, the South became "prosperous and developed" thanks to decades of military rule and barrels of money and defense protection from the United States. If every country was so fortunate to get so much aid, while forcing down wages and annihilating labor unions at the barrel of a gun, then others would be prosperous also. Oh wait, the same thing happened in Taiwan. Meanwhile North Korea had the rug pulled from under them when the Soviet Union fell. This combined with several years of natural disasters put wreaked havoc on their economy.

If your model is brutal military rule, then you'll love South Korea. But don't write poems to democracy and human rights. Your hypocrisy shines through.

I bet if you try really hard, you can see five lights.

"That was totally cool. And if you expect anybody with even a passing understanding of history to believe Kim il Sung was popularly elected...."

Not Kim il Sung, Yeo Un Hyeong and the CPKI. Look it up. Then come back and insult me some more.

"which is why the North Korean army was well equipped with Russian tanks and supplies, and the South Korean "army" was underequipped and undertrained"

"Shitty" enough to massacre the elderly and children in Gyeongsang. And whether Rhee was well-armed or not, he was threatening and boasting of his plans to invade the North before June 25, 1950.

The north had almost a quarter of a million soldiers when it invaded the south. the south had only 100,000. the north had heavy armor and aircraft, the south had no armor and only a handful of planes. yeah, the south was just biting at the bit to invade the north.

Also, "In occupied areas, North Korean Army political officers purged South Korean society of its intelligentsia by assassinating every educated person—academic, governmental, religious—who might lead resistance against the North; the purges continued during the NPA retreat." Rummel, Rudolph J.. Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Murder Since 1900

That shows how great the north was.

Is this the sort of arguments people had before the Fall of Communism? It's like traveling back in time to hear Putin33 defend North Korea, of all places. That's not even considering the claims that the Soviet Union was some international champion of human rights...

If I can just comment on the USSR:

Yes, at times, Putin, they were on the right side of the moral equation, in international issues.

At times.

And even then it was CERTAINLY not because of some moral sense, it was to tamper the power of the US.

I'M NOT SAYING THE US was any better in that sense, I'm just saying that's what it was about. There are visa-versa examples... so...

I mean come on dog... Chechnya?

Anyway, the point is that the USSR was an autocracy that had political prisoners and disappeared dissidents and subjugated other nations.... to a much greater degree than what the US has done.

This does not mean the US has not done it too. Make no mistake. But trying to paint the USSR as a greater force for good than the US has been? That's ludicrous revisionism... if you can even call it that.

I know you're probably from Russia, and probably proud of your country, as you should be, just like I'm American and proud of mine. But one should not shy away from acknowledging evil periods in even our own country's past.

For the US you have
-slavery
-genocide of the Native Americans
-institutionalized racism and brutal class suppression
-a perverted political system
-etc.

Thing is, I'm telling you that this was not as bad as the USSR's track record.

Now if you want to make things fairer you can average the USSR's track record into the track record of the rest of Russia, pre-revolution and post-USSR. This is a little more of a toss-up.

But the USSR itself was overwhelmingly a force of evil.

Please note that this does not, and did not make Russians or Soviets evil. The evil *people* involved in this would be those carrying out the oppression and the fatcat leaders who benefited with full knowledge of the oppression.

What's the deal Putin?

Would you mind sharing some about yourself? (NOT for the purposes of questioning your motives, but for my own curiosity to understand why someone might actually defend the USSR/NK etc)

Neither the US or the USSR are champions of the ideals of freedom or self determination or whatever you want to say unless its convenient or beneficial for them. Neither are "evil" either... they're just both dickheads.

They're just both states. That's how the world works.

"Also, "In occupied areas, North Korean Army political officers purged South Korean society of its intelligentsia by assassinating every educated person—academic, governmental, religious—who might lead resistance against the North; the purges continued during the NPA retreat." Rummel, Rudolph J.. Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Murder Since 1900

That shows how great the north was."

You might want to check a different source. As I pointed out in a different thread, Rummel is the worst of the anti-communist propagandists. He claims close to 70 million were killed during the 1928-1953 era in the USSR. He's 10x worse than Conquest and Pipes in terms of his sloppy and ideologically based "research".

I see no profit in continuing to argue with a close-minded nutcase! Shirley there's better things todo.

Alright, so my source may be biased, but so are communist sources.

According to the data from the US Department of Defense, the United States had suffered 33,686 battle deaths, along with 2,830 non-battle deaths during the Korean War and 8,176 missing in action.
"Korean War Death Stats Highlight Modern DoD Safety Record". DOD. 2000-06-28. http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45275.

"the Chinese and North Koreans estimated that about 390,000 soldiers from United States, 660,000 soldiers from South Korea and 29,000 other UN soldiers were "eliminated" from the battlefield."
Xu, Yan (2003-07-29). "Korean War: In the View of Cost-effectiveness". Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in New York. http://www.nyconsulate.prchina.org/eng/xw/t31430.htm.

There is simply no way that over 350,000 US troops were wounded in action with that number of deaths, if you include the wounded in "eliminated".

On Chechnya, what about it? Would you accept a movement that was engaged in terrorism and was invading neighboring states, was tied to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and wanted to create an Islamic state in your territory? Of course not. You'd repress it with the full force of the state.

As to the record of the US vs USSR.

On the US side you have - hundreds of thousands killed by US installed governments all over Latin America and Asia, including 500,000 Communists killed in Indonesia and 200,000 killed in Guatemala alone. Millions killed by US forces in Vietnam and Korea, two countries that never did anything to threaten the US and were halfway around the world.

On the scale of domestic political repression - you have the assassinations of the Black Panthers, the imprisonment of US Socialists in the 1920s, the witchhunt of US Communists in the 1940s/1950s, the infiltration of MLK and other Civil Rights leaders movements, and the general repression of any group that did anything more than argue about the optimal tax rate. People being attacked with dogs and water cannons.

On the issue of racial equality, it's not even close. The Soviets were consistently supporting it and anti-colonial movements around the world, the Americans consistently fought to preserve the privileges of race.

On women's equality, same deal. There's a reason why every equal rights movement was suspected of being a Communist plot. That's because....it was!

The reason why colonialism is no longer with us is because of the persistent political pressure the Soviets engaged in throughout the Cold War. There's a reason why Nehru wrote a eulogy for Stalin. Anti-colonial struggles owed their victory to Soviet support.

Slavery is not 'better' than ending pogroms and liberating the workers and peasants of Russia. Annihilating aboriginals is not 'better' than granting ethnic minorities - for the first time - their own language and cultural rights. The prison house of nations was no more.

The country that did this cannot be called a "force for evil". Not by anybody outside the deluded West.

As for me, I'm not Russian. I'm an American. I defend the Soviet Union because they destroyed fascism and fought for people like me, the working class. I see no reason why I should advocate for a class I do not belong to.

"There is simply no way that over 350,000 US troops were wounded in action with that number of deaths, if you include the wounded in "eliminated"."

Fair enough, we'll both aim to use balanced sources.

Colonialism is alive and well in the new global trade, where 'autonomous' states sanction multi-national corporations to exploit their workers....

Surely we have not changed that much... tactics differ explitation of 'under-developed' nations continues.

http://www.truththeory.org/america-freedom-to-fascism/

I'm fact-less about this subject.
America has ruled excellently in the past ages. The reason why America is falling is because it's quality of rule has decreased. Too much corruption and the order of society is falling apart. There are many reasons for this, but I'm fact-less. I'm sure that the facts will uphold my statement. The only image I see of when I see America now is the difference between the roots of America and America today. America of the past and present has such definite contrasts. What is America doing today? What did America accomplish in the past? America has shined for a very long time. And definitely it can continue to shine..
America needs to rebuild on its foundations.
The people of America probably don't even know the foundations of America.

@furball..i agree with you,but seem that changing of america is not long an american issue,that should be the global issue,but am.administration & the pepole should be aware of the problem & unfort.that is not a case...