The Poet as by Dave Jaffe
Margaret MacMillan is a historian who leans to the right. She wrote a book and a good one on Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. She mentioned the damage that Mao's 'Cultural; Revolution' had done to China. Yet she said very little about the American war in Indochina.
The U.S. armed forces killed somewhere between two and three million people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 1954 and 1975. As Christopher Lasch remarked communists kill people inside their borders. Capitalist rulers kill people outside their borders. The U.S. and its allies certainly did that.
All over the world after 1945, the United States sponsored right wing coups by military and the election of civilian leaders that killed millions of people. In 1965 General Suharto overthrew the left leaning ruler of Indonesia, Suharto. 500,000 people were killed in this coup. Jennifer Wade of Amnesty International when asked how many people Suharto killed in his more than 30 year reign said, " I think it would be about 4 million people."
In east Asia, the U.S. helped stamp out communist rebellions in the Phillipines using massive force. All across Africa, Asia and Latin America, the U.S. government helped install right wing dictators who murdered their own people and kept their countries safe for capitalism.
"He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch," said U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930's about the founder of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua. The last ruler of Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza killed 50,000 of his own people when they rose in rebellion in the late 1970's and turfed him out of office. In Latin America the U.S. helped overthrow the democratically elected Salvador Allende in 1973. His successor General Pinochet ruled Chile with an iron fist keeping profits safe from higher taxation and nationalizations. All across Latin America in the 1970's and later, dictators and right wing candidates backed by the U.S. of A. came to power.
Nearly all of them slashed social programs to the bone, destroyed unions and abolished legislatures. In this way they assured that many of their citizens would live much shorter lives. In Africa the U.S. helped kill the nationalist Patrice Lumumba and in the end installed Mobutu in the ruler's seat. Mobutu like many other U.S. backed candidates left most of his people living in squalor while he became a billionaire.
In the 1980's and before, the U.S. and its allies supported the apartheid regime in South Africa. South African troops killed about 1.5 million people in Angola, Mozambique and Namibia in the 1980's. Countries like Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau had already lost 2 million people to Portuguese troops in their struggle for independence.
True Mao Zedong and Stalin and Pol Pot were monsters. Yet the U.S. and its allies were no saints either.
"The yellow crane is gone," wrote the young Mao in 1927. "Who knows whither?
Only the tower remains
A haunt for visitors
I pledge my wine to the surging torrent
The tide of my heart swells with the waves."
Most of Mao's successors didn't write poetry. Yet Jiang Zemin, the successor to Cairman Deng Xiaoping did. "His poetry doesn't match Mao's," Chinese critics said. On the other hand the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz thought Mao's poetry to be mediocre.
Whatever the merits of Mao's poetry, Mao's ruthless dictatorship did give China new respect in the world. In 1900 China was a doormat for the great powers of the world. By 1963, as the African-American nationalist Malcolm X. said, "China is one of the most feared nations on earth." It still is to-day. At home Mao's policies killed millions of people.
"Nearly all men can stand adversity," said the U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. "But if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Mao's character was tested by adversity He may or may not have failed the test.
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