I continue to enjoy reading Richard N. Goodwin's excellent book "Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties" and had a sudden inspiration while reading about how America backed and stumbled into the Vietnam war. Conventional wisdom is that America became involved in Vietnam as a result of the continuation of a foreign policy practiced steadily since the end of World War II, a foreign policy centered on resistance to communist expansion. Why was United States policy geared to focus on the expansion of communism rather than the spread of totalitarianism?

On the surface, it may seem to be a small distinction, for many people the terms are synonyms. The truth is that communism can be anywhere on the spectrum between democratic and totalitarian, and while it is true that most of the world's attention on communist nations through 1965 was exclusively focused on totalitarian communist regimes, there have been a few examples of communism that are more democratic (mostly amongst Native Americans). A change of policy so that America would focus on resistance to totalitarianism would also prohibit the support of capitalist totalitarian regimes as a way of blocking the spread of totalitarianism. What I am getting at, is that the terms used to justify a policy matter, and by focusing American attention (in 1965) on communism, the U.S. government felt free to back the regimes in Saigon, despite the knowledge that those regimes were repressive and authoritarian. Is it possible that if the fight had been against the real problem, governments that did not represent the people, that the United States would never have gotten involved in Vietnam? Guatemala? The Philippines? Angola?

Of course this ignores the business interests of certain companies who always profit from war and from exploitation of humans; but I remain convinced that they are a small group with well funded lobbies, but lobbies that are easy to shame with public opinion if one can pick the right terms. Imagine if Lyndon Johnson (or even Ike or Kennedy) had been able to frame a policy of non-involvement in Vietnam in terms of not supporting one authoritarian regime against another, rather than getting caught up in a reactionary resistance to expansion of communism? Might that same policy have kept Reagan out of Grenada in 1983? We'll probably never know for sure, but it sure makes an interesting idea.

I have no problem with the foreign policy rhetoric that George W. Bush keeps pounding home again, and again: the attempt to spread democracy everywhere. The problem is that I trust neither him, nor his cronies, to actually carry out that lofty goal. They have shown no interest in actually improving the democracy we have right here in the United States (verified voting, anything better than pluralistic voting, really open debates, proportional representation), and they continue to back repressive and authoritarian dictatorships around the globe so long as it is good for business. Even if you help democracy in one country, it does not count in your favor if you have prevented it in other countries.