Most Negative Western action of the Cold War?

[Speaker Dereich]

I've been reading about the genocides of the Khmer Rouge and Western support of that government, which as a Chinese client opposed the Russians, and it made me think: what do you all think are some of the worst actions, human-rights wise, done by the west in the name of Anti-Communism?

[ChairmanSanchez]

Pinochet.

[Old Europe]

Vietnam?

[Rooney]

The idea of Operation Duckhook in 1971 was a pretty bad idea for victory in Southeast Asia. Operation Northwoods in 1963 was also really awful.

However, the CIA throughout the cold war was incompetent (especially in Berlin) and so some of the worst stuff they thought up never came true.

[The Mikado]

It ends up varying quite a bit depending on your definition of action.

I mean, installing Pinochet is a US action (with cooperation from Pinochet himself, of course).  Pinochet's activities as dictator of Chile are not US actions.  Similarly, the US bombing of Cambodia and the overthrow of the king helped lead to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, but the Khmer Rouge's massacres were its own actions.  Defining Pinochet's atrocities as de facto American atrocities really takes him out of the picture and contributes to the incorporation of Latin American history into the US history narrative by removing Latin American agency and is a gross misuse of history as a discipline IMO.

[asexual trans victimologist]

Mossadegh, anybody?

[Beet]

If we're talking direct actions, then 'Nam.

[Dr. Cynic]

If we're talking direct actions, then 'Nam.

[Old Europe]

I suppose Operation Gladio is another nominee for a specific operation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

[dead0man]

The LBJ fanboys aren't going to like all this talk about Vietnam being the most negative action of the Cold War.

[SPC]

So many to choose from...Surprised Operation Paperclip hasn't been mentioned yet, although Operation PBSUCCESS might be a better one.

[Lief]

The LBJ fanboys aren't going to like all this talk about Vietnam being the most negative action of the Cold War.

As an LBJ fanboy I'll readily admit that Vietnam was the most negative Western action of the Cold War. 2 to 4 million people died, all told. Nothing really compares to that.

[© Tweed the Younger]

Berlin Airlift

[shua]

Berlin Airlift

ok, you can't possibly be real

[dead0man]

Berlin Airlift

I hope we get an explanation for this, it's going to be hilarious.

[SPC]

The LBJ fanboys aren't going to like all this talk about Vietnam being the most negative action of the Cold War.

As an LBJ fanboy I'll readily admit that Vietnam was the most negative Western action of the Cold War. 2 to 4 million people died, all told. Nothing really compares to that.

Would the Phoenix Program constitute a part of the most negative action, or would it have to compete separately with the Vietnam tragedy for most negative action of the Cold War?

[memphis]

Negative for whom? Iran has been one cluster[inks] after another for us ever since the 1953 coup.

[dead0man]

Berlin Airlift

I hope we get an explanation for this, it's going to be hilarious.

Still waiting on my yuks yuks here.

[Rooney]

Berlin Airlift

I agree with this poster. The Berlin Airlift was an unnecessary overreaction on the part of the Truman Administration. In fact, it was one of three hyped "crises" of the year 1948. The three manufactured cold war crises of 1948 were the Czechoslovakian coup, the Berlin Blockade and the issue of recognizing the state of Israel. These three crises were played to the hilt by men like Truman, Clark Clifford, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman and George Kennan.

The Berlin Airlift was unnecessary because the Soviets never intended to threaten West Berlin. Colonel Robert B. Landry, Truman’s air aide, reported in 1948 that the Soviet zone in Eastern Germany was undergoing demilitarization. Landry recorded that the Soviets had dismantled hundreds of mile of railroad track. This track would be necessary to attack Western Europe or even West Berlin. Bernard Montgomery reported to Dwight Eisenhower in 1947 that the Soviets were “very very tired. Devastation in Russia is appalling and the country is in no fit state to go to war.”

Despite these facts General Lucius Clay was well stage managed by the administration in forming his “red scare” letter of March 5, 1948. In this letter Clay stated that Soviet movements in Berlin indicated that war “may come with dramatic suddenness.” Senator Robert Taft, campaigning for the 1948 Republican presidential nomination, took great offense to this alarming statement. “I know of no indication of Russian intention to undertake military aggression beyond the sphere of influence that was originally assigned to them [at Yalta],” Taft stated. He also commented that if Truman and Marshall had any private intelligence which pointed towards the Berlin issue as the step for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe: “They ought to tell the American people about it.”

General Marshall was a great alarmist who is chiefly responsible for the fall of Nationalist China. He obviously had no “private intelligence” pointing towards a Soviet invasion. Truman, Kennan and Marshall needed a crisis to push through the reinstitution of the draft. Truman laughingly renamed this scheme universal military training (UMT) and claimed that it was a necessary public service. This was simply another power grab on behalf of the haberdasher from Pendergrast. General Clay himself told his biographer that he sent General Stephen J, Chamberlain the March 5 cable talking about impending war because: “Chamberlain…told me that the Army was having trouble getting the draft reinstituted and they needed a strong message from me that they could use in congressional testimony. So I wrote this cable.”

The Berlin Airlift itself was just a Western show in response to a nonexistent threat. It was one of the worst steps of the West in the cold war because it solidified in the minds of most citizens the idea that the Soviets were a great threat. Averell Harriman even pulled the Hitler card by stating that the Soviets “are a greater menace than Hitler was.” A pro-statist media, led by Henry Luce, painted men like Senator Taft as “Kremlin assets” for opposing the airlift and the Red war scare.  Republicans decided that if they couldn’t beat Truman than to join him Okayed the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, NATO and eventually the Korean War. The Berlin Airlift scare of 1948 also empowered Truman to request that U.S. soldiers be stationed in Germany and that military appropriations be made for NATO.

In short, the Berlin Airlift is what started the Cold War policy of the arms race. Despite the fact that the Rand Corporation and Team B cooked the books on the “missile gap” between the U.S. and the starving Soviet Union this idea was carried on through the years. All of the madness of MAD and the arms race began with the Berlin Airlift.

[CathKhan]

That whole part where we fought communism. Ridiculous and stupid.

[dead0man]

Berlin Airlift

I agree with this poster.

Then you are an idiot too.  From wiki

That same day, a Soviet representative told the other three occupying powers that "We are warning both you and the population of Berlin that we shall apply economic and administrative sanctions that will lead to the circulation in Berlin exclusively of the currency of the Soviet occupation zone."

Then a week later.

On 24 June, the Soviets severed land and water communications between the non-Soviet zones and Berlin.[36] That same day, they halted all rail and barge traffic in and out of Berlin.[36] On 25 June, the Soviets stopped supplying food to the civilian population in the non-Soviet sectors of Berlin.[36] Motor traffic from Berlin to the western zones was permitted, but this required a 23 kilometer detour to a ferry crossing because of alleged "repairs" to a bridge.[36] They also cut off the electricity relied on by Berlin, using their control over the generating plants in the Soviet zone.

<snip>

Believing that Britain, France, and the United States had little option than to acquiesce, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany celebrated the beginning of the blockade.[44] General Clay felt that the Soviets were bluffing about Berlin since they would not want to be viewed as starting a Third World War. He believed that Stalin did not want a war and that Soviet actions were aimed at exerting military and political pressure on the West to obtain concessions, relying on the West's prudence and unwillingness to provoke a war.

[patrick1]

Sadly, the US did do a lot of really screwed up things in the name of preventing the red menace. This was not confined to installing or playing footsie with some tinpot dictators. A host of misdeeds were conducted against our own unsuspecting citizens- including the employees of everyone's favorite boogeyman, the CIA. Just off the top of my head, we gave black men the clap and syph, CIA agents LSD, dropped nukes near inhabited towns and dropped infected insects on American towns to study bio-warfare dispersal patterns.

It is important and timely point that you do not lose touch with your founding and guiding principles when faced with an external or internal enemy.

[Old Europe]

Yeah, the Berlin Airlift really f**cked a lot of people over. Almost as bad as the whole Marshall plan atrocity.

[Proud Lieberal from Northeast]

That's definitively not an easy question.

In terms of a total death tool, I'd have to say Vietnam war, which also includes strictly related interventions in neighboring countries, most notably Cambodia (I especially mention Cambodia since U.S. bombings contributed to fall of the Cambodian government and rise of the genocidal Khmer Rogue regime).

In long terms, perhaps coup in Iran, since it destroyed moderate (not to mention progressive) opposition as organized force and left fundamentalists as the only force able to take power away from the Shah, which they did in 1979. And Iranians are still in this mess, while countries like Chile recovered very nicely from U.S.-imposed regimes.

[The Mikado]

General Marshall was a great alarmist who is chiefly responsible for the fall of Nationalist China.

I had a post upthread about people eliminating agency of foreign peoples and annexing their history into US history, and this is a great example.  Nationalist China wasn't "lost" by anyone in the US, it was lost by the incompetent, brutal, and corrupt Chiang regime which managed to alienate vast swathes of the population and proved utterly unable to defeat the CCP.  Chiang lost the Chinese Civil War (or rather Mao won it), not the US.