Friday, September 14, 2007

Korea, the Success

I see that George Bush is again trying to convince us to support his Iraq adventure by drawing on the Korean model. Matt Yglesias comments on the absurdity of that analogy for Iraq, but something else strikes me. Especially considering the Bush Administration's, and the neocons in general, insistence that we avoid the horrid failure of Viet Nam. The thing that strikes me is that Viet Nam is actually doing fairly well at this point, 30 years after the end of the war and while South Korea is doing very well, the North not so much. Furthermore, North Korea is on everyone's list of dangerous states what with the supporting terrorism, the isolation, the horrid state of the Korean population and the nuclear program (well now the having a nuclear bomb, thanks George). Viet Nam, on the other hand is no where near the top of anyone's list of dangerous countries. In fact it is developing fairly well to a more open society. It is certainly developing into a fairly market oriented society and one that is friendly to the west. While it is clear that much more good things are happening in Korea (the South anyway) Viet Nam can claim to have much less bad stuff going on than in Korea (the North anyway). My point is only that it is not clear to me that Viet Nam constitutes some horrible failure and Korea some fantastic success.

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