re: #128 FFL (GOP Delenda Est)

re: #142 Hecuba’s daughter

re: #128 FFL (GOP Delenda Est)

As best as I understand the history, after the Japanese surrender in 1945, the general attitude among US policymakers wrt China was that once the Japanese forces were repatriated, the situation would revert to the status quo ante: i.e. that Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT government (the “legitimate” government of China) would simply (re)take over its “legitimate” territory, and deal with the Communist “bandit insurgency” in due course. Mao, of course, had other plans….

But there was, AFAICT, little, if any, support in the US for the sort of massive direct involvement, i.e. boots-on-the-ground, to defeat what was painted, for several years, as a minimal threat to the “legitimate” authority of the KMT - a view enhanced by a flood of pro-Chiang propaganda from the Usual Sources - so that when the Chiang Regime finally collapsed (and fled to Taiwan), events came as something of a nasty surprise to the US FP Establishment, and the efforts to support the non-Communist government were much too little, much too late.

IMHO.