Here are two questions that few today can answer, to wit:
“During the Vietnam War, what could you buy in a Filipino PX that you couldn’t buy in an American PX?”
“Johnnie Walker Black Label and Chivas Regal.”
“What else could you buy in a Filipino PX?”
“Nothing.”
After Lyndon Johnson sent American ground troops into Vietnam in 1965, he looked around rather desperately for allies. Charles De Gaulle had plenty of advice (and precedent), neither of which Lyndon cared for, while Britain’s Harold Wilson was similarly uncooperative, to Lyndon’s fury, who somehow believed that Britain ought to be willing to send its sons to die futile deaths in Vietnam at least once. Fortunately, Filipino president Fernando Marcos was made of sterner stuff—for a price.
American PXes in Vietnam did not sell liquor. for quite sensible reasons. You could get plenty of liquor in bars in base camps, but for those of us in the boonies, well, it made sense to keep temptation at a distance. The details of the Filipino PX liquor concession are surely lost to history. You could not just walk into a Filipino PX and buy Johnnie Black or Chivas. In fact, you could not just walk into a Filipino PX at all. It was all done by appointment. How, I do not know. It is, of course, quite “amusing” that us $240 a month GIs (and that includes $60 a month combat pay) had nothing to drink over there but premium scotch, but the reason for this is, again, quite unclear. Probably the whole concession was given to one of Marcos’ relatives or cronies. It’s possible, I guess, that it was all some sort of counterfeiting ring, that the liquor wasn’t really from the Johnnie Walker and Chivas distilleries—if it was, how could they possibly keep up with the demand, and how did they survive when the war ended?—but that seems hard to believe as well. I only got drunk on the stuff once—it was Johnnie Black—and the label looked legit—I had bought my dad a bottle for his birthday once—and it didn’t make me sick. Well, fog of war, and all of that sort of thing.
But that was then, right? Well, no. The Bush administration surely had a dozen tricks to every one of Lyndon’s, to spread the load and disguise the cost of its multiple wars—and giving Tony Blair the opportunity to make Harold Wilson look like a genius. And now the Biden administration is playing the same game, as both substackers Peter Beinart and Daniel Larison explain, Pete working the Middle East while Dan handles the Far East.
Jake Sullivan is Wrong. A Saudi-Israel Deal Won’t Stabilize the Middle East, Pete explains, taking National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to task for claiming that “normalization” between Israel and Saudi Arabia will create a more stable Middle East. (You have to scroll down a bit, to the sentence beginning “I was struck by” to get to this.) Says Peter, “it’s striking here that the rhetoric is a complete departure from Biden’s rhetoric about democracy, or about the international rules-based order, right, which is the language that Biden tends to use when he’s talking about Russia and China, right? When he’s talking about what Russia and China are doing that’s wrong, we hear this language about America and democracy and international rules-based order. That’s kind of out the window in this case when it comes to what America is actually doing, right? Because both Saudi Arabia and Israel are serious violators in various different ways of international law, right, the international rules-based order. The Saudis, for instance, by murdering an American-based journalist; the Israelis by overseeing a political system that has been called apartheid by its own human rights organizations and the world’s leading human rights organization. So, the justification is completely different.”
Well, yes, it is. Because, in my opinion, what the Biden administration is really concerned about here is not the Middle East but Middle America, specifically keeping control of the price of gas and appeasing the Israeli lobby, aka AIPAC nation, which, of course, is always sure that the Democrats will sell out Israel the first chance they get. Figuring out a reason to heap goodies on both nations will, the Biden folks hope, convince the Saudis not to jerk us around when it comes to the price of gas (giving them every reason, of course, to continue to jerk us around, to remind us who’s boss), and convince the AIPAC (American Israel Political Affairs Committee) folks not to absolutely hate the Democratic Party.1
Meanwhile, in the Far East, Daniel Larison picks up on Stephen Walt’s criticism of the Biden administration’s “Pactomania”, Dan noting that the recent agreement between the U.S., South Korea, and Japan commits us to the support of the repressive, right-wing government led by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeo, a decision sure to antagonize the South Korean left, and, of course, directly contrary (again) to America’s supposed role as the upholder of the world’s “rule based order”.
And so we find ourselves, once more, cutting unsavory deals in the name of, well, “savoriness”, so that we can effectively oppose the “real” unsavory ones, our new “axis of evil”, Russia, China, and Iran, three nations who have effectively nothing in common except that the U.S. hates them. We ignore repression in Saudi Arabia and Israel so we can denounce repression in Iran; we meddle in eastern Europe so that we can denounce Russian meddling in eastern Europe; and we ignore Indian oppression of Muslims so that we can denounce Chinese oppression of Muslims. As I have repeatedly suggested, we could just cut to the chase and ignore the unsavoriness2 of Russia, Iran, and China. But then we wouldn’t have to spend more than half a trillion dollars a year on military equipment that could, and unfortunately, may, blow up the whole world, rule based or no. But then an awful lot of Beltway folks would be out of a job.
ADDENDA
Less “amusing” are reports from The Intercept describing how the U.S. pressured Pakistan into getting in line behind Ukraine—U.S. Helped Pakistan Get IMF Bailout With Secret Arms Deal For Ukraine, Leaked Documents Reveal. According to the article by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain, “the U.S.-brokered loan let Pakistan’s military postpone elections, deepen a brutal crackdown, and jail former Prime Minister Imran Khan.”
Meanwhile, at the New York Times, Christopher Caldwell says The U.S. Has a New Set of Tools for Bullying the World, arguing that “The United States has long wanted Europeans to kick over two of the pillars on which their economies rest: imports of cheap energy from Russia and exports of advanced manufactures to China, Russia’s ally” and detailing how America’s command of the world economy allows us to make this happen. Nothing like a little more bad news to ruin your day!
1. You’ll be glad to know that AIPAC is not one of those fair weather friends of fervent Israeli backer Sen. Bob Menendez, willing to suspend judgment regarding his recent indictment despite the fact that the good senator just happened to have half a mil in cash lying around his home, because, hey, you never want to be caught short when the pizza boy shows up. And if you thought the circumstances surrounding Bob couldn’t get even more suspicious, well, you’re wrong.
2. Word can spell “unsavoriness” but not “savoriness”, which makes sense, when you think about it, because more things are said to be “unsavory” than “savory”.
