We pulled out of the Philippines because it became a bad investment. Why? Because American, uh, America, if you look, American agricultural interests were very much opposed to the, back in the, the mid-thirties they were very strongly opposed to the, uh, free trade relationships which allowed Philippine crops to compete with them. That’s why we pulled out of the Philippines. Why did they, Why did these agricultural interests authorize us to intervene in South Vietnam? Well, they didn’t. If you consider this is, this is, uh, this is a critical intervention.
I’m aware of that.
Because we didn’t intervene on the basis of… No, I say that in the Philippines it was the critical intervention. Look, the world was a complex place. There are certain, certain interests that were involved…
MIT is a complex place. Well, there were certain interests that were involved in our Philippine venture, [cough] there were different interests that were involved in our Vietnam venture. You see our Vietnam Mm-hmmm. venture. Don’t forget that with the Second World War, America’s imperial interests expanded enormously. I mean, prior to the Second World War we were sort of a marginal imperialist power, except for the, uh, Monroe Doctrine. But since the Second World War we became the world’s major imperialist power.
American Terror libretto © Jeffrey Lependorf 2008
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