STALE 'DESPOTISM' RIDES AGAIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001200870001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 29, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 14, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2001103/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 ATAMWIF0001-6
SIOUX CITY, IOWA
JOURNAL
D - 74,044
S - 57,489
Sale. `De; po'isnn' Rides
Some time ago we ventured the guess
that as the United States moved toward the
recognition of Mao Tse-tung's regime in
Peking, a campaign would be mounted to
discredit the Nationalist government on
Taiwan.
Actually "guess" is a very poor word,
nor was much of a venture involved. The
pattern in such cases has become so firmly
established that the old hands at the game
use the same script -- only the names of
the principles are changed.
As an initial. exhibit, we offer the stan-
dardized surgery performed on Chiang _Kai
shek in a recent issue of Parade, by one of
its editors, Lloyd Shearer.
After a fuzzy attempt to tie in the cost of
the Vietnam War with China policy,
Shearer expounds: "... Chiang Kai-shek
at age 83 is confronted with a loss of face
on Taiwan and can no longer perpetuate the
fiction that he is the rightful leader of some
750 million Chinese.
. "Chiang fled to Taiwan in 1949 with 2
million Chinese mainlanders and has kept
12 million Taiwanese Islanders '-under his
benevolent despotism ever since."
If- Shearer's "benevolent d?spotism"
strikes a familiar chord, readers surely will
recall attacks waged at various times in the
United States against the governments of
South Korea, South Vietnam, Thailand,
Laos, Cambodia (only after the coup),
Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Iran,
co's Spanish regime is repressive, ? Tito's
Yugoslavia and Ceausecu's Romania are
forward-looking regimes which ,(like the
Russians and Red Chinese) are worthy of
U.S. trust.
Such comparisons could go on and on;
the point is, why is it our friends and allies
seem to have so many faults while our ene-
mies are pure? Is it the same reasoning
that makes the American military, the
FBI, the CIA,, big business and most of the
nation's old moral
:wrong?
J
Tshombe's secessionist Katanga Province,'
Biafra, South Africa, Rhodesia and most of
the governments of South America (except
Chile). We may have missed quite a few.
Admittedly, a few of the above are not
desirable, although in comparison to their
Red counterparts, indeed their benevolence
cloth shine,
We do not argue that despotism and
corruption are good, but rather that all
governments, being run by men, are apt to
be - sullied to a degree at one time or
another. Also, despotism and corruption, to
use a stale and irksome old bromide, are
often "in the eyes of the beholder," and
Shearer and his friends are masters of the
game of pick-and-choose.
Therefore, Chiang is a despot, Mao
(whose regime probably murdered more
people than Stalin's) is not; Thieu is a con-
Hiving dictator, Ho Chi Minh was not; Fran-
Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R001200870001-6