Between President Bush and Chairman Mao: Is There Something Similar?
Wendy Liu
January 29, 2007
President Bush was the first president I ever voted for, in 2000, upon becoming a US citizen just before that. It was a privilege to vote. I had never voted for any national or regional leader in China, my native country. The presidency of the past six years, especially since the Iraq war, however, has turned me into a disappointed voter. It is hard to believe, but President Bush, with his Iraq policy, has reminded me of Chairman Mao, China’s long-time leader and dictator.
After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, Mao launched one political movement after another against, in turn, landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, rightists, capitalist roaders, revisionists, and endless other enemies, culminating in the ten-year catastrophe called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966-76. With all politics all the time, China was on the brink of collapse, not to say the Chinese people with broken families, broken education, broken careers, and broken life all around. Yet Mao kept assuring the country that China’s situation was not only good, it was excellent. To make sure China stayed red, as he insisted, continuous revolution was needed even if it was chaotic, because “great disorder under the heaven brings great order across the land.” From his point of view, even socialist grass was better than capitalist wheat. Alas, China has since abandoned his revolution and embraced capitalism. But Mao believed to his last day that the Cultural Revolution was necessary and good for China.
President Bush seems to believe the same about the Iraq war for America, if not in delusion as some suggest. Everybody knows by now that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD, did not involve in 9/11, did not collaborate with al-Qaeda, proving every one of president’s justifications for the war wrong. Yet, just as Mao invented and re-invented reason after reason for yet another political movement, President Bush has come up with new and after-the-fact justifications as he goes along: to topple a dictator, to liberate Iraqi people, to make Iraq central front of the war on terror, to promote freedom, to bring peace in the Middle East, and now to help a young democracy to survive. Just as Mao was convinced that his disastrous continuous revolution was worth more than millions of Chinese lives ruined, Bush seems convinced that the chaotic Iraq war is worth more than 25,000 plus American casualties and 50,000 plus Iraqi civilian lives, and counting, even when it is a war that lacks clear justification, specific goals, progress on the ground, voter support, not to say international support.
Mao, of course, was a dictator, with near absolute power over Chinese people’s political life and life in general. Being the head of the ruling communist party, the “advance party” of the Chinese working people, Mao didn’t need to listen to public opinion. Yet, as an elected leader in an advanced democracy, President Bush has also adamantly, and repeatedly, stated that he didn’t need to lead by the polls. He may be right technically. He has enough power not to care about the polls once in office. He can act like a dictator if he chooses to, especially with his New Way Forward surge strategy for Iraq, even though majority of Americans and in Congress oppose it. On that point, Bush is not too far from Mao who always had the support of the cadre of the party, if not the masses.
Not only did his conduct of the Iraq war and his disregard of public opinion remind me of Mao, Bush’s rhetoric also reminded me of the language of the Mao years. Remember “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists?” There was an older version in China: “Either you are with Mao or you are counter-revolutionary.”
Bush and the Iraq war also reminded of Mao and another war. After agreeing to commit Chinese troops in the Korean War, Mao also agreed to let his son Mao Anying join them, saying that he couldn’t send other people’s sons to fight without sending his own first. Anying was killed in an American air raid soon after arriving at the front.
That war, of course, was beyond my knowledge or experience to comment. But as an American citizen who has followed closely the Iraq war under President Bush and a former Chinese citizen who lived through the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao, I have a one-word conclusion for both exercises: unnecessary.
After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, Mao launched one political movement after another against, in turn, landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, rightists, capitalist roaders, revisionists, and endless other enemies, culminating in the ten-year catastrophe called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966-76. With all politics all the time, China was on the brink of collapse, not to say the Chinese people with broken families, broken education, broken careers, and broken life all around. Yet Mao kept assuring the country that China’s situation was not only good, it was excellent. To make sure China stayed red, as he insisted, continuous revolution was needed even if it was chaotic, because “great disorder under the heaven brings great order across the land.” From his point of view, even socialist grass was better than capitalist wheat. Alas, China has since abandoned his revolution and embraced capitalism. But Mao believed to his last day that the Cultural Revolution was necessary and good for China.
President Bush seems to believe the same about the Iraq war for America, if not in delusion as some suggest. Everybody knows by now that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD, did not involve in 9/11, did not collaborate with al-Qaeda, proving every one of president’s justifications for the war wrong. Yet, just as Mao invented and re-invented reason after reason for yet another political movement, President Bush has come up with new and after-the-fact justifications as he goes along: to topple a dictator, to liberate Iraqi people, to make Iraq central front of the war on terror, to promote freedom, to bring peace in the Middle East, and now to help a young democracy to survive. Just as Mao was convinced that his disastrous continuous revolution was worth more than millions of Chinese lives ruined, Bush seems convinced that the chaotic Iraq war is worth more than 25,000 plus American casualties and 50,000 plus Iraqi civilian lives, and counting, even when it is a war that lacks clear justification, specific goals, progress on the ground, voter support, not to say international support.
Mao, of course, was a dictator, with near absolute power over Chinese people’s political life and life in general. Being the head of the ruling communist party, the “advance party” of the Chinese working people, Mao didn’t need to listen to public opinion. Yet, as an elected leader in an advanced democracy, President Bush has also adamantly, and repeatedly, stated that he didn’t need to lead by the polls. He may be right technically. He has enough power not to care about the polls once in office. He can act like a dictator if he chooses to, especially with his New Way Forward surge strategy for Iraq, even though majority of Americans and in Congress oppose it. On that point, Bush is not too far from Mao who always had the support of the cadre of the party, if not the masses.
Not only did his conduct of the Iraq war and his disregard of public opinion remind me of Mao, Bush’s rhetoric also reminded me of the language of the Mao years. Remember “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists?” There was an older version in China: “Either you are with Mao or you are counter-revolutionary.”
Bush and the Iraq war also reminded of Mao and another war. After agreeing to commit Chinese troops in the Korean War, Mao also agreed to let his son Mao Anying join them, saying that he couldn’t send other people’s sons to fight without sending his own first. Anying was killed in an American air raid soon after arriving at the front.
That war, of course, was beyond my knowledge or experience to comment. But as an American citizen who has followed closely the Iraq war under President Bush and a former Chinese citizen who lived through the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao, I have a one-word conclusion for both exercises: unnecessary.
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