I hate to see stuff so misunderstood and misrepresented.
If you're talking about "boat people" from Southeast Asia, more specifically Vietnam, around whom the term came into general use back in the '80s, those achievements aren't too miraculous when you understand that the people in the biggest hurry to get out of the newly-Communist-run "South Vietnam" were the existing middle- and upper- classes anyway!
They were overwhelmingly NOT "poor downtrodden" masses seeking economic improvement or some such crap. They were the local ex-capitalists and pro-American types who were seen as problematic anyway by the new Communist government. Further, lots of the "boat people" were ethnic Chinese who comprised a huge proportion of the entrepreneurial class in the ex- "South Vietnam" and who were seen as sort of a "fifth column" because-- believe it or not-- not "all them commie countries" were controlled out of Moscow; they were actual independent countries who had their own various tensions, like when China invaded Vietnam in 1979.
In any case, those capitalists and ex- members of the U.S.-puppet government who left Vietnam had existing social and business networks that the upper- and middle classes of any society use to maintain and advance their status, and these were transferred largely intact to the U.S.Good question. Find another example in history of a nation collapsing and transferring it's elite largely intact to another nation. Because that's what happened. It bespeaks nothing particularly "great" about the U.S. that people with connections can easily regain wealth here.
What does it say about the U.S. that it creates puppet states and grinds them to death in needless, artificial wars?
you DO understand that those "freedom fighters" turned into "al-Qaeda," right?
I was just pointing out that elections matter, but since you asked..
Yeah, those damn yellow people, living in refugee boat people camps in Hong Kong for years and years, some getting sent back and disappearing into 're-education camps, others finally getting the US and working more years as janotors and dishwashers, saving thier money, living in cramped lousy apartments. Now they are capitalist oligarchs - they've somehow gotten complete control of the Pho and Noodle Houses here.
You seem to focus on race a lot, would you feel better if they were white? Or black?
And about al-Qaeda. It was the Taliban that emerged the strongest of the factions fighting the Soviets in Afganistan. There were some Arab 'foreign fighters' also there, including apparently bin Laden, that eventually were with al-Qaeda years later, but they were low level soldiers at the time. Al-Qaeda didn't show up in Afganistan until their previous hosts in The Sudan offered bin Laden to Bill Clinton - he turned them down - that's when they moved operations to Afganistan.
By the way, the Talibs were prepared to offer bin Laden to Bush Jr, but he wanted to attack instead. It's a mstake to think al-Qaeda and the Taliban are the same.
