In the same CounterPunch that contained Alex Cockburn’s excellent piece on the war in Iraq was this:

Peter Kwong gives us the “New China” without illusions: from the “millionaires’ fair” in Shanghai, with $60,000 diamond-studded dog leashes to one of the most savagely repressed working class and peasantry on the planet. How China’s leaders swapped Marx and Mao for Milton Friedman.

Keep in mind that China under Mao was one of the most repressive societies in history, as Mao proved to be efficient in murdering millions of people. While I might agree with the left on the war in Iraq (or at least partly agree), I do not forget that the world that the Alex Cockburns want to impose upon us is the world of the gulag, the firing squad, and mass starvation. That was the China of Mao that Cockburn so glorifies.