Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images ‘A sea of righteous retribution’ In 1975, helicopters evacuated Americans and Vietnamese people from the U.S. was directly involved for 20 years, marched on.
effort to overthrow another government and I thought, “This is a bad idea my country should not be doing this.” And the war, in which the U.S. On that day, I was in a bus on a tour of the battlefields of Ypres, Belgium, led by a French history professor.Īs I watched the grave markers sweep by, I was reading a report in Le Monde exposing this U.S. I was a Fulbright Fellow, starting a long career in national security policymaking and teaching, studying in Europe. embassy and intelligence agencies had been directly involved in planning a coup to depose the president of South Vietnam and his brother, leading to their executions. The pattern first became clear to me when I learned on Nov. This weakness-masquerading-as-strength has repeatedly led the country into failed foreign interventions.
In Afghanistan, American hubris – the United States’ capacity for self-delusion and official lying – has struck once again, as it has repeatedly for the last 60 years.
