“I have in mind those men in Washington who have given a new life to the missionary impulse in American foreign relations: who believe that this nation, in this era, has received a threefold endowment that can transform the world. As they see it, that endowment is composed of, first, our unsurpassed military might; second, our clear technological supremacy; and third, our allegedly invincible benevolence (our “altruism,” our affluence, our lack of territorial aspirations). Together, it is argued, this threefold endowment provides us with the opportunity and the obligation to ease the nations of the earth toward modernization and stability: toward a fullfledged Pax Americana Technocratica. “
The Atlantic monthly whose former editor Michael Kelly was tragically killed yesterday.
April 2003? – no, 35 years ago, April 1968.
Then:
“Who was the aggressor — and the “real enemy”? The Viet Cong? Hanoi? Peking? Moscow? International Communism? Or maybe “Asian Communism”?”
Now:
Who was the aggressor — and the “real enemy”? Al-Quaeda? Baghdad? Tehran? Riyad? Islamic Fundamentalism? Or maybe “Secular Iraqi Pan-Arabism”?
Then:
“In Washington the semantics of the military muted the reality of war for the civilian policy-makers. In quiet, air-conditioned, thick-carpeted rooms, such terms as “systematic pressure,” “armed reconnaissance,” “targets of opportunity,” and even “body count” seemed to breed a sort of games-theory detachment.”
Now: ditto
How Could Vietnam Happen? – An Autopsy by James C. Thomson, Jr.