Go read Christopher Dickey on Halbertsam's The Making of a Quagmire. "...Halberstam had seen firsthand the way the U.S. military commanders struggled with the realities on the ground, then fell back on clichés that Washington wanted to hear: 'The enemy, they said, succeeds because of terror.' ... Halberstam was agonizing as he wrote. Some 400 American soldiers had been killed in Vietnam by the beginning of 1965. 'What is there to recommend at the end of that long road down which we have traveled for years and years when the policy was: There is no place else to go? How do you find somewhere else to go now?' He realized he did not have the answer. The quagmire that Halberstam was describing was, precisely, a place where you could not stay and you could not leave, and a situation that might remain like that indefinitely. ..."

Posted by Laura at April 26, 2007 12:13 AM