Quotes from Fredrik Logevall

Previous to that I had been somewhat cynical about the American as a fighting man. I had seen too much bellyaching and laying off. But with the chips down, that all faded away. I can now believe—which I never would have before—the stories of Bataan and Wake. For an American it's got to be awfully easy or awfully tough.

America's intervention, Halberstam said on a later occasion, occurred "in the embers of another colonial war.

When de Gaulle and Bohlen met at the Elysee a few days after the coup the French leader spoke in harsh tones. You will be blamed for the deaths of Diem and Nhu, he told the American. You may do and say what you like; no one will believe you. It is you who will be held responsible.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

Kennedy's view was closer to that of Norwegian resistance fighter Knut Lier-Hansen: "Though wars can bring adventures which stir the heart, the true nature of war is composed of innumerable personal tragedies, of grief, waste and sacrifice, wholly evil and not redeemed by glory.

November 1963, the administration adhered firmly to the position that the insurgency in the South had to be defeated and that no diplomacy should be undertaken until that result was ensured. Negotiations should be entered into only when there was nothing to negotiate. Note here that American officials were not merely skeptical of what negotiations might bring; they were downright fearful of the likely results.

GVN and its local officials," even if they were afraid to show

The soldiers were overwhelmed and blinded by the forces of nature, by the soaking vegetation, the mountains that vanished in the clouds, the rivers swirling with turbid, dangerously rapid water, by the mud, the heat, by everything. It was a formless, green-gray world, devoid of outline, inimical, a world in which every movement, even eating was an effort.

And she helped transform him into a better public speaker, coaxing him to abandon his high, nasal twang in favor of deeper, more sonorous tones. (A vocal coach had given Jack the same advice, and for a time he spent some minutes each morning barking like a dog to deepen his voice.)

In short, we even support and sustain corruption and tyranny to maintain a status-quo wherever we find existing regimes anti-communistic

Jack was lying in bed, very pale, which highlighted the freckles across his nose. He was so surrounded by books I could hardly see him. I was very impressed, because at that point this very young child was reading The World Crisis, by Winston Churchill.

Successful American presidents project a populist image. They do not place themselves above their compatriots but strive whenever possible to show qualities typical of "average" Americans. If they have an intellectual bent, they do their best to hide it. To be likable, smiling, and unpretentious is all-important, to express the values of middle America an essential prerequisite for greatness.

Alone among the older kids, he had a romantic imagination, a feel for the things of the spirit, for the intangibles in human affairs. (It's what drew him to Churchill, a man whose appeal Joe Senior could never grasp.)

This project saved his life," Jackie said. "It helped him channel all his energies while distracting him from pain."53

When he learned from home that "all the nuns and priests along the Atlantic coast" were "putting in a lot of praying time" on his behalf, Jack was comforted but said he hoped "it won't be taken as a sign of lack of confidence in you all or the Church if I continue to duck.

Rather than combating the irrationality of the charges of softness on Communism and subversion, the Truman Administration, sure that it was the lesser of two evils, moved to expropriate the issue, as in a more subtle way it was already doing in foreign affairs. So the issue was legitimized; rather than being the property of the far right, which the centrist Republicans tolerated for obvious political benefits, it had even been picked up by the incumbent Democratic party.

In practice, American modernizers tended to be distrustful of populist politics and inclined to favor elite-led societies; often they turned to modernization as a means of counterinsurgency and social control.

In 1922, movies drew some forty million viewers weekly; by 1929 the number approached a hundred million—this at a time when the nation's population was 122 million and weekly church attendance was sixty million.

In the winter of 1932, when two friends picked him up from the Bronxville train station, he remarked sardonically, "I want to stop by the house for a minute, and check the nursery and see if there's anybody new in the family." He came out and exclaimed, "By God, there is!" (It was Teddy, born on February 22.)

And so, seemingly overnight, French political and military influence in South Vietnam withered. On May 20, 1955, French forces withdrew from the Saigon area and assembled in a coastal enclave. From there, their numbers steadily dwindled, until on April 28, 1956, the last French soldier departed Vietnam—signifying the symbolic end, some said, of France's century in the Far East.

if the GVN did not soon show a capacity to beat back the Vietcong challenge-and on its own, without increased American participation. "If the conclusion is reached that the Viet Cong are not being beaten," one analyst at the Foreign Office wrote in late summer, "the only alternative is negotiation." The West's bargaining position would be poor, this and other British analysts agreed, but the likely end result, a reunified, Titoist Vietnam, would be acceptable. ("The

prize of a Tito-istic Vietnam would be a great let-out for the West," as one put it.) Moreover, given Hanoi's desire to be rid of the Americans, it ought to be possible at a conference to negotiate a concession that would help the Americans save face-the most likely such concession being a delay in reunifying

Meanwhile, with each day that passes, there is an increasing danger that the GVN's deteriorating relations with the South Vietnamese people will begin to produce a general sag of enthusiasm for continuing the war against the Viet Cong, both among the populace and the armed forces. Should this occur, the likelihood of achieving ultimate U.S. objectives in South Vietnam will have virtually disappeared.

Already in mid September the dissident generals had renewed their scheming.