The idee fixe can infect policymakers as well—and in the case of Vietnam, it was the 'Domino Theory.'
It was 49 years ago—April 30, 1975—that Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. I remember, as a kid, watching the last U.S. personnel and thousands of at-risk South Vietnamese being airlifted out of the country to waiting ships by helicopter—the largest such evacuation in history, and quite a stunning sight to behold on black-and-white TV.It was an ignoble defeat after a decade's effort in which 58,220 Americans were killed—equivalent to about 20 Sept. 11s and almost 10 times the U.S.
intelligence consistently told the generals and politicians that Vietnamese support for the Vietcong was indigenous and that the Domino Theory was wrong, such that the U.S. could pull out and 'all of Southeast Asia was remain exactly as it is for at least another generation.''The divergence between the facts ... and the premises, theories and hypotheses according to which decisions were finally made is total,' Arendt writes, devastatingly.
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