Reviews for What Washington said

The average rating for What Washington said based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-10-28 00:00:00 Anetra Nabozna Ah, diplomacy...As long as the Congo's central government was in Lumumba's hands, or in chaos, the principal U.S. goal of maintaining a unified Congo was moderated by the strong desire - shared by the Belgians and other NATO allies - not to see [break-away province] Katanga's riches brought under radical control...Similarly, while pressing the Belgians to support UN resolutions favoring Congolese unity, we were also urging the United Nations to avoid actions that...acted to facilitate Lumumba's entry into Katanga. At times I have criticised Graham Greene's two-dimensional stereotypes of naive, guileless Americans in The Quiet American. Perhaps I was a little unfair if this was the case even ten years later: Conveying the mind-set of the era was a Peanuts cartoon someone later stuck on a wall in our Saigon embassy showing Charlie Brown marching resolutely onto the baseball field with his bat over his shoulder and his glove slung over his bat. The caption read, "How can we lose when we're so sincere?" One more peripheral thought is on the questionable practice of constantly rotating diplomats to new and usually unfamiliar locales. I suppose politicians have it that way to prevent overly enmeshed old hands going rogue in a far-off land, but the amount of Americans in the South Vietnamese embassy during the war with not even any Asian experience at all is a little terrifying. Many (in the time of Kissinger, perhaps all) of them may not, as Miller writes, been responsible for decisions about the prosecution of the war, but they were the eyes and ears on the ground, the ones writing the reports, advising on political strategy, on which dictator to prop up and which faction to support as a backup...

Review # 2 was written on 2009-10-29 00:00:00 Maurice Ylner did not get chance to read