“You’ll probably never understand, Kim, but we came to Vietnam for noble motives. We were afraid Communism would swamp the world and change it beyond recognition if we didn’t act. The trouble was, we went on fighting long after it became clear we’d been wrong about that. But we’d never understood the complicated background to your war, and in our frustration we used terror and methods of mass destruction which betrayed all our own dearest principles. In the end we were trying to win just to satisfy our national vanity. That’s why the war has torn my country apart.”
