Officially, Holbrooke knew almost nothing about Vietnam. That’s always been the weak spot of our Foreign Service—other countries. It’s hard to get Americans interested in them, and the more interested you get, the worse your career prospects. Strange for a country of immigrants from everywhere. But to become American the new arrivals have to erase the past. We wipe out this immense store of knowledge about the rest of the world and lose ourselves in the endless drama of America the Exceptional. So other countries are never quite real to us.
