Lansdale matters in historical terms because he gave momentum and conceptual clarity to a policy that was already emerging. He described the stakes and the tasks in Vietnam in ways that resonated with Americans, insisting, as he constantly did, on the need to be for something, not merely against Communism. “Democracy” and “freedom” were his watchwords, not “empire” or “intervention,” and he stressed that Americans were in Vietnam not to be colonizers like the French but to build a nation. Their motives were wholly altruistic.
