Lake and Holbrooke went to Vietnam in the 1960s “as innocents.” Foreign service officers, they wanted to make a difference. Holbrooke sees that America is not fighting communism but a Vietnamese quest for national liberation — an impossible war. Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian strongman, was astounded: “You would do all this for a journalist ?” Yes, Holbrooke would. At the State Department, where higher floors denote seniority, Holbrooke ended up in a cramped office on the first floor. Yes, America is, and will be once more when the nightmare passes, as it must if Americans have half the stubborn resourcefulness and passionate idealism of Richard Holbrooke.

Source: International New York Times June 15, 2019 00:45 UTC