A decade after Vietnam, we still cannot understand why "their"
Salvadorans fight better than "our" Salvadorans. It is not a matter of
their training or their equipment. It has to do with the quality of the
society we are asking them to risk death defending. The metaphor of the
domino obscures this reality, and the cost our self-imposed blindness
is high. San Salvador is closer to Saigon than to Munich.
-- William LeoGrande (NYT 3/9/83)
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid
of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men
and women who shall renovate life and our social state but we see that
most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an
ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean
and beg day and night continually....