The Best and the Brightest

What Hacker News says

1. dctoedtMay 2026
   > That’s really splitting hairs.

   As software people are keenly aware, accuracy in writing is important.

   > The Republic of Vietnam was a dead man walking, but it was a United States puppet state, and they finally collapsed in 1975.

   I don't disagree. In hindsight, the U.S.'s political strategy was disastrous. American decisionmakers — like all of us — had to make their best judgments based on education and experience (and the often-malign influence of groupthink). Some factors were especially salient:

   • As WWII ended, the "Atlanticists" in the State Department supported France's insistence on retaining their Southeast Asian colonies (IIRC, because the U.S. wanted a strong anticommunist France to help stand up to Stalin and the Red Army after Germany's surrender). Also IIRC, FDR was inclined to support Ho Chi Minh's independence movement, but he was gravely ill by then.

   • The American political class was very much aware of the lessons of Munich in 1938; of Stalin's conquest of Eastern Europe in 1945; and of North Korea's invasion of South Korea in 1950. It wasn't unreasonable for them to fear the spread of totalitarian communism.

   • The governing Democratic Party was acutely aware of the political impact of McCarthyism in the 1950s, including being incessantly attacked by the GOP for having "lost" China in 1949 (as if China was ours to lose).

   • Douglas MacArthur's advice to President Kennedy — not to put troops on the ground in Asia — didn't carry the day. [0]

   Those interested in this debacle should read David Halberstam's magisterial book The Best and the Brightest. [1]

   [0] https://thediplomat.com/2018/10/a-new-take-on-general-macart...

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest

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2. dctoedtJun 2024
   > Leftists don’t think we entered Vietnam or Korea for resources.

   Disagree, again: Back in the day, many leftists — especially the radical ones, who not infrequently were Communists or sympathizers — proclaimed loudly that Pax Americana and its small wars were facets of an allegedly-rapacious capitalist-colonialist imperialism, extracting resources from the poor and redistributing them upward to the wealthy, and suppressing popular revolutionary movements that professed to want to even things out.

   (I recently re-read David Halberstam's magisterial The Best and the Brightest about the origins of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, including backing the French efforts to stay as the colonial power after liberation from Japanese occupation. Highly recommended.)

   > And when I was a mainstream young liberal in the 1990s and early oughts

   It's not your fault you missed the 1960s and 70s.

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3. phobosanomalySep 2020
   Imperial by William T. Vollmann

   It is an almost stream-of-consciousness dissection of the social, cultural, geographic, and hydrologic history of an area that most would write-off as desert wasteland. It gave me a portal into the complexity of an ordinary place and how it is viewed through the lens of a genius.

   The Places In Between - Rory Stewart

   An introduction to how radically different and complex societies outside-the-fold of the Western world can be, and how ancient many of their traditions and way of life are. It also reminded me that real adventure necessitates risk.

   The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk

   Taught me that whatever I know about foreign conflict, I know nothing about foreign conflict.

   The Best and the Brightest - David Halberstam

   Provides a template for how the US government embarks upon adventures abroad. Taught me how stupid tremendously smart people can be when you get them all together in one room.

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4. cs702May 2020
   Also recommended:

   "The Best and the Brightest" (https://www.amazon.com/Best-Brightest-David-Halberstam/dp/04...)

   The title refers to individuals who at the time were widely admired -- including of course Robert McNamara. These individuals were of keen intellect, and had been educated at Ivy League and equivalent schools; many had PhD's. They had a reputation as successful managers and leaders who prided themselves on straight talk. And yet, these "uber-men," working together as a team with the best of intentions, gradually managed to entangle the US into the hell of the Vietnam war, by many accounts mismanaged the war, and, last but least, deceived the public about it.

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5. GabrielF00Dec 2014
   Take a look at David Halberstam's book The Best and the Brightest. The people who made bad policy decisions with respect to Vietnam were among the finest products of the American educational system of that era.
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6. dctoedtApr 2024
   > People from different cultures are different. Not because of race, but because of cultural socialization, which persists for generations even in a new host country.

   You've said that your wife's family has been in this country since before the American Revolution. So your kids aren't exclusively products of your (recent-immigrant) family's culture.

   > In a democracy, those cultural differences will be reflected in the government and society of the new country.

   That's how evolution works: Through the combined effects of variation — especially through mixing of genetic- and cultural traits via sexual reproduction — plus selection for that which provides an advantage in the relevant environment. (It's part of the Great Project of building a universe.)

   > There are perfectly good reasons why the people in new country wouldn’t want to live with those changes.

   Different people dislike a wide variety of changes. (We love novelty, we hate change.) Robert A. Heinlein said, "Never argue with the weather"; in the modern world, population migration falls into that category.

   Footnote: I'm re-reading David Halberstam's book The Best and the Brightest, about the origins of American involvement in the Vietnam War — which was a subject of not a little personal interest to me and my generation back then. It's saddening to read again how U.S. policymakers' insistence on unrealistic premises — rejecting knowledgeable advice from experienced Asia hands — led to delusions that we could interfere in a colonial war on the cheap. Modern global migration presents similar opportunities for policy f*k-ups.

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