"It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: "You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was 'to be as rich and as wise as an American'. What happened?" An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention. The opportunity to build the war-ravaged world anew, to lay the foundations for peace, prosperity and justice, collapsed under the awful weight of anti-communism."
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Activists from the United StatesAnti-fascistsHistorians from the United StatesAnti-war activistsJournalists from New York City
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William Blum
William Henry Blum (March 6, 1933 – December 9, 2018) was an American author, historian and critic of United States foreign policy. A former computer programmer at the State Department, he left the organization in 1967 due to his opposition to the Vietnam War.
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