I like Robert Leckie.
He was a Marine who then wrote 40 books.
As he wrote in 1998,

Why, then, were five Presidents unable to contain
Communism in Indo-China?
Probably because of their naïve but mistaken belief that
democracy can flourish in any soil. In truth, democracy
-free speech society with truly representative government -
is a rare bloom, which has seldom blossomed outside Europe
or the English-speaking countries of the world. To have
attempted to graft it onto South Vietnam's population of
peasants, ignoring their psychology, their traditions, their
rigidly structured society, their indifference to the Western gods
of Ballot Box and Freedom and their attachment to a charismatic
leader, be he emperor, king or commissar, was the original and
major mistake of the war.

"a425couple" wrote in message news:ebZfJ.5986$Gco3.4138@fx01.iad...

I like Robert Leckie.
He was a Marine who then wrote 40 books.
As he wrote in 1998,

Why, then, were five Presidents unable to contain
Communism in Indo-China?
Probably because of their naïve but mistaken belief that
democracy can flourish in any soil. In truth, democracy
-free speech society with truly representative government -
is a rare bloom, which has seldom blossomed outside Europe
or the English-speaking countries of the world. To have
attempted to graft it onto South Vietnam's population of
peasants, ignoring their psychology, their traditions, their
rigidly structured society, their indifference to the Western gods
of Ballot Box and Freedom and their attachment to a charismatic
leader, be he emperor, king or commissar, was the original and
major mistake of the war.

----------------------

Democracy has also failed in Europe, most notably with the Weimar Republic
and revolutionary France. Sometimes a nation's rival factions can't be
reconciled.