Why the bastards wouldn’t stand and fight

Murray Sayle: Mao in Vietnam, 21 February 2002

China and the Vietnam Wars 1950-75 
by Qiang Zhai.
North Carolina, 304 pp., $49.95, April 2000, 0 8078 4842 5
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None so Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam 
by George Allen.
Ivan Dee, 296 pp., $27.50, October 2001, 1 56663 387 7
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No Peace, No Honour: Nixon, Kissinger and Betrayal in Vietnam 
by Larry Berman.
Free Press, 334 pp., $27.50, November 2001, 0 684 84968 2
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... country’ as opposed to ‘The World’; ‘VC’, ‘Charlie’, or even, respectfully, ‘Sir Charles’, as stubbornly opposed to ‘friendlies’, subdivided into US, ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and ‘Free World’ – South Koreans, Thais, Filipinos, Australians, New Zealanders and, keeping low profiles somewhere, 30 each from Chiang ...

Ghosting

Andrew O’Hagan: Julian Assange, 6 March 2014

... hippie ready to tell you you were bourgeois for liking, say, Earl Grey tea or for reading Anthony Powell. In that same vein, Julian scorns all attempts at social graces. He eats like a pig. He marches through doors and leaves women in his wake. He talks over everybody. And all his life he has depended on being the impish one, the eccentric one, the boy with a ...