It is always amazing how much we think things have changed, but how little it actually has. In 1966, J. William Fulbright, the then Senator from Arkansas, published
The Arrogance of Power (//%22http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812992628/sr=8-1/qid=1151594985/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0204690-6680834?ie=UTF8%22)in which he attacked the justification of the Vietnam War, Congress's failure to set limits on it, and the impulses which gave rise to it. Fulbright's scathing critique undermined the elite consensus that U.S. military intervention in Indochina was necessitated by Cold War geopolitics. Some critics of U.S. foreign policy argue that U.S. policy has changed little since Fulbright wrote his book and find his words applicable today.
In his book, Fulbright offered an analysis of American foreign policy:
quote:
"Throughout our history two strands have coexisted uneasily; a dominant strand of democratic humanism and a lesser but durable strand of intolerant Puritanism. There has been a tendency through the years for reason and moderation to prevail as long as things are going tolerably well or as long as our problems seem clear and finite and manageable. But... when some event or leader of opinion has aroused the people to a state of high emotion, our puritan spirit has tended to break through, leading us to look at the world through the distorting prism of a harsh and angry moralism."