Seventy-five thousand French troops had died in the first act of the war for Vietnamese independence. Fifty-eight thousand American lives and close to three million Vietnamese ones later, Uncle Sam was seen leaving from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon on a helicopter in April 1975. Vietnam became one nation under communism and remains red to this day. Cambodia and Laos went commie for a while but then went quasi-democratic.

The Eisenhower Administration had decided long before the final French defeat to create and sustain a non-communist bastion in southern Vietnam. The Vietnam lobby included a Supreme Court judge and a young Senator, JFK. Through developmental aid and technical know-how, the US would help the Vietnamese and other newly independent neighbors move away from colonial rule without falling for communism’s false promises.

Well, we all know the results. Well-meaning superpowers cannot win faraway wars. Battlefield victories by the good guys are followed by the establishment of authoritarian, elite-led local mafias, as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan. The neocons and the Israeli lobby led the cheerleading while Uncle Sam yet again spilled American blood to overthrow one of the Middle East’s few secular leaders. Iraq remains in far worse shape than it was under Saddam Hussein. In Afghanistan we have wasted billions while enriching a mafia close to president Karzai, a man so crooked he makes a pretzel look straight.

The pompous bores that blow hot air over the airwaves and in print for the five deadly sinners”€”CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post“€”continue to rattle sabers for democracy in faraway places. US interventions that resulted in regime change since the Cold War ended”€”in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya”€”have made the world a far more dangerous place. The next domino to fall will be Syria”€”it will fall to chaos and al-Qaeda, that is. And Uncle Sam will have one more failed state to deal with, thanks to the neocon and Saudi propaganda, his inability to learn from history, and his lack of common sense. Poor Uncle Sam. Can”€™t someone force him to sit down and study Fredrik Logevall’s Embers of War? It’s about the fall of an empire and the making of America’s Vietnam. Make him read it again and again, then test him on what he learned. And then force him never to read or watch anything that the five deadly sinners print or say.