I’ve been reading, with a great deal of pleasure, John Lewis Gaddis’ estimable We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, written in 1997 after the release of much formerly secret material from the former Soviet Union. While writing about the Korean War, Gaddis quotes an unnamed (of course) source with the CIA to the effect that “Our failure to anticipate this was a big fat wart.”
Well, it was, but that big fat wart scarcely lacks for company these days. There was the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, which has come back to bite us rather severely in the ass. There was the Bay of Pigs, of course, followed by the numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, which saw the U.S. government join hands with the Mafia. Then there were massive instances of domestic spying initiated during the Vietnam War (now, of course, entirely discontinued), plus the massive failure to anticipate in the slightest the total collapse of the Soviet Union until it was 99% complete. And, oh yeah, 9/11 and, you know, weapons of mass destruction. Yeah, a whole lotta warts!
