"It Became Better Not To See The Shades Of Difference"

If the State Department did not apply adequate pressure on the French to negotiate...by the same token it did not accept the French tenet that this was a free-world fight against Communism, an idea close to the hearts of the French government. Though the American press did not delve with great insight into the struggle between the Vietminh and the French, it did not accept the assumptions of the French that this was a great Western crusade against Communist hordes. The war was, in fact, viewed as a colonial war.

Two events would change the American perceptions, and equally important in this case, the disposition to perceive nuances. (Many things, after all, were perceptible, if one wanted to see them, but the seeing involved increasing risk. It became better not to see the shades of difference -- the fact, for instance, that Ho, although a Communist, might also be primarily Vietnamese and under no orders from Moscow.) The first event was the hardening of the Cold War as tensions in Europe grew; the second was the fall of China, which sent deep psychic shock waves into the American political structure. These events...would markedly change the American perceptions of international Communism, and more important, change the disposition of high political figures to discern subtleties within the Communist world. The spectrum of American political attitudes would sharply narrow, and there would be an enormous two-party consensus of anti-Communism. The only main difference was on how to implement it, one centrist group believing in subtle anti-Communism, using economic aid as a weapon, using nationalism as a weapon; the other believing more in sheer military force...But the China issue, even more emotional, and the coming of the Korean War, would legitimize the fringe viewpoints, would limit rational discussion and rational political activity. China would help freeze American policy toward Communism. A kind of demonology about a vast part of the world would become enshrined as accepted gospel. One major political party would be too frightened to challenge it, the other delighted to reap the benefits of it.

David Halberstam in The Best and the Brightest (pp.105-106), describing how Vietnam's civil war became "the calling of our time." Re-read the second paragraph, substituting "9/11" for "the fall of China" and, in the next sentence, "Islam/Islamic" for "Communism/Communist."