“Victory,”US president John F. Kennedy once said (paraphrasing the Roman historian Tacitus), “has a hundred fathers, and defeat is an orphan.” To be precise, Kennedy made the comment after a humiliating political and black-ops fiasco, namely the botched attempt to use Cuban exiles to invade and regime-change Fidel Castro’s Cuba, commonly known as the Bay of Pigs disaster.
What Kennedy rediscovered so painfully is a sad truth about human nature, that is, our love of taking credit for success even when it’s not really due and aversion to taking responsibility for failure.
"Truly, times have changed. When we defeated the Mongols, we sent them back on our own horses & boats, always with generous tribute and our excuses for defeating their armies after they crossed our borders. Now the invader sends his own transport and even an emissary to discuss the tribute amount."
Soulmates
“I realized that in the world there are two peoples who are similar in their heroic spirit and are very good at fighting the enemy. Those are the Russians and the Vietnamese.“
Hồ Chí Minh
President Hồ turned his sun helmet upside down on the table. Running his slim fingers around the outer rim, he said, “This is the situation. Down there is the valley of Điện Biên Phủ – that’s where the French are with the best troops they have in Indochina. They will never get out.”
Việt Nam Will Win
"My people have always been here as long as we can count. Their bones lie here, even if the Yankee devils have torn up the tombstones with their shells. I will live & fight here and if I die from Yankee shells or bombs, at least my bones will remain on the same bit of soil as those of my ancestors."
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