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Substitute “Iraq” or “Syria” for “Vietnam,” and “American” for “French,” and the arguments that Logevall quotes from journalist Sol Sanders, writing in The New Republic in 1951, would sound familiar to readers of The New Republic today: “Beneath the layers of opportunists, French spies, and hangers-on, there is a hard nucleus of patriots who are fighting for an independent, libertarian Vietnam.” Before Ahmad Chalabi in Iraq, there was Bao Dai (the westernized Emperor of Vietnam) or Trình Minh Thế (a flamboyant colonel with ties to an exotic religious sect) in Indochina—favorites of the democracy-promoters in Paris and Washington.