In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military- industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961)
In the late 1980s I had a student in an American history class who said that the United States won the war in Vietnam. I felt dizzy. Maybe I had misunderstood. So, I asked him to explain. “My father,” he told the class, “said that we had won the war because we won most of the battles and we killed more of them than they killed of us.”