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Article: The unquiet Graham Greene: President Bush's invocation of Alden Pyle reveals his dangerous naivete.(Profile)(George W. Bush)
- Article from:
- The American Conservative
- Article date:
- October 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 The American Conservative LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THERE WAS SOMETHING bizarre, indeed something almost surreal, about George W. Bush's recent reference to Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American in his speech to the National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Attempting to draw a parallel between the conflict in Vietnam and the current conflagration in Iraq, Bush criticized Greene's suggestion that the "quiet American's" patriotism was dangerously naive:
In 1955 ... Graham Greene wrote
a novel called The Quiet American.
It was set in Saigon, and the
main character was a young government
agent named Alden Pyle.
He was a symbol of American purpose
and patriotism--and dangerous
...