In Search of Enemies

“[The United States’ goal in Angola] was not to keep out the Cubans and Soviets but to make their imperial efforts as costly as possible to prove that, after Vietnam, we were still capable of response, however insane. It is the story that has been told, and in impressive and convincing detail, by John Stockwell, the former chief of the CIA’s Angola ‘task force.’ His book should not be missed. Since strategic thought survives by ignoring experience, it has a highly professional interest in avoiding accounts such as this. By the same token, all who are alarmed about the tendency toward such strategic thinking should strongly welcome Mr. Stockwell’s book.” —John Kenneth Galbraith, New York Review of Books