December 16, 2003, here on slacktivist: The Quiet American
When one reads the audacious plans of the PNAC — the neoconservative Project for a New American Century — in the light of Greene’s novel, what’s striking is the way its authors seem to combine the worst elements of both Fowler and Pyle. It exhibits both Pyle’s unbridled, hubristic idealism and Fowler’s cynical regard for the naked power of imperial hegemony.
… What’s particularly annoying — and offensive — is the habit that the PNACes have of treating all of us who disagree with their destructive Pylesque idealism as though we are defenders of Fowler’s cynical views (the old “you’re objectively pro-Saddam” sophistry). This accusation reveals a despairing failure of imagination, as well as a refusal to listen to what is actually being said.
“Sooner or later one has to take sides if one is to remain human,” Greene writes in TQA. I’d like to think that one can do so without the indiscriminate use of plastic explosives.
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