Thoughts Upon Finishing "The Quiet American"

I've referred to the Bush-Cheney-Rummy conception of nation-building as "Sea Monkey Democracy" (just add water, then watch the little creatures cavort and caper!). But reading Greene's novel, you can easily see the US agent Pyle aging into Donald Rumsfeld. So the Bush era is not a unique age, simmering with hubris and delusion--Americans have always been that way. And that's just super.