Chapter 12: The Burden of Good Intentions

Vietnam ended, but its shadow did not. This episode opens with Project 100,000 and the Pentagon Papers, where promises of opportunity and careful strategy give way to lowered standards, hidden escalation, and young men sent to fight under false stories. From there, we follow the Marines into uneasy interventions. Beirut begins as a mission of presence and ends in the rubble of the 1983 barracks…