Una sortida honorable

One of the longest modern conflicts of the 20th century was the Indochina War, and yet it has received little attention. An honorable exit tells how, due to an unprecedented setback in history, two great world powers, France and the United States, were defeated by a small people, the Vietnamese, and introduces us to the chain of interests that will lead to disaster. In memorable scenes, Éric Vuillard brings us closer to both the exploited rubber tappers and the generals who led the war, while he describes a disturbing human comedy. How did the politicians react? Which US Secretary of State proposed using the atomic bomb to settle the conflict? What did a high command of the French army, an apostle of napalm, talk about on American television? And, well thought of, do we prefer the comfort of fiction to the vertigo that reality causes us? The truth is that the war in Indochina allows us to understand how today, in Afghanistan, in Mali, anywhere, we continue to search in vain for an "honorable exit."