Crabs

From the obituary of Robert Oakley:

He said a Vietnamese journalist once told him: “You know, you Americans look on us as if we were just a basket of crabs. You don’t really care what the crabs are doing in that basket as long as they don’t escape or as long as someone is not stealing the basket away from you.”

Mr. Oakley later added, “I thought then that he had that right. Our motives were often quite selfish even when disguised in very noble terms.”

 Got that right.