Word: nam
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More than any other force, the war in Viet Nam alienated the American young from their elders -- and, in equally tragic ways, from one another. The war was the dark hallucination, the black magic that would come and take the young and bear them off to the other side of the world and destroy them, for reasons progressively more obscure. Lyndon Johnson had campaigned for the White House in 1964 by promising that "we are not about to send American boys 10,000 miles away to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves," but he ! ended...
...beginning of 1968, almost 16,000 Americans had been killed in Viet Nam and more than 100,000 wounded. During that time the war in Viet Nam became a gathering presence in American life. History obeyed Newton's Third Law of Motion: for every U.S. action in Viet Nam, there came a (seemingly) equal and opposite reaction back home. America internalized the war, as if it had swallowed fire. In the fall of 1967, 35,000 demonstrators had marched on the Pentagon and in the hip-mystic style had attempted with chants to levitate the palace of the war machine...
...illumination, never seen, that would indicate that victory and salvation were near. At the close of 1967, the official invocation of the light at the end of the tunnel was still ritual. The New York Times, influenced by Government briefings, reported in late December that "military indicators in Viet Nam present the most dramatic and clear-cut evidence of progress in the war since the dark days...
Then, as often happened in Viet Nam, one murderous mirage overtook another. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched their general offensive during the lunar New Year, called Tet. Militarily, Tet was a defeat for the Communists. But once again in Viet Nam and in the American mind, illusion triumphed over reality. America, and much of the rest of the world, regarded Tet as shocking proof that the war was a disaster for the U.S., unwinnable...
...first unhappy surprise for Americans came at dawn Viet Nam time on Jan. 30, 1968. Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces attacked Da Nang, the second largest city in South Viet Nam, and seven other major towns. Almost 24 hours later, they mounted a wave of near simultaneous attacks throughout South Viet Nam. They hit 36 of the country's 44 provincial capitals. They overran all but a corner of the historic former capital at Hue. Communists penetrated the heart of Saigon. They attacked the U.S. embassy, the presidential palace, the government radio station. All this was the work...