Word: viet
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...course the veterans of Viet Nam were tangible evidence, the breathing testimony, that it had all been humiliatingly real. Whether walking straight or riding wheelchairs, whether prospering at their work or glaring out at the rest of the nation from a daze of rage and drugs and night sweats, they reminded America that the war had cost and that it had hurt. For years, at least some part of every Viet Nam veteran has inhabited a limbo of denial-the nation's or his own-often overcome by guilt and shame, and almost always by anger. Among other things...
...they had the long trip back in which to hear each other's confessions and apologies. And of course the piers in New York or San Francisco were crammed with waiting wives and children, the grateful nation craning to get a look at its boys, its heroes. During Viet Nam, in keeping with an almost sinister Government tendency to treat the war as an elaborate bureaucratic illusion, the military shipped people out alone and brought them back alone. The process caused surreal dislocations: one day in a firefight in I Corps, the next day standing on the American tarmac...
...that may be changing. A new attitude seems to be developing, in both Viet Nam veterans and the nation at large. Americans seem more disposed than at any time in the 13 years since the Tet offensive to admit that the Viet Nam veterans have borne too much of the moral burden for a war that went all wrong. If there is a burden to be carried, it should be assigned to the men who conceived and directed the war; or, more broadly, it should be shared-in the most profound explorations of which they are capable-by all Americans...
...peeling away slowly for several years. An odd breakthrough occurred last January after the extravagantly emotional, almost giddy welcome home that America staged for the 52 hostages from Iran. The nation was an orgy of yellow ribbons and misting eyes. But then, a few days later, a countertheme surfaced. Viet Nam veterans watched the spectacle of welcome (the routes of motorcades lined with cheering, weeping Americans, the nation glued to its TV sets, the new President doing the hostages proud in the Rose Garden) and their years of bitterness boiled up to a choked cry: WHERE THE HELL...
Perhaps, too, enough history has passed to allow the country to proceed to the next stage, to acknowledge the Viet Nam veterans without setting off a civil war or a national nervous breakdown. Fresh history has added a few new perspectives. Ronald Reagan, who last August described Viet Nam as a "noble cause," nonetheless proposed to eliminate $691 million in benefits for the Viet Nam veterans, including $30 million for the 91 valuable and even lifesaving storefront veterans' counseling centers around the country. Congress will probably save the counseling centers and some other benefits, and lobbying groups like...