Word: vietnam
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...description of the Vietnam conflict that the reader is most cheated. Not because Nixon misses any details, or fails to deem it important and emotional. Nixon even provides an anecdote on Kent State that succeeds in making even the great villain of those days somewhat human, stating his sympathy for the parents and students who died "protesting a decision they felt was wrong...
UNFORTUNATELY, that is only part of the story. While Pentagon gamesmen have made their return to the fold only recently, pressure has been building for a number of years for a re-instatement of another Vietnam-era favorite, the Selective Service System. The movement has been subtle, of course: no bills have been introduced to Congress yet, and so far very few Congressmen have gone to the stumps with formula-like speeches about devotion to God, flag and motherhood. But lobbying for the draft has apparently gone on behind the scenes, taking the less obvious form of news documentaries, reports...
...WITH VIETNAM a rapidly fading memory, with former anti-draft protesters such as the Berrigan brothers safely ensconced on the lecture circuit, with McGovern giving way to Carter and, just possibly, to Jerry Brown, opposition to the draft and to what it represents is no longer such an automatic reflex. The knee-jerk liberals no longer twitch when reminded of Chicago and Kent State, of the cries of a generation that would not go to war, a generation that could not support a system that it believed reaped extra dollars out of every platoon that charged into battle. Instead...
...explosions, which are now shaking the kibbutz and drowning out even the loudest singing, the group bursts into a Hebrew chorus of a tune that sounds familiar to me. It is "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"--a vestige of some long-ago childhood memories of the Vietnam protests...
Another young American in the room, who understands what that song means to our generation, looks at me with a haunted expression on his face. It is a sort of Vietnam deja-vu, combined with the horrors of our own decade ten years later. Tears brim in my friend's eyes. They are already falling from mine...