Word: viets
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...Viet Nam veterans, maturing into their 30s and 40s, have begun to achieve some power in American society. They are seen more as leaders, less as victims. Charles Robb, who commanded a Marine rifle company in 1968-69, is the Governor of Virginia. Bob Kerrey, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner who lost part of a leg in action as a member of the Seals, a Navy special forces unit, is the Governor of Nebraska. John Kerry, a Navy officer and eloquent spokesman against the war during congressional hearings in 1971, is a Senator from Massachusetts. Veteran and Writer John...
...when the knights somehow seem monstrous, killers risen out of a black id, perpetrators of My Lai, then the entire chivalric logic collapses, and masculinity itself becomes a horror--all rage and aggression and reptilian brain. Viet Nam changed American notions about the virtues of masculinity and femininity. In the '60s, during the great violence of the war, masculine power came to be subtly discredited in many circles as oafish and destructive. The heritage of the Enlightenment (the scientific method, progress, that dreamy Jeffersonian clarity of mind that told us all problems could be solved) now seemed drawn into...
...Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, dedicated in Washington two years ago, became a central symbol in the veterans' struggle for acceptance. It was not built by the Government, but by contributions, largely from the veterans themselves. The memorial's design--two long triangular panels of polished black granite, set below ground level, inscribed with the names of all the 58,022 who died in the Viet Nam War--struck many veterans as insulting at the time it was chosen. "A black gash of shame," Tom Carhart, a Viet Nam veteran and West Pointer, called it. Novelist James Webb (Fields of Fire...
...itself. To walk down the declivity toward the apex of the walls, the walkway declining at what seems to be precisely the angle of escalation of the war, and to go deeper and deeper into the names of the dead, is to go back into the Viet Nam War. The force of so many names, the names a long incantation, listed in the order of their deaths, and the specificity of the names, each one individual, and the names seen in the black granite that also reflects the sky and the countenance of the one looking, all produce an effect...
...many veterans, however, acceptance has not been enough. About 5% of those who served in Viet Nam, according to the estimate, still suffer from post- traumatic-stress syndrome, a chronic form of what once was known as battle fatigue. The peculiarities of combat in Viet Nam made them especially vulnerable--never knowing who the enemy was, living in almost constant fear of attack in the bush...