TIME ESSAY
THE ARMY AND VIET NAM: THE STAB-IN-THE-BACK COMPLEX
WHENEVER a war ends in defeat or a dubious stalemate, the unsuccessful military leaders are apt to grope for some kind of stab-in-the-back explanation. The U.S. is certainly not headed in Viet Nam for any defeat remotely akin to Germany's humiliation in World War I, which the German generals blamed on treacherous politicians and civilian softness. Nor is Viet Nam likely to prove quite as bitter a military experience as the French abandonment of the Algerian war, in which some French officers even...