THERE is a phantom pain that endures even after the wound is repaired. Now that a cease-fire agreement has been signed, there is still a persistent wince in the American body politic —the feeling that somehow, somewhere, soldiers are still pulling triggers. In fact, given the fragility of the ceasefire, they well may be, but even if all shooting really stops, the idea of peace will take getting used to. After ten years, the Viet Nam War has become more than a national curse. It was also a national excuse.
The proliferation of drug abuse, crime in the streets, lack of respect for authority, racism—all these were conveniently stenciled "made in Viet Nam." The war's impact, goes the conventional wisdom, went against the American grain and splintered the country into discrete and angry factions. The bombing of Orientals was a symptom of the ethnocentricism implicit in American history. The great father figures of the presidency were shown to be aloof and unresponsive to their children. Parents, policemen, establishmentarians—all figures of authority—were correspondingly devalued. Moneys were diverted from welfare projects to military hardware, and in response, minorities turned to violence and despair.
Like all cliches, these commonplaces contain large components of truth. But the war is over now, and soon the scapegoat will be led away. Then it will no longer be possible to see all domestic evils as the orphans of war. As partisan historians have taken pains to show, violence is in, not against, the American grain. The glorification of the criminal is not the product of new films like Super Fly but ancient legends like Billy the Kid. Drug abuse did not flower with the poppies of Viet Nam; it escaped the ghetto in the early '60s and spread to the American midstream. As for authority figures, it takes no sociologist to realize that institutions and establishments, from universities to Senate subcommittees, had been ossifying for decades.
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The acknowledgment of these facts will not necessarily be pleasant—but it should be healthy. It can force Americans to regard themselves in an unclouded mirror, to see the war not so much as a cause as a symptom. Only then can the repairs begin.
Traditionally, American conflicts have a long-lived emotional residue. The Civil War, for example, left resentments and changes that are still felt in American society. If that conflict annealed the Union, it also lacerated the country so deeply that it lost hold of what Alistair Cooke called "the glory that will never be restored." World War I presented a grave shock to isolationist America. Afterward, the nation suffered what amounted to a great fever of xenophobia and anxiety, and the recovery period was appropriately dubbed the Aspirin Age.