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Like those much bigger but somehow simpler conflicts, World War II and Korea, the Viet Nam War will doubtless bring back its own harsh pathology. It has already left scars that cannot readily be mended. "War does things to the language," as New York Times Columnist Russell Baker warned, "and the language in revenge refuses to cooperate in helping us to understand what we are talking about." The language has also taken its revenge at home, from the Vietspeak of "fragging" and "pacification" to the home-brewed jargon of "pigs" and "fascist conspiracies." The campuses have again begun to turn silent (as in the '50s), not in a spirit of tranquillity but with a sense of impotence and self-interest. The rage of the antiwar demonstrators has dissipated without a true sense of initiative or accomplishment. The once powerful liberals, pursued by such unforgiving histories as David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, still try to understand their guilt and re-invent their philosophy.
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Above all, there is the damage to the country's self-image. One of the most persistent and persuasive observations by Viet Nam commentators has been that the war, and the revelations of My Lai, the perversity of the overdog, the abuses of power, conspired to destroy not only the sense of America's omnipotence but the sense of American guilelessness as well. And yet, how true will that prove to be?
A brilliant historian once described the American participation in a controversial war: "In the lives of the American people," she wrote, "it was the end of innocence." The writer is Barbara Tuchman, the book The Zimmermann Telegram, and the event described, the American entry into World War I. The U.S., it would appear, is capable of losing and recovering its innocence not once, but over and over again.
Of course, innocence is never wholly restored. Yet U.S. society can be amazingly resilient and forgetful. It has often shown a healing ability to forget —or, as Mark Twain had it, to "dis-remember"—the sins of the enemy as well as those of the self.
No doubt most Americans are eager to forget the war, and one way to do it is simply through moral cupidity, a deafness to the reverberations of the past. A more hopeful and very American way to forget is through action.
Traditionally, America has rushed to repair the damage wrought by U.S. aims abroad. Surely, this time, that tradition should encompass aid to the two countries so long besieged: both Viet Nam and the U.S. There is much chance for action at home.
It is clear that the war's end will not bring the long-touted "peace divdend" of cash to solve almost every social need. But peace can bring other dividends, not least a resurgence of energies and concern. Hanoi and Sai gon, for example, are not the only war-wasted cities; there are a score in the U.S. desperately in need of repair. There are still Americans starving, as well as Asians, and still many citizens in need of homes and education and the prospects of hope. These unsatisfied needs cannot be blamed on Viet Nam. If the cries of the needy persist in the '70s there will be a social tragedy: the rav ages of peace.