The Nation: The Wound Reopened

VIET NAM is the wound in American life that will not heal, however soothed it may seem for long stretches under the balm of continuing U.S. withdrawals. Last week it opened anew in an angry, troubling and sometimes ugly hemorrhaging of national passions. The cause was the verdict of premeditated murder against Lieut. William Calley, a decision that served to arouse all the varied and temporarily suppressed emotions of America's longest and most frustrating war.

The hostile reaction ranged across the political spectrum. War critics on the left saw in Galley's conviction for slaying...

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