Special Section: The US. After Viet Nam

WHEN the truce came, no one would call it "V-V Day." No crowds would jig through Times Square yelling their relief and pride, exuberantly kissing strangers. Such celebrations, the victory dances of other wars, were in a sense ceremonies of innocence. When the end for Americans came in Viet Nam, the longest and strangest of U.S. wars, innocence would have little to do with it. Something more complex would be occurring in the national psyche: relief, surely, but also bewilderment and chagrin, perhaps a lingering sense of...

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