Editorials
Contents Volume CVI, Number 12 Comm= Correspondence ...
...Your guilt, Deciding What's News: Edwin Diamond375 your hang-ups, your uneasiness, made it socially unacceptable to mention the fact that we were Vietnam veterans...
...foreign, $39...
...At the moment, the public seems to have learned to be liest expressions of concern that Vietnam veterans were being wary about proposed military intervention anywhere but in shortchanged in their benefits emanated from the anti-war Europe and to prefer a less activist and less "missionary" movement...
...Each film is greeted with fierce Domestic Affairs: controversy, accused of caricature, distortion, moral insensitivity...
...369 about those holidays is called Gasoline Shortage...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S...
...It remains true, no doubt, that the Vietnam vet- American foreign policy...
...As with the continuing exodus of boat people, this event provokes claims from supporters of Staff the war that they have been proven right...
...Peter Steinfels 383 • Anti-war activists, led by Joan Baez, place an advertisement in five American newspapers protesting Vietnam's violations of fundamental human rights...
...bumper sticker appeared with the phrase, " We Are All Prison- If what turned out to be a realistic estimate of the prospects ers of War...
...William ShawColumnists: John Garvey, Frank Getlein, Abigail McCarthy, Thomas Powers cross's Sideshow traces the suffering of Cambodia, including the rise of Pol Pot's Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Hair revisits the years of protest...
...As rewhich this magazine went beyond specific criticisms of U.S...
...Commonweal, A Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts, is published biweekly, except • Uncertainly about the sufficiency of an all-volunteer antsy and a move in monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and Au- Congress to reinstitute military registration of young mains tevive§ fears of military gust, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madi- adventurism as well as arguments about the inequities of width rend education that son Ave., New York, N.Y...
...denothing to be proud of...
...moral difficulties...
...To religiously-oriented social action organizations met in begin with, only a distinct though very vocal minority of those Washington, D.C., May 16-18 to consider what, if opposed to the war harbored rosy illusions about the nature of anything, might be done to develop a closer on-going relationthe adversary...
...of its responsibility...
...In the key editorial, written 13 years ago, in ship between the labor movement and the churches...
...By the same more than 100 Catholic labor schools going full blast during standards, a Saigon victory will probably mean a looser form that period...
...It is not true, for example, that the anti-war The precise "lessons" of Vietnam will be debated for years movement was anti-soldier or anti-veteran...
...Two-thirds of the public and an even higher percentage three-quarters of the public now hold that "the Vietnam war of its leadership consider that the U.S...
...With few exceptions, however, being expanded to decide between these outcomes-and even these membership organizations and training centers had Commonweal: 356...
...The nation, he charges, had treated Chamber Music: Eleanor B. Wymard 379 them as "Lieutenant Calley types, junkies, crazed psychos or dummies that couldn't Families...
...But the small story, the Dance: Don McDonagh 371 lurking, nagging, aching story-the one these patriotic occasions inevitably Psyching Patty: Saul Maloff 372 retrieves from the background where we would rather keep it-is the unsettled and unsettling story of Vietnam...
...America's involvement seem no more persuasive than the What understanding is possible, however, will not be ad- argument for celebrating the war-in order to improve the vanced by falsifying the historical record or softening the situation of those who were honorably caught up in fighting it...
...Those who were tragically maimed, who lost pre- the public and less than half that of its leaders think the U.S...
...public is increasingly worried eran's situation is complicated by the belief that the war was about Soviet power and willing to spend more on U.S...
...but those with any memory can confirm how profoundly American involvement in 1966, it is hard to see why it should the war seized hold of our minds and feelings...
...Stunning a New York Memorial Day observance The Center of Christianity: into silence, Muller recalls the Vietnam veterans who had succumbed to suicide, Richard John Neuhaus 377 drug abuse, alcoholism, or marital problems...
...Indeed many of them are probably less interested in nerve...
...And the major finding of most variety of war-inflicted disabilities have every claim on the studies of public opinion about Vietnam-that the Presidency nation's aid and support...
...Guenter Lewy's America in.Vietnam argues Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson the legality, though not the prudence, of American military action...
...The conclusion to condemn the war was based on the Working Life, and several chapters of the Association of fact that vastly disproportionate and destructive force was Catholic Trade Unionists...
...According to a recent poll, almost fense...
...Critical Theory of find their way to Canada...
...foreign, $22...
...But they cannot expect the war in could lead the nation in the direction it wished in foreign which they participated to be celebrated as past wars have policy-appears to remain true...
...10016...
...At the same time, there fashion, today's bumper sticker might read, "We Are All is nothing in that argument which should militate against Vietnam Veterans," not to expropriate the often terrible and recognition of Communis oppression-and protest against it...
...and • A Supreme Court decision justifying preferential treeinwnt of veterans despite Canada, $20...
...So much for "failure of been...
...It does not look like the lessons of Vietnam are being such celebration-even opposed to it-than are those who sent overlearned...
...always personal experience of those who served there but to The arguments against denouncing that oppression on the recognize the common involvement, responsibility and baf- grounds that protests give comfort to those responsible for flement of the nation...
...Some of the ear- to come...
...In similar justify that involvement retroactively...
...Telephone: affect the make-up of the military...
...It also elicits criticism from other anti-war Editor: James O'Gara activists who feel that such protests are misdirected and only serve to absolve the Executive Editor: Peter Steinfels U.S...
...cious years of their lives, who suffered and still suffer from a has been a "force for evil...
...will not be relieved by adding another belated reversal of A MODEST BEGINNING opinion...
...has been a "force for was more than a mistake, it was fundamentally wrong and good" in the world since World War II...
...claims of sex bias focuses attention again on the difficu6ppf (air compensation for military service...
...ruthless Khmer Rouge, to the miscalculations and deceptions of American Poetry: John Fandel policymakers...
...In the late not by declared intentions but by past performance, a Com- '30s, the '40s and even into the '50s, church-related social munist victory in South Vietnam would most likely mean a action organizations, at least in the Catholic community, conrigorous dictatorship, bloody liquidation of dissenters, and a centrated almost exclusively on the labor problem...
...Contents Volume CVI, Number 12 Comm= Correspondence 354 Editorials 355 Born-again coalition?: George G. Higgins 356 Vision of Shalom: David Dillon 358 The Unwanted: Thomas Powers 360 The Long Search: John Garvey 362 VETEM The Mexican Connection: Richard E. Kipling 364 AND VIE= The Odyssey of Michael Novak: Joseph Walsh 366 WE ARE MIDWAY between Memorial Day and the 4th of July, and the big story Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Only nine percent of immoral...
...A bad conscience BORN-AGAIN COALITION...
...Therewere certain amount of social and economic reform...
...Special two-year rate: $35...
...You people ran a number on us," declares Robert Mtdler, former Marine, Books paraplegic and executive director of the Council of Vietnam Veterans...
...Staff: Linda F. Kayler, Harriette Balsky • Public discussion about Soviet military might, about intervention in the Middle Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor East, about an alleged "failure of nerve" among U.S...
...The same duty to the historical record and moral principle ought to govern the debate about Vietnam's violations of MORE THAN 100 representatives of unions and human rights and the resurrected claims of war supporters...
...the Family: Thomas V. McGovern 381 • The impact of the war on the Americans who fought there and their families at Take a Bishop Like Me: home is portrayed in The Deer Hunter, Coming Rome end the television feature Frederick Shriver 382 Friendly Fire...
...them to Southeast Asia...
...Religion & labor The discomfort that veterans sense among their fellow citizens is probably less the result of Americans' having come to a negative moral judgment on the war than the result of having reached that position so late in the conflict...
...There were also several labor-oriented Catholic of authoritarian government, suppression of radical dissent organizations, including, for example, the Catholic Radical rather than its liquidation, and little alteration in the status Alliance of Pittsburgh, the Chicago Catholic Council on quo...
...Single copy, $1...
...cently as five years ago, it would have been difficult, if not policy to a flat condemnation, the editors wrote: "Measured impossible, to put together a meeting of this kind...
...Sentimentality may have its therapeutic uses, but in this case the moral cost, for the whole society of which these veterans are part, would be exorbitant...
...22 June 1979: 355 In the days when the Nixon administration attempted to then without any foreseeable certainty of accomplishing one capitalize on the plight.of American POWs in Vietnam, a rather than the other...
...We were not all prisoners of war in the literal for Vietnam did not justify an open-ended continuation of sense...
...elites reopens the question of Publisher: Edward S. Skillin the "lessons" of Vietnam and whether America has.overlearned them-or learned them at all...
...212) MU 3-2042...
...Associate Editor: Raymond A. Schroth • The battle of the books continues...
Vol. 106 • June 1979 • No. 12
