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Article: Why Are They in Vietnam?
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- July 17, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Vietnam. It seemed so familiar. At least, certain images did:
body bags and B-52s, Agent Orange and napalm, POW bracelets,
helicopters, boat people. This was the Vietnam that I, like most
Americans, had lived with for so long; the Vietnam, it almost
seemed, that I had been born with.
I was 9 on Vietnam Moratorium Day in 1969. As a child, and as a
teenager, I experienced Vietnam as a constant, a permanent part of
the background landscape that makes up a youngster's life. There was
Little League in summer; there was church on Sunday; there was a war
in Vietnam. I remember talking with buddies about how strange it
would be not to have a Vietnam War. We had never known a world
without it. ...