From Newsday
By James L. Larocca

Before shipping out to river patrol in the Mekong Delta in early 1967, I managed to get home to New York for a few days. As my parents were driving me back to the airport for my trip overseas, we talked about everything but the subject at hand. Then, as the flight was being called, they told me they wanted to say something, to make an apology. They had been good and loving parents, I thought, what on earth did they have to apologize for?

They said they were sorry that, despite the searing experience of World War II, their generation had turned out to be no better at avoiding war than those who had come before. Less than 10 years after their war ended came Korea. Now, with broken hearts, they were shipping their son off to a new war in Vietnam – one that, unlike World War II, seemed avoidable and unnecessary.

I came back at the end of 1968, dispirited and disoriented. I had survived two tours but understood that no matter how well we performed in the field, the war could not be won.

At home I found that a growing number of people already knew this. Many of my generation were standing up to a government that had blundered heedlessly into an impossible war on a deliberately manufactured myth (the “Gulf of Tonkin incident”) and a questionable political premise (the “domino theory”).

People were using the tools of civil protest and political activism to call their leaders to account, to change national policy and topple a president.

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