Slate Magazine
Home history lesson
Go to Ask.com
SIDEBAR

Return to Article

Slate Contents

Needless to say, this guilt extends to participants on both sides of the conflict. Angrily defensive articles of recent days, such as one that former Navy Secretary James Webb wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week, suggest that American actions might be mitigated by the barbarism of Viet Cong violence. He forgets that one of the anti-war movement's best arguments was that patriotism consisted of Americans themselves holding the United States to a moral standard.