The War Doppler

In its regular Thursday tabulation, the U.S. command in Saigon announced last week that American casualties--five killed in action and four wounded--were at the lowest combined count since early in 1965. For months American losses in Viet Nam have been declining in an almost steady curve.

The Viet Nam War, as the Pentagon papers seem to confirm, entered most Americans' consciousness almost surreptitiously, until in the later 1960s they found themselves fighting, to their own bewilderment, the longest war of their national history. Today the process seems reversed as the U.S. fades out of the war. No one is ready to declare the war over for Americans while they are still dying in it. But the war that came without declaration is also ending--for the U.S. at least--gradually, again without formalities, like the Doppler effect, as some great baleful engine screams by and then recedes.

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