Portrays United States political leaders as the driving force behind the country's involvement in Vietnam and discusses the reluctance of military authorities to escalate the war.

"President Nixon's announcement on April 30, 1970, that US troops were invading neutral Cambodia as part of the ongoing Vietnam War campaign sparked a complicated series of events with tragic consequences on many fronts. In Cambodia, the invasion renewed calls for a government independent of western power and influence, eventually resulting in a civil war and the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Here at home, Nixon's expansion of the war galvanized the long-standing...

"Bringing together the voices of more than thirty former and current members of the VVAW, oral historian Richard Stacewicz offers an eloquent account of the impact of the war on the lives of individuals and the nation."--Jacket.

Examines the critical events that took place in the fall of 1967, from the ambush of an American battalion by the Viet Cong that led to skepticism of whether the Vietnamese conflict was winnable, to the first violent anti-war demonstration on a campus in Wisconsin.