Why not us? Where have we failed?

REPORTAGE on the Vietnam war produced great television journalism, and one of the most unforgettable opening lines of such reportage was narrated amid the familiar backdrop of the bombed-out villages, the bagged bodies of the dead and the usual detritus of war. The opening line was precise, unsentimental and to the point; it said: "Here, is a graveyard of lost hopes." At that precise nadir of Vietnam's history, its peasant soldiers fighting the world's mightiest army, the nation was indeed written off as a graveyard of lost hopes and dreams.