As President Clinton goes to Vietnam this week, he carries with him a heavy weight of legacy from America’s longest war. Some, of course, is personal: like many men of his generation, Clinton opposed the war and sought to avoid fighting it, decisions that had political consequences he could not have anticipated. He bears a national legacy, too. The Vietnam War still clings to Americans—to those who fought it and resisted it, to those who came of age while it was fought, and even to those who now jam college courses on the war, wondering what it was that so provoked their parents. The war has been credited with, or blamed for, everything from heavy metal rock music to the neo-brutalist architecture of the 1970s. But parts of its legacy are indisputable.