I’ve analyzed the political situation here rather thoroughly by now—but migosh, what to do to construct something out of the horrible mess! I’m scared to tell everyone how really bad it is. . . . What has happened here is that after 20 years of war almost all the tensile strength has gone out of the social fabric. Military operations just make it limper. The village folks just don’t seem to give a damn about anything except to please be left alone. The VC have an infrastructure in place throughout the villages—but the villagers are duly resentful of them, too—along with being disbelieving of
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