This is a really good point--I grew up obsessed with Vietnam, because every night at dinner on the six o'clock news we heard the roll call of the soldiers who'd died that day, and I had a POW bracelet, etc. I was glued to the TV in the last days of our presence in Saigon. Now when my military history buff friend asks me what recent Vietnam books I've read, I have to tell him none, because few of them are making it out on the popular shelves.
I've been thinking about it a lot because Sebastian Stan is starring in a movie adaptation of one of my favorites, The Last Full Measure, and just started filiming a couple weeks ago, and there were some pics with him and a couple of the vets Ptsenbarger saved. And they are old men now, you know, we've all aged yet we still have this image of the young vet coming home, scarred and traumatized, to a nation that didn't want to acknowledge what was happening over there, the growing divide between the anti-commie, pro-war right and the "make love not war" left, and the fact that, really, we were losing, and did eventually "lose." And that's a big thing about it, and about the recent Iraq war, as dira mentioned above--we lost, or at least didn't make any difference despite the huge casualties and destruction. It's such a huge part of our national consciousness that we are right and we don't lose, and like you mentioned, everyone who grew up then was touched by the war in some way, but we lost, and that's our national shame or something. It's very weird and tragic.
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I've been thinking about it a lot because Sebastian Stan is starring in a movie adaptation of one of my favorites, The Last Full Measure, and just started filiming a couple weeks ago, and there were some pics with him and a couple of the vets Ptsenbarger saved. And they are old men now, you know, we've all aged yet we still have this image of the young vet coming home, scarred and traumatized, to a nation that didn't want to acknowledge what was happening over there, the growing divide between the anti-commie, pro-war right and the "make love not war" left, and the fact that, really, we were losing, and did eventually "lose." And that's a big thing about it, and about the recent Iraq war, as dira mentioned above--we lost, or at least didn't make any difference despite the huge casualties and destruction. It's such a huge part of our national consciousness that we are right and we don't lose, and like you mentioned, everyone who grew up then was touched by the war in some way, but we lost, and that's our national shame or something. It's very weird and tragic.