RE: My generation was NOT anti-war; we were very patriotic.
With all due respect, percentage wise, the Baby Boomers had an unbelievably large faction of neer do wells. Perhaps not where you grew up, but in the same areas that are "blue" voting areas today, it was like a nightmare. I was barely old enough to understand what all the "big kids" were up to at the time, but the whole thing was quite wierd to me. Sorry if this offends you, but that's how I saw it.
GOP has it right. The question here is %. I'm afraid that there was indeed a very vocal large minority of that generation who were not only shirkers, but detestors....openly despising the military and those in it.
We realize that those who fought Nam were the same generation, and many existed who had no problem w/it, but there was an *awful* lot of "protest" from the same. Unlike anything before certainly, and not really since, either.
So that's why the appellations "anti-war" and other stereotypes like "hippie" and "drug-ridden self-indulgent" generation.