if you are not a Liberal by the time you are 20...
you have no heart...
If you are not a Conservative by the time you reach 40...
you have no mind!!
1965 was nexus of baby-boomers becoming liberal...
not to mention good, cheap and plentiful Mexican Marijuanua...
we were all getting laid and feeling superior....
then reality kicked in and the USA was considered a joke!
The real reason for Viet-Nam was to prove to the Soviets we had the will to fight and bury our boys and keep on fighting....
it sucks, but it had to be done.
It was instrumental in having them fall into their own quagmire in Afghanastan in 1980...
after they ate enough shit, they quit and the rest is history...
which is the winning of the "Cold War!!"
The Vietnam war was the longest in our nation's history. Two American advisors were killed on July 8, 1959, and the last casualties in connection with the war occurred on May 15, 1975, during the Mayaquez incident. Approximately 2.7 million Americans served in the war zone; 300,000 were wounded and approximately 75,000 permanently disabled. Officially there are still 1,991 Americans unaccounted for from SE Asia.
Vietnam was a savage, in your face war where death could and did strike from anywhere with absolutely no warning. The brave young men and women who fought that war paid an awful price of blood, pain and suffering. As it is said: "ALL GAVE SOME ... SOME GAVE ALL"
The Vietnam war was not lost on the battlefield. No American force in ANY other conflict fought with more determination or sheer courage than the Vietnam Veteran. For the first time in our history America sent it's young men and women into a war run by inept politicians who had no grasp of military strategies and no moral will to win. They were led by "top brass" who were concerned mainly with furthering their own careers, most neither understood the nature of the war nor had a clue about the impossible mission with which they'd tasked their soldiers. And the war was reported by a self serving Media who penned stories filled with inaccuracies, deliberate omissions, biased presentations and blatant distorted interpretations because they were more interested in a story than the truth! It can be debated that we should never have fought that war. It can also be argued that the young Americans who fought so courageously, never losing a single major battle, helped in a huge way to WIN THE COLD WAR.
I agree and this can't be stressed enough. Any talk of protracted, infleuential culttural change is exxagerated. Yes, there was a cultural change, but part of the myth is that America overcame its naivete, suggesting that prior generations were relatuively witness, not notably savvy, etc.
Anyone who has actually spoken to old timers knows this isn't true.
The cultural revolution was really the self centered baby boomers growing into their teens, and projecting their experience to the whole nation. In the process, America didn't grow up - they just went through that rebellion phase not uncommon for that age group. There were just so many of them, and they tend to be so self centered, that they overstated their contributions and significance. Make no mistake, the boomer is best characterized by their dominant trait - self indulgence and self centeredness. I am glad I was born in 1968!
.... having never been a liberal, this may explain a great deal!