Our longest war was the Viet Nam War. It runs from 1959 to 1975, which is longer than the combined total of Civil War, WWI and WWII!
True enough, the rest of the country didn't really turn out, unless it was for the other side. I turned out for it, and lots of other Freepers turned out for it. Not likely we will forget.
Hey, some of the guys who really were at the battle shown in "We Were Soldiers" ran my basic training company and served as training cadre. We all swore to leave no one behind. Can't forget it.
I'd like to add a "God Bless You" for your Vietnam service. I'm a Desert Storm vet, myself. (Which might explain why I actually know a little about military history).
I was reading an article last night that drew an interesting parallel - between Truman's recognition of the cold war and W's recognition of the war on terror. The main point of the article was that both of these instances required the president to (a) recognize, (b) publicly identify, and (c) make major strategic changes to fight a 'new kind of war'. The article also pointed out that Truman's administrative shake-up (DoD) wasn't an overnight success - it actually suffered from some of the same problems W's Homeland Security department is facing, politically.
I hope and pray the war on terror is eventually just as successful as the cold war.