There's a reason WW11 is still "romanticized" on film, in books, during speeches,etc. It was the "last" war this nation won. It was the "last" war this nation actually fought to "preserve our freedoms." Each successive and ensuing conflict since then has been waged to maintain and expand the tentacles of "empire." The United States has military installations in 136 countries. We spend more money on "defense" related expenditures than our closest 10 competitors combined. We are now, even as I write, vastly expanding our presence in the far East, even negotiating a new alliance to place military air fields in...Vietnam. The only "freedoms" we send men and women off to die or be injured in are the freedoms to act irresponsibly, as empire's perdurably do. And if a "little" collateral damage happens in our "holy quest" so be it...after all, we're never allowed to forget...God Blesses America.

There is much to commend this article... except its premise. As a Vietnam combat veteran, I can add a bit of realism to the discussion. Most Vietnam veterans were welcomed home formally or informally with respect and deference, tempered with a little apprehension about what the war might have done to our psyches. But by the lat 1960s a large segment of our population was sick to death of the Vietnam War and angry that it was still going on -- don't believe the nonsense about Afghanistan being our longest war, the first US "advisors" went into Vietnam in September 1950 and the last combat troops left in March 1973. A significant number of Vietnam veterans WERE publicly insulted and many WERE spit upon. The revisionist history here is that such things never happened or that they were few and far between and therefore insignificant.

However, it is also true that many Vietnam veterans, while remaining proud of their individual service and that of the units in which they served, did oppose the continuation of the war in Vietnam and believed that it should never have been fought. I for one understood completely why so many of my contemporaries opposed the war and demonstrated against it and I had no problem at all with that. Freedom of speech is one of THE most important rights we Americans enjoy. It is also true that the Veterans Administration (federal government) should have done more sooner to help Vietnam veterans and still should.

But I'm just not buying the argument that President Obama latched onto a "myth" to suppress dissent against the war in Afghanistan, because I know it is not a myth. I think he meant what he said and had every right and every justification to say it.

Thank you for bringing up this comment about our Vietnam vets not being treated with respect by the people. I'm sure manywarriors were blamed for this war, but as a vet and demonstrator against the war and wearing my Eisenhower jacket, we were spat upon for opposing the war. In fact, this was the same period in which the cops and other emergency vehicles put our Flag on all of their vehicles with the respresentation that "Law and Order" was for the returning Vets and anyone protesting the War was against our Country. Is perhaps the same way today with politicians who wave the flag on their lapel. I don't know where this big Lie started, but living in Pittsburgh we honored our Warrriors and Vets while discouraging our Government from continuing this horrendous debacle...just like all of them.

It seems that Obama is always promoting one right wing meme or another. I find that a bit curious.

'Those people at home who opposed the Vietnam war often blame veterans for our involvement there'" while "94 percent said their reception by people their own age who had not served in the armed forces was friendly."

I resigned from the Navy in '64 in no small part because I realized that Vietnam and, frankly, all wars were evil enterprises. The previous paragraph was my experience from then through '75. It was the older generation of soon-to-be Raygun supporters who gave Vietnam Vets a hard time, NOT THOSE OF US WHO WERE ANTI-WAR.

It's unfortunate and intellectually lazy of Obama that he finds it useful to perpetuate the bullsh*t myths about treatment of returning Vietnam vets in order to justify his own dirty little wars!

ALL WARS ARE "FOUGHT" FOR THE WRONG REASONS! The sooner we get it through our thick skulls of that Truth and reject those self-serving few who would "lead" us into them, the sooner we can create the kind of world worth living in.

David, thank you so much for writing this.

I think exploiting the war against Viet Nam (which had the side effect of being a war against our soldiers) to promote more wars is a sin worse than blasphemy. It's the moral equivalent of holocaust denial, i think.

What we've never done as a society is even try to understand how we ended up at war against a country so far away, and how we could stick to it despite losing 55,000 of our sons (not to mention our 3 million Vietnamese victims).

I think what we need is some kind of memorial to all the victims of that war, which would include the 3 million Vietnamese, but also the victims of our own families---both the soldiers we forced to try to do this fool's errand, and those who opposed it but were punished for it (e.g., the Kent State 4).

We must never forget.