[CaptainCrunch]

There was a lot of negative propaganda put forth by the protest movement about 40 years ago, American soldiers were baby killers, and evil imperialist death squads. The peace movement was incredibly good at vilifying everything. But they had no clue about what these 18 and 19 year old conscripted soldiers went through during a horrible horrible war. Once again the Protest Movement cut a wide swath during their protests.

The you had the intellectual left that basically portrayed Soldiers as semi literate ######ed killing machines.

True story, when I was serving I was taking a public transport home when I had a semi drunken middle age woman who would have been in her 20's during the Vietnam conflict stand up in her glorious fur coat and scream at me and one of my squad buddies that we were horrible baby killers, and we should be tried for war crimes.

As much as I wanted to remark about her fur coat, and the fact that she looked like a live version of Cruella De Ville we pointedly ignored her while she continued to berate us.

The other thing that turned American sentiment about the military around was 9/11. After Vietnam the American Soldier and Military was treated with outright mistrust and hatred. During the cold war years after Nam American's pretty much pointedly ignored the American Military. They had a major turnaround in the first Gulf War, but it didn't really explode til 9/11 where they were seen as guardians and avenging angels doing a horrible and incredible tough job.