the trick is realizing it woulda been a close fight ‘cause between war weariness and communist sympathy, there’d be rebellion on the American home front

like there was hella backlash after WWI which was already resisted by a big international pacifist movement

(in America we repressed but also invented the idea of the “conscientious objector” to accommodate them; in the German Empire they were hanged as traitors)

and WWII seemed to be leading to reward

(tho there was a HUGE urban affordable housing issue in the late 40s, LOL)

but Korea was kind of a weird draw, first we (= the UN, which we managed to align as ‘The First World’ here, which is why we keep the UN around and what Bush the Elder thought he was following through on with Desert Storm)

okay what was I saying? First we were “ra ra, we’re so modern and advanced, check out how far we can project power, a front-line army in SE Asia!”

and then Russia/China were like “bitch we live here and we’re huge and you’re getting too close, deal with these huge waves of infantry and tanks”

And we got the shit beat out of us but we did this cool leapfrogging combined arms transport with ships and helicopters and it was like “ha ok still kinda modern tho”

And we called it a tie and forgot about it

But point being going into Vietnam it wasn’t just feckless kids not wanting to die who shunned it but but their “Greatest Generation” (or “Silent”) parents who knew that war could pay off, but weren’t sure this one would

They hadn’t seen Saving Private Ryan yet, so

(also along the way we bombed the everloving shit out of Korea, like, the peninsula, it was the real test case for “back to the Stone Age”and we really did kill a lot of people and bring hell to a lot more in the name of securing a foothold for a vicious right-authoritarian regime, so)