Reply #65: Didn't misread anything....

[MrBenchley]

"The one you gave above didn't address the issue at all."
If you ignore the parts of it that DID.

"A unique situation arose in which most Americans supported the cause but opposed the leaders, methods, and culture of protest."
And you're trying to tell us that situation didn't harm the cause at all, whne in fact it made it less effective than it could have been.

Here's another...

"One of the grave sins of the anti-Vietnam War movement was, I think, a conflation of the conflict with the combatants.  Instead of focusing their fire and their ire on the commander in chief, too many liberals wound up blaming the conscripts who so bravely fought Mr. Nixon's war.  This was a tragic error.  First, and most important, because decent, honorable men were smeared.   Some were called "baby killer."  Others were tainted by popular media that depicted them as unstable.
So one important lesson of Vietnam is, the first casualty of an unwise and unjust war are the American troops called on to fight it.  Their service should be honored.
Second, what we political consultants call the "optics" matter.  The popular memory of the anti-war movement calls to mind (even for those of us too young to clearly recall it) the indelible image of young Americans burning the American flag.  Cops were called "pigs."  Cherished American icons were trashed."

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/18/03721/8483

"Flag-burning by antiwar demonstrators, and overreactions by conservatives, seemed to bring out the worst of both sides."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0928/p22s1-hfes.html

Here's another...

"'VISUALIZE the movement against the Vietnam War. What do you see? Hippies with daisies in their long, unwashed hair yelling "Baby killers!" as they spit on clean-cut, bemedaled veterans just back from Vietnam? College students in tattered jeans (their pockets bulging with credit cards) staging a sit-in to avoid the draft? A mob of chanting demonstrators burning anAmerican flag (maybe with a bra or two thrown in)? That's what we're supposed to see, and that's what Americans today probably do see--if they visualize the antiwar movement at all. "

http://www.geocities.com/elethinker/RG/forget.htm

the plain fact is that without crap like flag-burning, mainstream America would have supported the anti-war movement much more readily.