I'm sure it would be a revelation to most baby boomers, press monkeys, and pretty much anyone under the age of 40, but the Vietnam era did not herald the invention of the anti-war protest movement. Protesting wars has been part of the American landscape for pretty much as long as there's been an America to own a landscape. From Washington's farewell address of 1796 to the draft riots of 1863 to giant anti-war rallies in 1915 through the conscientious objector movements of World War II and Korea we have always and ever been a country not completely comfortable with waging war. The Vietnam war protests are unique only in the the way its protagonists took nearly every good thing they did and twisted it into something awful.

In many ways the early part of the Vietnam conflict was quite unusual in its lack of protests. It was a time when a staggeringly large number of citizens had been trained in unquestioning obedience to authority (see Transformations for a more complete development of this idea). It was a time when communications technology had not developed to the point where any place on the globe could be reached by any other place in a matter of hours, minutes, even seconds. It was a time when politicians were far more afraid of nuclear conflagration than they were of victory, and generals were more afraid of losing their jobs than losing their men.

So through an unusual combination of forces, coincidences, personalities, and technology the United States took what should have been a three year civil war and turned it into a decade long bloodbath that cost the nation billions in wasted dollars and the lives of tens of thousands of its best and brightest, delivering nothing in return but misery and destruction.

But it could, and probably would, have been worse. It's difficult to understand just how badly the war was run in Vietnam. The President and his civilian cabinet picked targets for lieutenants and captains to bomb the same day. Generals counted success by the numbers of claimed enemy dead instead of the amount of enemy land taken and held. At least as many, if not more, soldiers were involved in making sure colonels and generals were kept in air conditioned, gourmet meal comfort as ever pointed a rifle at the enemy.

The mainstream media should be rightly proud it exposed such horrific waste and unbelievable incompetence. The protest movement should rightly be proud that it caused important and significant changes in the way that war was waged. These are events, achievements, and milestones that are properly celebrated in liberal academia and press clubs to this day. Unfortunately they came with a price, a price far too infrequently noted, in no small part because it was caused by those responsible for writing the history.

Because, as with most large group endeavors, the anti-war movement's and the media's reach eventually exceeded its grasp. Vietnam rapidly came to be seen as the prime ticket required to quickly advance a reporter's (few late in the war warranted the moniker "journalist") career. Fact checking, historical, even tactical perspective, and the ability to separate the story of soldiers from the story of war all got lost in the machiavellian quest to "get the story", "get the sound bite", "get the pictures".

Hysteria ruled not only the teenager getting shot at, but also the reporter trying to talk to him. Peter Arnett is world-famous for the quote "the only way Hue [a South Vietnamese city] could be won was by destroying it", yet he never provided a source for it and to this day no-one else has ever claimed to have said or heard it. Eddie Adams's electrifying photograph of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan personally blowing the brains out of a captured Vietcong infiltrator is widely held to be one of the most defining of the war, yet the fact that this was essentially a terrorist who, with his fellows, had just murdered most of the General's security forces (including one officer at home with his wife and children) has never been widely circulated.

The protest movement holds "four dead in Ohio" as the leitmotif of the suffering they went through in the execution of their cause. Yet hardly ever is remarked the pain and suffering their hyperbolic foaming caused thousands of soldiers returning from jungle horror. They caused these men, the vast majority of whom were draftees who never wanted to go in the first place, to be spat on for serving their country. Sean Penn may have visited Saddam in Iraq to highlight his views against the war, but Jane Fonda sat in an anti-aircraft gun used to kill American troops that week, and smiled as they took her picture.

The wounds these events caused on the American psyche were deep. Eventually even Hanoi Jane apologized for the pain she'd caused. As the first in-depth histories, biographies, and memoirs were written in the 70s and 80s the nation learned what it had always suspected... the war did not have to turn out the way it did, and the media and the protesters shared a heaping portion of the blame alongside the politicians and the generals.

It was therefore only surprising to the media, the liberal intelligentsia, and celebrities that, when the Gulf War rolled around, Americans had had a bellyfull of their careerism, myth-making, and sarcastic repartee. Poll after poll applauded the military's tight control of the media (in spite of the weak bleats of complaint heard to this day), and this time it was the protesters standing forlornly in the middle of college campuses, looking lost and out of place.

Because the media, the protesters, and the liberal left learned the wrong lessons from that war. When they should've been learning that no authority is beyond questioning, they instead chose to believe that no authority is worth trusting. When they should've been learning that the death of every American soldier was tragic, they instead chose to believe that preventing the suffering of enemy civilians was paramount. When they should've been learning that status, celebrity, and journalism were powerful counterweights to ensure the proper prosecution of a war, they instead chose to believe any cause they considered unjust could be stopped simply by upping the rhetoric, increasing the heat, attracting more attention.

By learning the wrong lessons, by crowing about the wrong things, they are losing the incredible opportunities they have before them today. Instead of focusing on the effectiveness of our strategies, they're visiting the palaces of those sworn to destroy us. Instead of concentrating to make sure politicians are not allowed to decide the fate of corporals, they're protesting that an economic lynch pin of the modern age isn't worth fighting for. Instead of ensuring our politicians have a workable, valid plan for an aftermath that will make the horrible sacrifices justified, they are instead trying to dredge up or recreate glories long past, and tarnished.

A great man once said, "Let the dead bury the dead." It is a lesson, to their great discredit, that not a single one of the current anti-war protesters seems to have learned.