I was too terse again.

Please understand that I agree that the war wasn't "winnable" and that too many agendas were wrapped up in a perfect storm that managed to ramp it up to an obscene degree. I've mentioned earlier watching TV news in the late '60s and wondering why we couldn't "win" and come home, and wondering if I was going to be drafted, too...

It was a tragedy for too many people and had ramifications far beyond what too many Americans think they know (Khmer Rouge, especially).

While we as a country do need to understand that war, its causes, our actions, and the aftermath much better than we do, my comment was to try to express my feeling that it would be pointless to try to have a national conversation about it now. The Republicans can't agree that we need to fund the government and protect its "full faith and credit". They have spent 5+ years trying to convince people that the president is a foriegner who wants to throw them in internment camps. There is no conceivable way that I can see that a rational discussion can be had with them when it comes to what Vietnam means and what happened there. Something that we don't need now is yet more screaming from the Teabaggers and the crazies. :-(

When's the right time? Unfortunately, like some of the CrookedTimber comments say, its probably after that generation has passed. Kerry and others tried during the "Winter Soldier" meetings. And yes, it would have helped to have that conversation before we invaded Iraq, and millions of people in the streets tried to make that happen, but it didn't work. :-( We're a stubborn bunch...

You may be right that we need to fight them now, or fight them later. I dunno. I've got too many memories of voters being swayed by crap like flag burning amendments and "traditional marriage" to think that rationality would finally win out this time. As "fuckwit" said in an earlier comment from B-J, you don't want to get people angry - you want to get them determined to make things right. Change doesn't come unless some large fraction of the middle can be persuaded to join you - and they don't do that if they're thinking with their vestigial lizard brain...

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.

yet they miss the nature of the Problem, IMO. I've come to the conclusion that, when people are THIS muddled, something.. Something!.. ...
(Which some call, a Conscious or Consciousness-Shock!) seems necessary for any next Big Picture to emerge, At. All.

Now.. 'delivering' such a Thing, if a one/or many imagine to attempt that? is by no means via some 'algorithm' or other formulaic ritual (as I hope is obvious.)
Past events as fit the concept have been of the horrific kind: remember *Kitty Genovese? (..stories heard about the event, for most here. I recall it LIve.)
http://en.wikipedia....of_Kitty_Genovese
* Note that the conflicting early reports, later clarifications are irrelevant to the theme thus the immediately evoked SHAME everywhere.
(Today with instant-Everything: no words needed re any comparable event.)

(Event occurred in the neighborhood where I spent two summers as a tyke: Kew Gardens, LI, NYC.)
This execrable example of peoples' ennui.. to an. inhuman. degree. prompted Lots of soul-searching. SHAME did that.
In today's morass, amidst an unprecedented environment of such deadly composition that, Lying is so expected that ... it's Not Even Noticed [anyone want to debate that assertion?]
methinks that SHAME--or an equivalently-Visceral emotion--must Needs be galvanized via some event aka Wake-UP! Call

You can't just choreograph such an event, of course. But for any who verify the psychological soundness of the 'process':
I do hope that a massive-SHOCK >IS< delivered to the cadaverous psyches of.. just too-bloody-Many people, seen to be somnambulists/sleep-walkers du jour.

With Language-murder now an hourly occurrence already: no amount/quality of more-Rhetoric or Doom-filled (or Unicorn-filled) verbal images: will come close, IMhO.
(OT?/Precisely relevant?) Obama is a Master at 'inspirational messages'
--and That ability/confounded by his other quirks, weaknesses, and propensity for re-hiring perps who Caused Finance to implode, Etc. and too-many Etcs.
--maybe adequately limns today's weariness with [Rhetoric]: however slick.

I have some ideas, know I'm not alone re this trajectory; realize also that--we are never taught 'How-to' actualize a psychological effect towards some specificity, like:
(say) WAKE UP! Mofos!--gehabt kindern--'these guys hate your guts and just want your assets: All of them'. ..well, any that survived '08.

Luck to us all on the Zyklon B Project.

Welcome to IWETHEY!