I may be misremembering, but my recollections of the late 1960s - 1972 or so was a bit different. Growing up outside of Atlanta, the bits of politics I picked up were strongly anti-communist. There would be off-hand rants about Truman not "winning" in Korea and tying the military's hands so they couldn't win. And similarly in Vietnam.

We did duck-and-cover drills occasionally at school (being close to a big Lockheed plant, there was an expectation that we would be hit fairly soon when the USSR inevitably attacked). We watched the national news every evening, hearing the never-ending story about the quagmire in South Vietnam. And then there was the '72 mid-East war that was another instance where the nukes were rattled on several sides without us knowing about it.

All of this was rolled together into a story that someone was keeping us from winning and imposing our self-evidently right views on how the world should be run with the USA in the vanguard. There was little if any nuance. The dirty hippies yelling about Nixon's and Kissinger's crimes were sore losers or misguided idealists who didn't understand how the world works or just a couple of steps away from joining the Manson Family or the Red Brigades (or later the SLA) and killing us all in our beds.

Lots of people wanted to forget Korea because it didn't fit with the narrative of the US single-handedly saving the world as in WWII (while conveniently ignoring the Red Army's role). It also (objectively) showed that internationalism led by the UN could actually impose a peace, and those who hate the UN couldn't have that... It was easier to forget it, or to make it a minor player in a larger story about the leftists destroying America. Or something.

If any specific bits of Korean war history were mentioned, it was invariably MacArthur's landing at Inchon. As if that showed that he was a genius in all aspects of the war and would have "won" if Truman hadn't fired him... Others have a more nuanced view - http://en.wikipedia..../Battle_of_Inchon

American forces achieved a strategic masterpiece in the Incheon landing in September 1950 and then largely negated it by a slow, tentative, 11-day advance on Seoul, only twenty miles away. By contrast in the Baltic region in 1941 the German forces achieved strategic surprise in the first day of their offensive and then, exhibiting a breakthrough mentality, pushed forward rapidly, seizing key positions and advancing almost two hundred miles in four days. The American advance was characterized by cautious, restrictive orders, concerns about phase lines, limited reconnaissance, and command posts well in the rear, while the Germans positioned their leaders as far forward as possible, relied on oral or short written orders, reorganized combat groups to meet immediate circumstances, and engaged in vigorous reconnaissance.

In my case, before I was a teenager, there was the consistent nagging feeling that the situation wasn't good. Why couldn't we "win" these wars any more? How long will we keep fighting? What's the point of perpetual stalemate? Why do we support so many dictators around the world? Will I be drafted? And on and on.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.