When Bush asserted that the aftermath of the US Vietnam experience was a useful example of the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq, I could not stop myself from trying to imagine what the Neocons were trying to achieve by putting those words into Bush's mouth. My ruminations led to a question about, for lack of a better term, "generational memory". I was born a few years after the end of WWII. Both of my parents served in that war, but their experiences were not a significant part of family lore. I was alive during the Korean War, but had no conscious experience of it.
Consequently, for me, both wars were as much historical events as WWI, in which the Grandfather I knew well fought. By this, I mean what I know about these wars is not the result of personal experience, even second-hand through personally delivered accounts of participants. My knowledge derives only from written and spoken accounts of news people, scholars or others whom I do not know, who probably have no direct experience of the events they are describing and interpreting, and who may have ideological or other biases.
Moreover, my education did not spend much, if any, time on the Korean War.
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