The lesson they took from Vietnam was not don't do this. It was do this more quietly.

 https://x.com/nxt888/status/2095473321949397333

Sony Thăng

@nxt888

After Vietnam, they had a choice. They could have looked at what happened, really looked at it, honestly, with the full weight of the evidence, and concluded that their model of intervention, their assumption that American power could and should shape the political futures of other countries, was fundamentally flawed. They could have rebuilt their foreign policy around that conclusion. They chose differently. Instead of reckoning with Vietnam, they pathologized the public's response to it. They decided the problem wasn't the war. It was that the American people had seen too much of it. Too much footage. Too many body bags coming home. Too much honest journalism from the field. So they changed the rules. They restricted press access to future conflicts. They banned the photographing of flag-draped coffins returning to American soil. They developed "embedded" journalism that put reporters inside military units, giving them access and proximity in exchange for a perspective that aligned with the military's narrative. They didn't fix the problem. They fixed the coverage of the problem. And then they went and did it again. In Grenada. In Panama. In Iraq. In Somalia. In Yugoslavia. In Afghanistan. In Libya. In Syria. Each time with tighter media control. Each time with better branding. Each time with a different vocabulary, "coalition of the willing," "responsibility to protect," "surgical strikes," designed to avoid the specific language that had lost public support in Vietnam. The lesson they took from Vietnam was not don't do this. It was do this more quietly. The countries on the receiving end of that quieter version are still living in the consequences. Vietnam taught the world to name what was happening. That naming is the beginning of resistance.

9:25 PM · Sep 3, 2026

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