The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties

by Christopher Caldwell

An inward suspicion that the war was unwinnable, along with an inability to avow it, put Americans in a strange psychological state. Throughout the war, they proved comfortable with an escalation of violence, whether or not it was related to the war effort. When reports emerged in late 1969 that U.S. forces had massacred women and children in the villages of Songmy and My Lai, only 24 percent of Americans thought the soldiers should be punished, versus 48 percent who thought they should not. The mining of Vietnam’s harbors in the spring of 1972 was approved of by a solid 59 percent majority. A slim majority approved of the all-out bombing of North Vietnamese cities at Christmas of that year. When Chicago police battered student anti-war protesters at the Democratic National Convention at the end of August 1968, 56 percent of Americans approved, versus just 31 percent who objected.