“I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed…managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units…Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.” -from Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey

Many in the corporate press claim they’ve grown tired of the steady focus on Vietnam. Instead, they’d prefer a debate on Iraq. The problem is, we would not be in Iraq today if the chickenhawks who put us there had learned the hard lessons of Vietnam–America’s most divisive war and the only one we ever lost.