Put yourself in the shoes of a WW2 veteran in the 60s. He sees his children get sucked into drug culture and protesting against the military that just 20 years ago saved the Pacific from tyranny. You turn on the news and see them making a nuisance of themselves in the streets. They're ungroomed, ugly, and do weird sex stuff.
You ask yourself where you went wrong raising them and lament the collapse of society and death of American values.
Or more objectively, they see murder rates literally doubling from 1964-1974, a rise never before seen in American history. They see a massive drug epidemic and an entirely unprecedented breakdown in the family unit that results in literally millions of children born to single mothers. They see a collapse of social institutions coinciding with an again unprecedented rise in suicides and antisocial activities. They see cities like Detroit, Newark (and to varying degrees nearly every other major city in the US) begin rapid declines that haven't been reversed to this day. Then they look to every other Western country that experienced the same "counterculture" in the same period and see these same issues to a similar or even greater extent.
It is either incredibly ignorant or intentionally dishonest to pretend that the 1960s counterculture was some uniformly benevolent force for peace and love, and says a lot about the person claiming so's lack of ability to see anything outside their contemporary/status-quo perspective.
Didn't the gangs in for instance L.A. start using guns and selling drugs after they got Vietnam veterans in their ranks who had experience with all of that?
(Makes one wonder what chickens will come home to roost in Russia eventually.)
Yes, but it was not the same military, not the same purpose, not the same high moral ground. WW II for US started with attack on US by Japan, so it was clear defense. Vietnam on the other hand had beyond pathetic Tonkin gulf and otherwise absolutely 0 threat to anything American, as proven after war ended.
You could argue that it was attack on US values, but that was about it. Half around the effin world. In society where US was not welcomed in any way even in South Vietnam by almost nobody local (and for good reasons). Some continuous and serious mental gymnastics were required to keep feeling righteous in that war.
I know after-perspective is easy, but this is how history judges actions long term. Emotions of given heated moment are irrelevant and ignored.
Put yourself in the shoes of a WW2 veteran in the 60s. He sees his children get sucked into drug culture and protesting against the military that just 20 years ago saved the Pacific from tyranny. You turn on the news and see them making a nuisance of themselves in the streets. They're ungroomed, ugly, and do weird sex stuff.
You ask yourself where you went wrong raising them and lament the collapse of society and death of American values.