The Vietnam War was a neo-colonial failure, as most fair historians admit: Vietnam is a united country under a communist government in Hanoi and Saigon is renamed after Vietnam's version of Abraham Lincoln, Ho Chi Minh. Historians and the public will know what exactly happened on the ground because the US military kept records of events. However, the history of the failed wars of global military hegemony in Iraq and Afghanistan will contain large redactions. Commanders in these wars did not keep required field records, perhaps because they knew in their hearts they were participating in a disaster better left unremembered in its distasteful details. After the Seattle Times and Pro Publica conducted an investigation, journalists found dozens of Army and National Guard units lost or failed to keep required battlefield records, in some cases impeding the award of benefits to veterans. Among the missing records were almost all of those belonging to the 82nd Airborne Division, a supposedly elite unit that deployed multiple times to the war zones. The Army had to admit a "records gap"* exists in response to congressional inquiry, and Army Secretary John McHugh ordered a global search to recover and consolidate battlefield records. Computerization of Army records has not enhanced its ability to keep track of events; rather, computerization has contributed to records being treated as nuisance ephemera. When a reporter embedded with the 2nd Combat Brigade of the 82nd wanted to write a history about their week-long battle at As Samawah, Iraq, he could not find any records of the engagement. He contacted the father of a soldier killed in the action who told him, "None of them exist". Like it or not, history is written based on field reports, and if there is no record, then history is whatever a person cares to write, truth be damned.
That the United States government will propagandize its own citizens is a reality. On July 2nd the implementation of a 'reform' measure passed in January will allow government funded radio and TV programs to be broadcast for domestic consumptions. The Smith-Mundt Act prohibited the broadcast of propaganda thanks to the efforts of Arkansas Senator William Fullbright. He moved to restrict Voice of America and Radio Free Europe from domestic distribution, saying these essentially propaganda organs, "should be given the opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics". His position was followed by Edward Zorinsky of Nebraska who wanted to maintain a distinction between American propaganda policy and the Soviet Union's where propaganda was a major government activity at home and abroad. So it is that that distinction is also history. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 passed as part of an omnibus defense bill allows the US government to broadcast propaganda programs in the US. US Person thinks PBS is biased in favor of the United States! Is it any wonder sales of Orwell's 1984 are brisk?
*very similar to the "mineshaft gap" Mineshafts are necessary to store the volatile bodily fluids containing the race's pure essence.