AHC: The Vietnam War not viewed as a ''dirty war'' in American popular culture

The Vietnam War thanks to the growth of the mass media and unbridled color photography were able to capture the sheer brutality of that war and bring that brutality to the American public in never before seen ways. Is there any ways to prevent the war from gaining this reputation and keeping that effect from going on to pop culture. It doesn't have to be a victory in war necessarily. Anyway to keep the brutality downstated so it isn't as infamous.
 
No Watergate, Congress remains dominated by Republicans, the 1975 invasion is met with US air power, South Vietnam survives, liberalises in the 80s and a free, successful South Vietnam is seen as proof in America that the war was worth it in the same way Korea was.
 
No Watergate, Congress remains dominated by Republicans, the 1975 invasion is met with US air power, South Vietnam survives, liberalises in the 80s and a free, successful South Vietnam is seen as proof in America that the war was worth it in the same way Korea was.

Korea had war time press controls which I think the author is getting at which if placed on Vietnam could have been used to have separated the savagery of war from people's living rooms. Korea was not a pretty war as well, but the public had a filtered view of the violence do to the press controls.

LBJ took a step further then Truman in viewing and treating Vietnam as a police action conflict.
 
Vietnam was probably no dirtier or brutal than any other war before, or since. Indeed it might be argued that some of the combatants fought a less dirty war than previous conflicts. However Joe Q Public watching their TV has little idea of what war is like and would have a perception based on rose tinted views of WW2.

Either the public at large are exposed to the realities of war at an earlier point in time, or as suggested above Korean War style press controls that keep the worst images out of the public domain.
Of course had the US managed to win, by say doing an equivalent to Linebacker II, but in 1965, then the public might not care too much. Vietnam would be 'just another foreign war'.

Just stay away. Then you have not handle all that shit

Easy to say in 2017 with decades of hindsight. In the geopolitical circumstances of the Sixties there is no way that the US is not going to get involved.
 
Vietnam was probably no dirtier or brutal than any other war before, or since. Indeed it might be argued that some of the combatants fought a less dirty war than previous conflicts. However Joe Q Public watching their TV has little idea of what war is like and would have a perception based on rose tinted views of WW2.

Either the public at large are exposed to the realities of war at an earlier point in time, or as suggested above Korean War style press controls that keep the worst images out of the public domain.
Of course had the US managed to win, by say doing an equivalent to Linebacker II, but in 1965, then the public might not care too much. Vietnam would be 'just another foreign war'.
I think it has to do with the political climate each war was fought in. The Korean War was fought in the height of McCarthyism so the Communists there were always just ''evil commies''. While Vietnam War was fought in the 60s, the era of Civil Rights. It was a very self-reflective for America. White America had come to terms that America isn't what was it cracked to be. Vietnam War was caught up in the hysteria of the ongoing civil right movement at the time. That alone will always make people view the war differently from other wars.
 
Since it was the first war that America fought with its army fully integrated it could have been the 'Civil Rights' war. However if it was successful it would be less likely to be noticed against the background of the Civil Rights issue.
 
if Vietnam isn't a "dirty" war it's pratically almost guaranteed America has a war down the road seen in similar light to how Vietnam was seen OTL.
 
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