The political/media patterns that had been set in 1991 were repeated a decade later. Most Democrats and the mainstream U.S. news media fell smartly into line behind the President's war justifications. Almost no one risked having their patriotism questioned.
Many average Americans reveled again in the thrill of watching the U.S. military swing back into action.
Even now, nearly a decade after the second Bush wars began -- after nearly 6,000 U.S. soldiers have died and hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis have perished -- the momentum from those exciting early days continues to hold at least the Washington insider community in thrall.
Politicians, journalists and military analysts still shy away from any suggestion that they might be defeatists who would "blame America first."
Across the country, however, polls show that many Americans have lost their enthusiasm as the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq siphon off hundreds of billions of dollars, as millions of Americans are unemployed and governments are laying off teachers and other public workers.
Still, many die-hard Bush supporters and others on the Right refuse to see how they have been manipulated for decades, used either as fodder for war or as the suckers who pay for it. They don't appreciate that the Vietnam Syndrome might have been the last hope for saving the American Republic.
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