Collective amnesia descends upon society following foreign policy disasters. People everywhere seem to exhibit symptoms of short-term memory loss; at the very least, few appear particularly eager to discuss what just occurred. Enterprising journalists might undertake first drafts of history, but for the most part the event barely registers in the popular imagination. For a certain period of time, one whose length is directly related to the magnitude of the disaster, the embarrassment and shame generated by national mistakes make them too raw for people to confront in any real depth. Lessons, if there are any, have to wait.

Vietnam was all but ignored by the media for quite some time following the fall of Saigon, for example, and was hardly mentioned at all during the presidential campaign of 1976. Popular culture was equally reticent: no major film dealt with the reality of the war until 1979, and then not again until 1986. The uninformed newcomer to the United States in the mid-1970s could have been forgiven for being unaware that any tragic, unnecessary war had just been fought in Southeast Asia.

It is in these periods, however, that beliefs about such events solidify and narratives coalesce, if in private. Few people ever change the positions at which they subconsciously arrive during these seemingly somnambulant times. These brief respites are not merely efforts at mass denial, in other words, but crucial phases in society’s long-term interpretation, in the process of coming to terms with what just occurred, or with what its country just did.