Brother, the US has been doing this for literally our entire history. We both Gulf Wars, Vietnam, and Korea were all just “police actions”, not wars (according to our government). Hell, in history we call our westward expansion the “Indian Wars”, but we never declared war on any Native American tribes ever. Those were just “internal police actions”.
How well-known were that facts around those events at the time though? The availability of information is much much greater today, which allows people to easily learn about and even see atrocities happening in real time. Was there a similar availability of information to challenge propaganda back then too? I wasn’t alive but it doesn’t seem so.
There were MASSIVE anti-Vietnam war protests at the time. Far more massive than anything we’ve seen since. And they did recognize the hypocrisy in calling it a “police action” when it was obviously a war.
Brother, the US has been doing this for literally our entire history. We both Gulf Wars, Vietnam, and Korea were all just “police actions”, not wars (according to our government). Hell, in history we call our westward expansion the “Indian Wars”, but we never declared war on any Native American tribes ever. Those were just “internal police actions”.
How well-known were that facts around those events at the time though? The availability of information is much much greater today, which allows people to easily learn about and even see atrocities happening in real time. Was there a similar availability of information to challenge propaganda back then too? I wasn’t alive but it doesn’t seem so.
There were MASSIVE anti-Vietnam war protests at the time. Far more massive than anything we’ve seen since. And they did recognize the hypocrisy in calling it a “police action” when it was obviously a war.