You mean like Bob Kerrey, John Kerry, Al Gore, Oliver Stone, Ron Kovic, and my uncle(who has a picture framed of himself shaking hands with Bernie Sanders)?
If even 5% of all Vietnam Veterans have even heard of that organization much less agree with it, I’d be shocked. Making a judgement of around 2 million people based on such an organization strikes me as at best short-sighted.
You might as well argue the most Vietnam Vets believe the war was a war crime, that the US engaged in genocide, and that the US deserved to lose based on the statements and beliefs of the VVAW(Vietnam Veterans of the War), which probably had vastly more members and was more influential than the yahoo group you mentioned.
Taking this statement along with the others you’ve made into account I get the impression that you’re making judgements about Vietnam Veterans based on people that Philip Caputo, the author of A Rumor of War referred to during a Q&A with me at one of his book readings of “the professional veterans”.
These are the people who make their service in Vietnam the defining experience of their life, who never let anyone forget they served, and who go out of their way in a number of different ways to constantly remind people of it. Many, though not all, also regularly use it as a crutch and an excuse for all sorts of things,(I.E. why they can’t hold onto a job, get divorced, beat their wives, commit crimes etc.).
Yes, I’m sure amongst the Vietnam Vets who go around wearing hats and jackets that proclaim themselves as such, particularly the ones who wear those stupid POW-MIA symbols, and who constantly are telling stories of their service, your description would be pretty accurate, but in my own experience, such are a minority amongst Vietnam Veterans.
In my own experience, Vietnam Veterans, far more than veterans of other wars(with the possible exception of Korea) tend to take the opposite track and bury the past, rarely speaking of or bringing up the subject(my uncle is the perfect example of that). This is particularly true in comparison to WWII veterans.
To give an obvious example, both the American Legion and the VFW long fretted about how a much smaller percentage of Vietnam Veterans signed up as members than did WWII veterans.
Most of the Vietnam Veterans I’ve met you could know for years without finding out that they served and generally don’t like telling stories of being “in country” and the few that do tell such stories often sound like something too much out of a movie to be believable.
So yeah, I suspect amongst the Vietnam Veterans who are members of the American Legion and the VFW, you’re probably correct, but that says far more about those groups than it does about Vietnam Veterans.