``...The best place to look for the answer is not in the days after the attacks, but in the years before. Examining the cultural mood of the late '90s allows us to separate the natural reaction to a national trauma from any underlying predispositions. During that period, the country was in the grip of a strange, prolonged obsession with World War II and the generation that had fought it...'' (Christopher Hayes)
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Under a broad brush, I more or less agree, except for this little part above. It's true the mid-90s were partly characterized by a prolonged obsession with WWII. But the reason was that most of the veterans of WWII were moving into old age, their friends and family already gone and their own lives more or less over. WWII had been the defining event of their youth, which capped a probably tough childhood in the Depression, and their marriages and children in the 50s was a celebration of a mythic return to `normal' for their adult pay off.
By the 90s all of that had been mostly forgotten and if not, then Vietnam certainly chilled their middle years as many of their own children came to despise `normal' life in the empty suburbs, the rigid militaristic climate of most public education and most public life in general, and of course the endless cold war propaganda.
What changed in the early 90s was the rehabilitation of the US military with the Gulf War. It was conducted for various reasons, and none of them legitimate, in the sense that Iraq was certainly not invading or threatening the US. Iraq went on a classic pillage campaign to Kuwait. The US military was launched to wipe the Iraq military off the map and they did just that with high style, clean, fast, and devastating brutality. Whole Iraq units and columns were incinerated, transformed into crispy critters, still seated in their burned out hulks and looked like barbecued ribs left on the grill too long. The pure horror of these scenes created the illusion that the US military was a staggeringly effective, vicious, and uncompromising force that no state in their right mind would ever challenge.
So, I suggest that it was the Gulf War that erased the public stigma of the post-Vietnam US military and created the impression that the US was completely capable, willing, and able to wreck mayhem and slaughter on a vast scale. The dramatic effects were so great that everything that Vietnam had come to stand for in the public mind was erased.
The concurrent remembrance of WWII veterans and their WWII memorabilia was a pure fortuity, evoked because both were on their way to oblivion.
CG