“We are the United States of Amnesia” and the Consequences of Forgetting

Photo: Shireen Mazari on the Dawn

By: Luke Venezia

In our country’s nearly 250 year history since independence, the United States has officially declared war 11 times, utilized its armed forces internationally 31 times, and domestically another 39 times. These exclude the numerous covert operations that facilitated regime change, economic destabilization, and proxy warfare around the globe. While conflict, armed forces, and covert action are legitimate tools to statecraft, their frequent use raises questions about accountability and the ambiguity of what “national interest” means. The US political system often engages in conflict without confronting its past decisions, leading to a cycle of crisis, denial, and repetition. This is more than a historical oversight. It reflects a structural and cultural failure and a tendency to forego scrutiny. Forgetting is a liability for the generations past and will continue to be so for those in the future.

The phrase “We are the United States of Amnesia” arose in the shadow of the Vietnam War, where essayist, Gore Vidal, uses it to critique American society and government that continuously ignores its legacy through moral exceptionalism and mythology. Vietnam exposed the faults of American nationalism, idealism, and domestic politics that fueled a drawn out, bloody conflict with little to show but disillusionment and instability. The phrase remains in front of mind because of its continued relevance across several decades, administrations, ideologies, and conflicts. The pattern of overreach, misinformation, and exceptionalism continuously echoes throughout events today: the War on Terror, the January 6 riots, or proxy warfare in the Middle East. These are not isolated episodes but symptoms of a larger condition: a refusal to remember, reckon, and reform. 

Vietnam: The Blueprint to Forget

The Vietnam War (1955-1975) has long been a cautionary tale for Americans, not because it encouraged a reconciliation of our failures but because it was never reckoned with at all. The United States entered Vietnam with a poor understanding and awareness of the region’s colonial history and with an inflated sense of American morality and exceptionalism. Further simplification of our involvement using Cold War paranoia that threatened our national interest provided justification for the fight for freedom. The longer we spent in Vietnam, internal dissent and mounting evidence showed American involvement to be failing. As one of the first truly reported conflicts, this failure — military, political, and moral — was visible every day in American living rooms.

Public opposition grew only when American casualties were too great to hide. The end of the war was further plagued by the shame of Watergate and the Fall of Saigon. U.S. involvement left 60,000 Americans and 2 million Vietnamese civilians dead. Its aftermath should have been a natural point of reflection, but instead it deviated into denial, ignorance, and eventual repetition of our prior mistakes. It was rebranded and repackaged by the Reagan administration as a “noble cause”, that only shifted blame from systemic failures onto external factors. The reframing, amplified throughout media, education, and public discourse, enabled the government and public alike to move on without necessary acknowledgement to how the U.S. should approach decisions on war, intelligence, and diplomacy. Vietnam was anything but a lesson learned, it was a rewritten narrative. The start of how forgetting is more convenient than facing the reality of failure.

Afghanistan: Echoes of a Forgotten Past

Fast forward three decades, and the U.S. found itself reeling from the September 11th terrorist attacks. While largely justified and supported for the U.S. to hunt down the terrorists that attacked us, strategy, goals, and approach remained vague and changing. What started as a hunt for Al-Qaeda turned into dismantling the Taliban, nation building, empowering women, and protecting elections. Each shift obfuscated failures, shirked accountability, and enabled a veil of ignorance towards the war’s realities. 

Once again, the U.S. failed to properly understand and adapt to local realities, while trumpeting its exceptional moral and technological high ground. Yet, post 9/11 conflict zones were media saturated, which compounded official narratives and drowned out dissent. Without a draft, fewer everyday Americans had a direct stake in the conflict, further enabling the tendency to disengage. America sacrificed its standing, its values, and its morals with the simplified explanation that we were wronged, and hence we must respond. Warnings of corruption, ambiguity, and lack of progress were swept aside for two decades, while foolishly pursuing questionable terror conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria based on a blanket Authorization of Military Force. Ignoring our roots and current realities came to a head with the 2021 Collapse of Kabul, when the provisional government collapsed at a speed that shocked even the most pessimistic analysts. The exit was bloody, chaotic, and shameful, but the consequences matched those of Vietnam: abandoned allies, broken promises, and a generation left to wrestle with a war that few supported and even fewer understood.

Both conflicts are symptoms of a broader national culture and system that avoids learning from its history, the good and the bad. Our leaders and our government are certainly at fault, there is no question, but at what point do we also question our own culpability as fellow Americans.

Why We Insist on Forgetting

To blame all our failures on the politicians of our time would be a disservice to the problems within our broader system. This is not just a result of lacking leadership, it is something that remains in embedded in American habits, institutional incentives, and public engagement.

1. American Exceptionalism

The idea that the United States is uniquely virtuous, destined to lead, and otherwise fundamentally different from other nations leaves little room for confronting wrongdoings. To even acknowledge the scale of defeat and error, in either Afghanistan or Vietnam, would tear away the veil that we are different, that we made mistakes. The air of American exceptionalism will continue to persist through pop culture, historical writings, and the people we elect to office. The result is that memories of failures are rebranded as misunderstood or misguided.

2. The Fragmentation of Media 

Media has always existed on the plane of immediacy and emotion but certainly not the scale it does now. Today, the sheer volume, rapidity, and emotional variance of news sources make it incredibly arduous to maintain attention on any singular issue. Events are framed as singular, in isolation, and stripped of context. This fragmented and complex world of media does not encourage reflection and structural understanding of failures. Instead, the issue of 20 years of war in Afghanistan is reduced to “Biden’s Blunder”.

3. Educational Failures

History is hardly treated as a tool for students to understand complexity; instead, it is used to propagate certain realities. Textbooks are quick to reduce conflict, like Vietnam or the War on Terror, to instances of American bravery and noble intention that was miscalculated. This reductive framing narrows understanding to America’s place in the world, despite living in a deeply connected global landscape. We can, and should, insist students learn the legacy of the U.S., and that there are greater complexities and scales to history than our own country. As a country, our education falls vastly short in foreign language and comparative history, which does not help understand or acknowledge American impact, relationships, and weaknesses with other countries. We encourage national civics but rarely ask students to think how our policies, perception, and reputation ripple across borders. With no tools to think globally, how can we produce leaders and citizens that reflect and adapt thoughtfully.

4. National Isolation

The U.S. has been, and will continue to be, geographically and culturally isolated from other nations of the world. This leaves the American public insulated and physically distant from the effects of war that it engages in. When American wars end, they may fade from view, but they hardly ever bring peace to where we fought. We fight conflicts from a distance, both literally and metaphorically, as demonstrated by only 17% of Americans being able to locate Afghanistan on a map despite waging war there. The physical and mental separation we enjoy allows lives lost and cities destroyed to remain a news headline, rather than a lived reality. This detachment is not new, but it has only grown with the shift to an all-volunteer military. The distribution of sacrifice to such a small number of people allows the majority to remain unaffected and unaware. The result is deeper amnesia and a public unaffected by the consequences of its choices.

Breaking the Cycle

If forgetting is structural and cultural, then we must all remember that part of being American involves action and intentionality. As fellow Americans, we should not expect institutions and politicians to provide our basis for accountability. We must be aware of our impact on the world and the criticality of a global perspective. This does not mean we need to wallow in guilt and shame in isolation; it means emerging with clarity and understanding so that we will not fail at the same thing twice. This means seeking and teaching perspectives from beyond our borders and asking harder questions about how we use our power. It means understanding the importance of our actions and the cost of forgetting. This is measured in a tarnished reputation, skewed ideals, and human lives. Choose honesty over comfort, complexity over convenience, and responsibility over individualism.