“Those of us who came back, we tried to hide that we were in Vietnam,” Milam said.

“A large part of the American public really did look at the warriors and war in the same way,” said UC-Davis political scientist Larry Berman, a Vietnam War historian. “It was a terrible thing to have done.”

It was also a new thing. During the First World War, English women handed white feathers to men who could serve, but did not. The counter culture came to question, among other things, military service as a path to honor. Many veterans sought to reclaim that honor.

And here is Blumenthal. He falsely claimed veterans’ honor. And he did it by the time America again honored them. He avoided the war when it was costly. He claimed the war when it was valued. To Milam, “Blumenthal was trying to have it both ways.”