This article examines the most significant memoirs of the 'War on Terror', arguing that although comparisons to Vietnam have emerged as legible and legitimate within critiques of US policies, these memoirs have not embraced discourses of Vietnam's remembrance to critique the war and its surrounding issues. However, neither have they explicitly rejected those memorial strategies. Rather, they have acknowledged and reconfigured them, insistently recalling elements of Vietnam's remembrance that initially facilitated critiques of US foreign policy and the portrayal of veterans' struggles and revising and redeploying them in ways that obscure critical questions regarding the war's violence and the policies that enable it. In doing so, they undermine comparisons to Vietnam as they celebrate the soldier, justify his violence, define the loss of American lives as the war's only significant tragedy, and refuse to critique the war or the policies that enable it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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