"The first casualty when war comes is truth."
Hiram W Johnson

Governments and the media lie to get us into wars.
Once the war is started they lie to get us to support it.
These are not controversial statements.

What is less well known is that the lies don't stop with the end of the war.
Consider the re-writing of the Vietnam War.

In the first film, John Rambo recounts his experience coming back stateside after the war:
And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer!

The "spitting" part is a sadly common story, specifically the fact that anti-war protesters/hippies were waiting at airports to spit on veterans returning from combat. It's a striking image -- these tired, grizzled men returning from a nightmare, only to be covered in hippie saliva the moment they hit the ground. The story always ends with the vet walking sadly away, in shame, knowing he has been rejected by the country he was fighting for...

The Reality:

First off, if it happened, it was never reported.

That's right -- there was not a single reported instance of a Vietnam vet getting spit on. And it's hard to believe that such an outrage would be covered up, no matter how anti-war the media were (and the media were actually pro-war until after the Tet Offensive). But no, it's always a story passed along from your uncle's friend's cousin who lives in the next state, and it always takes place when a returning GI steps foot inside the airport. Hey, did we mention that those military flights didn't land at civilian airports? They landed at military bases. And it's much harder to arrange a group spit protest there, as you can imagine.

Let's forget for a moment those legions of hippies camped out on the tarmac of military airports waiting to spit on armed and trained soldiers, who oddly never fight back.
Why would anyone lie about something like that?
Because the truth is that it was the GI's who were leading the anti-war effort, and did more to end the war than all the hippies put together.

Consider if you will this article from the Armed Forces Journal, 1971.

THE MORALE, DISCIPLINE and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.
By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having _refused_ combat, murdering their officers and non commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.
Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious.

This article doesn't stand alone.
Consider this report by John Pilger in 1970.

On September 3, 2014, Andy Stapp passed away.
You may not know who Andy Stapp was, but the American military sure did.

Andy Stapp, who expressed his opposition to the Vietnam War by joining the Army and proceeding to do a very unmilitary thing — form a union among soldiers that demanded, among other things, the right to elect officers and reject what they viewed as illegal orders — died on Sept. 3 in Manhattan. He was 70.

At its peak in the early 1970s, the union that Mr. Stapp formed, the American Servicemen’s Union, claimed to have tens of thousands of members. It issued membership cards, published a newspaper and helped form chapters at military bases, on ships and in Vietnam.
Although the Army never came close to recognizing the union formally, it certainly recognized it as a problem. Mr. Stapp brought colorful idealism to his counterintuitive cause, and the Army did what it could to silence him...
“A remarkable aspect of Stapp’s siege of Fort Sill is that the self-proclaimed Communist has never been lynched by his fellow G.I.s,” Robert Christgau wrote in a 1968 profile of Mr. Stapp in Esquire magazine. “G.I.s are taught to kill Communists. But they like Stapp. When he won his second court-martial, they cheered. You just don’t win courts-martial.”
The Esquire article was briefly banned from the post exchange at Fort Hood, Tex.
Mr. Stapp’s discharge probably helped his cause.

At the time, the near collapse of the military was well-known.
But it was quickly forgotten by a brilliant PR campaign started under the Nixon Administration (with a heavy assist from Hollywood) to turn the blame for losing in Vietnam back on the demonstrators.

It worked so well that Americans now have an entirely imaginary memory of what actually happened during the Vietnam War, complete with hundreds of fictional American POWs remaining captives of the commies after the end of the war, and fictional ultra-violent games of Russian roulette.

What was done by Nixon and Hollywood was just a newer version of the Nazis stab-in-the-back myth.

The stab-in-the-back myth (German: Dolchstoßlegende) was the notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.

It might seem insulting to compare our government to Nazis, but the fact is that unlike our Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth, the Nazis didn't have to invent theirs from thin air. The Nazi stab-in-the-back myth has a grain of truth to it.

 Most people are under the impression that Germany surrendered in WWI much like how WWII ended, with Germany under occupation and their military completely destroyed.
  Instead when Germany surrendered in 1918 their troops were still spread all over eastern Europe and half of Belgium.
The Russian army began collapsing shortly after the February Revolution in 1917.
In May 1917, roughly half of the French army mutinied. Because of the mutinies, the French high command lost confidence and became reluctant to launch another major offensive for the rest of the war.
So why did Germany surrender? Because Germany's military refused to fight anymore.

 On 24 October, 1918, Admiral Franz von Hipper ordered the German fleet at Kiel, near Wilhelmshaven, to sail out against the British blockade in what would basically have been a suicide mission. Peace negotiations had already started and the German military was waiting for an end to the war. Admiral Hipper's orders were a bitter blow to moral

The battleship SMS Thueringen

 On October 29, the crews of the ships Thuringia and Helgoland refused to lift anchor. They even went so far as minor sabotage. However, the mutiny failed to catch on with the rest of the fleet. The following day some torpedo boats pointed their cannons at the two battleship and the sailors aboard gave up without a fight. Approximately 1,000 arrested mutineers were held for court-martial, but their mutiny had been effective.

 The German High Command, now with real doubts about the loyalty of the fleet, canceled the planned suicide mission. However, if the German leadership thought this was the end of the mutiny they were about to discover a shocking surprise.

 Other sailors of the fleet, knowing that the mutineers had acted in their interests as well, sent a delegation of 250 men to petition for the release of their comrades on November 1. The fleet officers refused to even meet with the delegation and they shut down the Union Hall in Kiel where the sailors had been meeting. That's when the sailors did something that the German leadership never expected.

Karl Artelt

 Led by the sailor Karl Artelt, and shipyard worker Lothar Popp, both USPD party members, the sailors called for a large open-air meeting at Großer Exerzierplatz on November 3rd. The USPD ("Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany") was formed in 1917. It was a union labor-based political party formed after the Social Democratic (SPD) opposition party (the mainstream labor-based political party) banned the anti-war voices. The USPD demanded an immediate end to the war.

 When the November 3rd meeting took place, labor unions were also represented.

The slogan "Frieden und Brot" (peace and bread) was used at this time, showing that the sailor's caused had been adopted and expanded by the unions.

Lothar Popp

  The meeting ended with a call to march on the military prison. Thousands marched down the streets and were met by a military patrol commanded by sub lieutenant Steinhäuse. The patrol fired into the demonstrators when they refused to turn back, killing seven people and wounding 29. Some of the demonstrators were armed and returned fire. Steinhause was injured with a rifle butt. Both the demonstration and the patrol were scattered. Nevertheless the mass protest turned into a general revolt.

   The following morning large groups of mutineers moved through town. At this point the sailors engaged in mass disobedience. Karl Artelt organised the first soldier's council, and soon many more were set up. The naval commander was forced to negotiate with the mutineers, and eventually he freed the imprisoned sailors. Sailors and workers brought public and military institutions in the city under their control.

 When troops from outside the city were ordered to put down the revolt, mutineers and workers met them on the outskirts of Kiel and either turned them back, or got them to join in the revolt. By the evening of November 4th, the entire city was firmly under the control of 40,000 sailors and labor unions members.

 That evening SPD deputy Gustav Noske arrived in the city under strict orders to put down the revolt. He managed to get himself elected chairman of the soldiers' council and began limiting the influence of the labor councils, but he failed in his primary objective - he failed to keep the revolt from spreading.

  Even as Noske arrived in Kiel, delegations of sailors were heading out of town to other major cities. By November 7, all large coastal cities in Germany were under the influence of the revolt, as well as the cities of Hanover, Frankfurt and Munich. In Munich a Workers' and Soldiers' Council forced the last King of Bavaria, Louis III, to abdicate.

 Bavaria declared an end to the Empire and became a "Council Republic" (Räterepublik) Bavarian Soviet Republic. In the following days the royals of all the other German states abdicated, the last one on November 23.

The Workers' and Soldiers' Councils were almost entirely made up of SPD and USPD members. Their programme was democracy, pacifism and anti-militarism. Apart from the royals they only deprived the hitherto almighty military commands of power. The imperial civilian administration and office bearers –police, municipal administrations, courts- remained unscathed. There were also hardly any confiscations of property or occupations of factories because such measures were expected from the new government.

On the evening of November 9, the USPD called up 26 assemblies in Berlin and announced a general strike and mass demonstration for the following day. The demand was put forth that the Kaiser abdicate. A rifle regiment was called into the city to restore order, but the soldiers were unwilling to fire on their fellow citizens.

 In the meantime the Kaiser got a report from his commanders on the Western Front. The troops were unwilling to follow the Kaiser's orders anymore, and one Guards unit had openly mutinied for the first time.
 The Kaiser fled to Netherlands without even abdicating first.

Why does this history matter?
Because workers and soldiers, arm-in-arm, refusing to fight isn't a story that the ruling class wants out there.
It's much more advantageous to say that people opposing war hate the soldiers.