Ancient history

Anything that happened to your parents is history. If it happened to your grandparents, its ancient history. And if it happened to your great-grandparents, its palaeolithic.
Glenn Greenwald writes about John McCain's Vietnam-based view of war:

John McCain is the ultimate embodiment of America's hoary, Vietnam era 'stabbed-in-the-back' myth. We should fight wars with massive bombing campaigns and unleashed force, unconstrained by excessive concerns over 'collateral damage' and unimpeded by domestic questioning. That's how we could have (and should have) 'won' in Vietnam and how we'll 'win' in Iraq.

What McCain hasn't realized is that, to anyone under 40, Vietnam is history. To anyone under 20, its ancient history. By trying to re-fight this war, he's just demonstrating just how old he really is.
America hated Vietnam because they were sucked into fighting it. They hate the Iraq War because they were tricked into fighting it. In both cases the public was right, not wrong -- both these wars were criminal acts, illegal in international law, and the American people were right to be disgusted with what their government was doing.
Politicians like McCain and Bush prattle on about how they just love democracy, but when the public makes a judgment they don't agree with, it never seems to cause them to question their own position. Instead they just write off the public as stupid or cowardly or both.