The reason that this remains necessary has nothing to do with the Vietnam War in particular. Instead, it has to do with the nature of our society and the nature of veterans’ needs.
Our society, like any democratic society, is not great at keeping its attention on any given problem. We have the ability to focus on a few problems at a time, and we tend to focus on those that are most current. Veterans’ issues are not usually very “current” as they do not affect that many of us in a direct way.
In addition, the needs of some veterans can be very hard to meet. It is not easy to provide effective psychological counseling. It is not easy to find ways to help veterans who are homeless or unemployed. Because there are no easy answers to veterans’ problems, it can be easy for us to try to forget about them. Veterans’ associations, therefore, need to keep advocating because veterans’ issues are difficult to deal with and because they are ongoing, long after most people in the society have stopped paying attention.