Hmm, I seem to recall a war from 1991 in which we kicked Iraq out of Kuwait in a matter of weeks, after a buildup of several months. It was the second Iraq War that gave us an initial victory over Saddam Hussein and then dragged on for years to an ambiguous withdrawal.
But I get the point. Even back in my school days, American History only covered wars, Revolutionary, Civil, and World War II, and then ended. World War I was covered so quickly no one learned anything, because we had to get to the second one, since all our teachers lived through it. Vietnam was not history yet. From Married to the Sea.
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History textbooks are notoriously behind the times for a variety of reasons:
1. State legislatures argue about everything along party lines, so consensus on what should be included in the book is always a stalemate.
2. It takes a minimum of 20 years for historians to process events for the meaning or outcome, and longer to gain access to government records on a war.
3. As it is, school districts struggle to afford maintenance and salaries, so books are third on the agenda (maybe lower).
4. Parents are nutballs about what their "children" should have access to. Nevermind a high school kid is not a child the same way a fifth-grader is a child. Chances are the high school kids are viewing (perhaps reading) all kinds of materials their parents don't know about...
Starting with the War Against Vietnam, US wars became profit generators for certain Elites. Winning or losing became irrelevant.
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