Well in the previous post I gave you, the reader, a direct insight on the Cold War from a general neutral perspective(if you have not read the part one of this then I implore you to do so, here is the link,
http://rocinantedelamancha.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-talk-of-war.html Now in this post i'll analyse what the Cold War meant in the mini series The 60's. To those who saw the series you saw how Brian returned in a different state when he came back from the war than when we started, Picture this, imagine fighting for something bigger than your self, something you truly find reason to feel it is an absolute truth, that said you should be able to succeed.What happens when you don't? Is what you fought for a lie to yourself? Society teaches us as kids that the truth always prevails above all, thanks to that is that Brian truly believed in the war until the very end, when the "Truth always prevail" didn't win the war and made him doubt everything he has fought for up to that point. This problem was shared across all the returned veterans from Vietnam.
You must be asking yourself how can the truth not prevail? It is simple, there is no single truth, I mean there is no absolute truth, we all think that what we fight for is a just cause but so does our enemies, so does the man on the other side who lifted a gun against you for the sake of his children. To us they are monsters and to them we are the real monster, who has the truth? The answer is none.
The truth is just a convenience that the government uses to wage war, truth meaning just cause. Due to this Brian became a victim of the system he sought to defend with ought seeing their real motifs behind it all.
The grim reality of it all is that this happens on our daily basis, what happened in the 60's today we call is Iraq and Afghanistan, the communist we so feared back then we replaced with terrorist. The fear of back then still exist to this day, the truth we sought is nothing but the figment of a good lie told to both sides. In that sense the show teaches us that the first causality in a war is the truth, (possible quote here that i don't remember) in the end we see many men like Brain when all is lost...
history of war:
http://www.historyofwar.org/