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I don't necessarily blame the media. Like is true with all news, bad news is the best to report.
Whether the war was justified or not is a matter of opinion. The majority of the press does have the opinion that it was not. I happen to think it was, for reasons previously (and over and over) stated, most recently in the Dick Durbin thread.
Which brings me to....Dick Durbin. Frankly, most youth don't know their history. They don't know specifically what the Nazi death camps and Pol Pot and the gulags of the Soviet Union were really like. They just know that they were bad. Really bad. So, when they hear things like Durbin comparing our military and procedures therein to those really bad guys, who wants to participate with that? That's just one example - and I fully admit it was so recent it could not have had an effect on the poor recruiting of the recent past.
Also, since the end of Vietnam and the end of the end of the draft, we have had relative peace. I know many people I went to highschool with that enlisted in the military because they wanted the educational incentives involved. I really doubt if many would have enlisted should the cold war have been a hot one. After the fervor surrounding 9/11 died down, so did enlistment.
It is irresponsible to blame the media. However, it is not irresponsible to blame those who have been calling this a Vietnam. Again, most youths are completely clueless as to what Vietnam was - only that it was really bad and many bad things happened there. When Kennedy and Shumer and Reid and whomever keep calling this a Vietnam, of course that will hurt recruitment.
Edited to add: MBC makes a great point about lengthening of tours, and I agree with it completely.
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