Well... I don't know about you, but for me "the War" is still WWII, even though I hadn't been born when it ended. Maybe for Gen X and the Millennials, "the War" is the war in Vietnam. I'm not sure where the Iraq War fits in.
But what we can say is that all the wars between WWII and the Ukraine War--in which we aren't a boots on the ground participant--were morally ambiguous. So perhaps they lack our clarity.