During the Vietnam War, the generation of David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan transformed America's mainstream media into a hotbed of antiwar and antimilitary muckraking. By the time a major war effort returned, in 2003, that generation had grown too old to visit the trenches, allowing the emergence of Generation X reporters like Dexter Filkins and George Packer, who did not share their predecessors' contempt for the military. Most Americans welcomed the change.