U.S. political and military difficulties in Iraq prompted comparisons to the American war in Vietnam. There are many reasons why some Americans believe that Iraq was turning into the new Vietnam—the two wars are a bit comparable. Even so, there are also many people who viewed the war in Iraq as a separate and completely different war from the Vietnam War. Although the wars are quite similar, I was also able to pinpoint some contrasting points of the two.
The United States had stumbled into another overseas quagmire—history seemed to be repeating itself when, once again, we were led by a group of men who launched wars without exit strategies and fail to understand the nature of their enemy. The United States got involved in order to stop the spread of communism. The belief was that if Vietnam fell, so then would Cambodia, Laos, etc. Vietnam was the longest war the U.S. had ever been it—15 years. In Vietnam, Americans were told that the U.S. was involved because the
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The Iraq war also differed from the Vietnam War in operation standpoints. The United States fought in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973, and yet they never officially declared war in congress. Also, far more soldiers were killed in Vietnam than in Iraq: after 8 years in Vietnam, 58,148 U.S. soldiers were killed, while after 11 years, over 5,000 troops died. The major difference in the number of killed troops helps depict the operational differences.
Another disparity was that Iraq did not have a functioning air force or the helpful air defenses that Vietnam had. The Vietnam War, unlike the Iraq War, had a long drawn out aerial bombing component. From 1962 to 1973, the U.S. Air Force flew almost 550,000 combat planes in South Vietnam alone. In terms of bombs dropped, it was the largest air war in history.
America needs to take a serious look at these wars and examine why we repeatedly get involved in painful and costly conflicts. We attempt to fight these unconventional wars with conventionally-trained