Vietnam - coming into focus

two more years
ten more years
twelve more years

Former Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird has an article in the Nov/Dec issue of Foreign Affairs magazine that while supportive of the Iraq War, notes similarities between mistakes being made in Iraq and those made in Vietnam.

“The United States should not let too many more weeks pass before it shows its confidence in the training of the Iraqi armed forces by withdrawing a few thousand US troops from the country. We owe it to the restive people back home to let them know there is an exit strategy, and, more important, we owe it to the Iraqi people.”

“Both the Vietnam War and the Iraq war were launched based on intelligence failures and possibly outright deception”

“Reports have already surfaced of skittish American soldiers shooting Iraqi civilians in acts that can only be attributed to poor training and discipline.....To stop abuses and mistakes by the rank and file, whether in the prisons or on the streets, heads must roll at much higher levels than they have thus far.”

“The minute we begin to deport prisoners to other nations where they can legally be tortured, when we hold people without charges or trial, when we move prisoners around to avoid the prying inspections of the Red Cross, when prisoners die inexplicably on our watch, we are on a slippery slope toward the inhumanity that we deplore.”

“The war in Iraq is not 'another Vietnam.' But it could become one if we continue to use Vietnam as a sound bite while ignoring its true lessons."

The only condition really separating it from Vietnam is that there is NO DRAFT. If there was, and the war supporters did not have their willing recruits, the invasion would never have begun.