Compare and contrast
U.S. political and military difficulties in Iraq have prompted comparisons to the American war in Vietnam. Unfolding events in Iraq have caused some observers to make analogies to the American experience in the Vietnam War. There are many reasons why most Americans believe that Iraq is becoming the new Vietnam, with U.S. troops getting shut down in a bloody war and occupation of a violent area. There are plenty of ways to compare and contrast the Vietnam and Iraq war. Many people have viewed Vietnam as a completely different war from the current one in Iraq. Despite these claims I have still noticed that there are many comparisons that have been made between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War.
The United States has again stumbled into an overseas quagmire from which there is no easy exit. History seems to be repeating itself when again, we are led by a group of men who launch wars without exit strategies and fail to understand the nature of their enemy. In Vietnam the United States became involved because they felt the need to stop the spread of communism throughout the rest of Asia and attempt to prevent the "domino effect." The belief is that if Vietnam fell, so then would Cambodia, Laos, etc. Vietnam was the longest U.S. war with its never ending deaths, escalating destruction of Vietnam and Cambodia, and growing danger of splitting the American people (Carter 28). In Vietnam the Americans were told that U.S. was there because the South Vietnamese asked us to save them from the communist threat. But what the soldiers experienced did not add up to what the American people were being told (Thura 9). Americans have been told that the United States is going to war against Iraq in order to remove Saddam Hussein, eliminate him from power, abolish Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and prevent Baghdad from aiding terrorist groups. (Anderson 5). In Iraq the soldiers are anxious with no evidence of weapons of mass...