Is Iraq Viet Nam on Speed?

At 30: Iraq and the Vietnam Syndrome

If you started reading this Blog from the bottom, then you know that it was the realization that the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and the end of the Viet Nam War was both on April 30th, threw me into a philophisical spin that ended up with me looking for a way to express my views, hence this weblog.

I ran across this article comparing Viet Nam and Iraq. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21912/

This comparison is something a lot of people don't want to make, but if we can't learn from our mistakes, then we shouldn't make mistakes, right?

At the beginning of Iraq War II there was a lot of talk about "we have learned not to repeat our mistakes from Viet Nam". Come to find out what that really meant was limiting information such as embedded reporters, no pictures of flag drapped caskets and no counting of cilivian dead.

One good change that was apparently made was that soldiers no longer shipped out to the war zone as an individual, but would tarvel only with their units. A pressing need for more soldiers in Iraq has apparently caused that change to go down the tubes as I met a 18 year old soldier here in the State of Jefferson a few weeeks ago that has orders in- hand to ship out to Iraq alone.
I asked him what happened to 'unit only' movements and he said that if the Army reclassifies a soldier away from their regualr job (Military Occupational Specialist or MOS ) and designates them as a "security specialist" then that person will go alone and be attached to unit already fighting, just like Viet Nam.

Below are excerpts from the article:
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"Yes, we have not yet been in Iraq 10 years. But military officials have said that we probably WILL have to be in Iraq for 10 years.

The sending of tens of thousands of soldiers into battle ill-prepared culturally and militarily. Our soldiers in Iraq do not know who is on our side -- who they should save and who they should shoot. Sound familiar?
Destroying cities to save them (notably, Fallujah) and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.
No Gulf of Tonkin incident, no weapons of mass destruction.
Yet despite all the above, very few in the mainstream media are calling for the a pullout in Iraq or even for setting a withdrawal deadline -- again, very much like Vietnam until the early 1970s.
Iraqization and Vietnamization.
Did I mention the enormous cost, $300 billion and counting for Iraq? The crippling of a second-term president's approval ratings?
There's even a new "domino theory": We must establish democracy in Iraq (apparently at any cost) to inspire American-friendly governments throughout the region.
As for the difference in the casualty count: For the parent whose child has been killed or badly maimed it makes no difference whether the son or daughter was one of a hundred damaged that week or one of a thousand. And every loss of limb or loss of life takes place in the context of more than half of the Americans back home feeling the war is "not worth it."
But let me turn this over to another baby boomer, a Vietnam veteran named Patrick Sheridan, who was permanently disabled in 1970 when a mine exploded under the personnel carrier he was riding in. He's not exactly one of Goldberg's effete antiwar vets nostalgic for the "good old days."

In an article in today's Bozeman (Mt.) Daily Chronicle, Sheridan warned that the U.S was reliving its Vietnam mistake in Iraq, getting involved again in a horrific internal conflict. "We've gotten ourselves enmeshed in a difficult, protracted war," he said, "that doesn't seem to be winnable at this point."