The analogizing between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq commenced as the glow from the speedy take-down of Saddam Hussein wore off and it became obvious that not only would U.S. troops not be home by Christmas 2003 but the Bush administration was ill-prepared for a long haul that had the earmarks of becoming a Vietnam-like quagmire.
As I wrote here, there are apt comparisons between all wars. People are killed. People are taken prisoner. There are winners. There are losers. And sooner or later, Hollywood gets into the act and profits from the bloodshed. But the accurate analogies between Vietnam and Iraq are relatively few.
Now come scholar-historians Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, who in a compelling Democracy: A Journal of Ideas commentary not only put the lie to much of the endless Vietnam-Iraq analogizing by the White House and senior U.S. military commanders, but argue that the biggest lesson of the earlier war is that the U.S. has to get out of the present one now.
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