Vietnam and iraq wars By Chris Vanaman

Intro and thesis These two wars have often been compared The outcome of the Vietnam War offered some lessons for U.S. policy makers but they chose to mostly ignore them in favor of aggressive military operations. Whether or not the Bush administration was wrong for ignoring these lessons is still up for debate.

Differences How organized the opposition was Magnitude of the war Draft vs no draft Objectives were different

Similarities Leaders during both wars believed that a U.S. victory would be easy Optimistic announcements were made about the wars Outside interference was to blame for failures Far reaching consequences were feared if the U.S. lost Motives for continuing involvement in the wars

Outcomes of the wars The catastrophic events that were predicted given a U.S. withdrawal of troops did not happen following the Vietnam War. Up until now, the Middle East remains unstable (which was predicted by George W. Bush), and it is difficult to say what impact U.S. involvement actually had given all of the fighting that has been going on for decades in that region.

Conclusion The U.S. could have used the outcome of the Vietnam War as a lesson about getting involved in long wars. Since nothing terrible happened after the Vietnam War, it could have been reasoned that nothing terrible would happen if we stayed out of Iraq. However, since each situation is unique, it is not entirely possible to predict one event based on a past event. Hopefully we can use lessons from both of these conflicts to avoid future conflicts that may not be necessary