Posted by Dan Ewert : 8/23/2002 11:01:00 PM (Archive Link)
I read a letter to the editor in today’s USA Today and a reader opined that we shouldn’t invade Iraq because it will just turn into another Vietnam. How many times have we heard that? Panama was supposed to be another Vietnam… The Persian Gulf War I was supposed to be another Vietnam… Yugoslavia was supposed to another Vietnam… Afghanistan was supposed to be even worse than another Vietnam. Of course, there hasn’t been another Vietnam and there won’t be another one. Heck, we could go back to Vietnam and it wouldn’t be another Vietnam. The actual Vietnam War was unique for the time period, culture, geography, politics, and military. You simply can’t transplant the experiences of that war into conditions that are vastly different from the conditions in the aforementioned categories. It simply doesn’t work. Saying that such and such will be another Vietnam has almost as much effect as saying it will be another War of the Roses or another Punic War (you can pick your favorite of the three). It’s simply incorrect to say that events in scenario A will occur in scenario B even though the circumstances and conditions surrounding B are nothing like A. Ever since the Vietnam War’s unfortunate conclusion, those on the left and those who are afraid of armed confrontation have used it as the war bogeyman. No matter where we propose our armed forces should intervene, we can’t go there because it might be like Vietnam. The notion doesn’t hold water but it is a silly piece of rhetoric that’s invoked to make Americans nervous. As Bush Sr. once said, it’s about time we kick this Vietnam syndrome once and for all. If only there weren’t people who kept trying to reinfect us.