In the midst of the war in Iraq, the comparison with Vietnam is inevitable. At first because of the pretext alleged by the United States to participate in the Vietnam War (1964-1975), which, according to several experts, was almost as baseless as the evidence alleged by the Americans that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
In the case of Vietnam, it all started in July 1964, when the American ships USS Maddox and USS C.Turney Joy would have been attacked by North Vietnamese communists while patrolling the Gulf of Tonquin. It is known that this attack was nothing more than an excuse for the US government to intervene directly in the region. Since 1962, the United States had been sending weapons, money and military advisers to the pro-capitalist dictatorship of South Vietnam to resist the communists in the north of the country.
Once there, as in Iraq today, the US army found that its military might was not capable of overcoming the Vietnamese resistance. Benefiting from a network of underground shelters and tunnels, the Viet Cong counterattacked through traps and ambushes. In addition, the TV broadcast of the deaths of American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians eroded the popularity of the White House, which was targeted by thousands of protesters during the Nixon administration. They demanded an end to a war whose financial and loss of life would become unsustainable. Which is not so different from the current situation that the United States is experiencing in the war with Iraq. The big difference so far is the death toll of the two wars, in Vietnam there were 500,000 dead and in Iraq 132,000 (last data released).
check out our related video lesson: