Comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq wars

Veterans say parallels between Vietnam and Iraq conflicts make them sad, angry
By Scott E. Pacheco

John O’Keefe Sr. can’t help but get a little angry as he sees a new generation of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Vietnam veteran has been there and suffered through that.

And, as the conflict in Iraq rolls into its third year, and the death toll mounts, the Linwood man says the similarities between the Vietnam War and the new no-end-in-sight conflict are undeniable.

“I get a knot in my stomach. It makes me sick. It makes me mad and then it makes me sad,” O’Keefe said. “They don’t want us there. When people don’t want us there, you are never going to win a war, just like Vietnam.”

Veterans and history experts agree there are haunting similarities between the conflict in Iraq and the Vietnam War – politically, socially, financially and even in the nature of combat…

“Our collective memory is 25 to 30 years, and the next generation” has to learn the same lessons, said Jeremy W. Kilar, history professor at Delta College.

Ed Sharoian of Standish, an Army veteran of Vietnam, said the similarity lies in the motive for going to war and the ambiguity with which the country has pursued war.

Sharoian said he still feels bitter toward former President Richard M. Nixon, who withdrew from the Far East after 10 years and with little accomplished.

“After they wasted 58,213 lives (in Vietnam), they pulled out,” he said. “You have to wonder what is going to happen here, if they are going to fulfill their purpose.”

In a little more than two years, more than 1,800 United States troops have died in Iraq. In the first two years of Vietnam, more than 5,000 soldiers perished.

And in both cases, the reason those soldiers were put in harm’s way is shaky at best, Kilar said.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the North Vietnamese carried out two attacks on American gunships, was reported to the American public as unprovoked, Kilar said. It was later discovered that there was provocation, and that the government used the incident to incite war with North Vietnam, he said.

Kilar said the weapons of mass destruction controversy – to date, none have been found – provides a similar scenario in Iraq.

O’Keefe said he believes President George Bush has a vendetta against Saddam Hussein and used that as another motivation for sending troops to war.

Kilar said while many people may not support the war in Iraq, they aren’t as vocal about it as they were in the Vietnam era, when citizens staged rallies and the general population was more involved in public protest.

One reason for the different social response is the lack of a draft, which led to more than 600,000 soldiers being deployed in the 1960s and ’70s. There now have been about 150,000 troops deployed to Iraq.

However, he said even if the public goes public with its malcontent, the soldiers wouldn’t take most of criticism, as they did during the Vietnam War.

“That was one of the lessons learned in Vietnam … we support our troops but not necessarily the war,” Kilar said.

In July, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari held a news conference to announce intentions to speed the process of removing troops from Iraq, possibly as early as next spring.

A main factor in that happening would be the training of Iraqi security forces to make sure they will be strong enough once the U.S. does pull out.

O’Keefe said it wasn’t that easy in Vietnam and it won’t be that easy in Iraq.

“We should pull out and let them resolve it for themselves. They are not going to change,” he said. “They are going to have a dictator leader and they’ll be fine. All we are doing is losing young boys and men, and National Guard people are there for nothing.”

Gordon Sherman knows just how harrowing the combat and reconstruction periods can be. He said it was common to work with the enemy during the day and shoot at them during the night.

“I worked with some in the lumber yard there,” said Sherman, 61, of Kawkawlin. “I was working with a Vietnamese and he said ‘I could have shot you last night.’ It was freaky.

“No matter where (troops in Iraq) go they are getting shot at. We basically had the same problem over (in Vietnam).”

While Sherman believes troops should be pulled out of Iraq, and that much of Vietnam War was in vain, he said he still was proud to serve his country.

“I felt like it was my duty to go serve at the time, and I did what I had to do,” he said.

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