GDAEman: Iraq and Vietnam Timelines Side-by-Side

January 7, 2007

Anonymous said...: There certainly are scary parallels. But there are (scarier?) differences as well: US involvement in Viet Nam's civil war was a clear if intractable part of the Cold War -- a proxy war between the US/allies and USSR/China -- a war of credibilty between super powers. Iraq was deemed, fallaciously, a part of the assymetrical War on Terror -- a now it's a war of credibility on many more levels (arab vs israel, capitalistic democracy vs radical theocracies, and oil rich emerging nations vs. super power oil institutions to name a few). On the timelines the number of casualties are much smaller for the Iraq timeline; while the financial cost to the US will likely be much higher. Also the Viet Nam draft kept young men out of college -- today the economy keeps young people out of college (and drives them into the recruitment centers). Another huge difference -- media coverage of Iraq: the embedded journalists restrained from sharing sensitive info, the glitzy corporate media "take", the free-wheeling image-rich bloggers, the inter(net)national indymedia & street news. What does it all mean? I don't think there's a soul who really knows...but the dollars keep ka-chingin' away and the government of Iran keeps looking like the Chesire Cat...or was that just a persian cat....; January 30, 2007 4:16 AM

GDAEman