in the future, what will be seen as a bigger mistake.... vietnam war or iraq war?

Answer 1

The biggest mistake will be withdrawing from both.

and not taking from history what happens if we do not finish what we started, as seen in Vietnam, Millions killed by the communists after the US withdrawal.

Answer 2

You need to look at your 20th century history. For Vietnam you have to go back to WWII. In an effort to get the vietnamese to help in the fight against the Japanese, the French government (Vietnam was a French colony that was call French Indo-China at the time) promised Ho Chi Minh that they would give the country independence if they helped in the fight. The vietnamese helped fight against the Japanese, but at the end of the war the French affectively said "psych, just kidding". This led to a colonial war in which the French suffered a huge defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The French, realizing that they were losing, started trying to get the US involved. The French marketed it as a fight against the spread of global communism, because by this point the Vietnamese forces where being backed by the Soviets and the Chinese. As the French withdrew the US became more and more involved until finally we get to what we call the Vietnam War.

The big problem with Vietnam and what we were trying to do was that the local government was not elected, was totally corrupt, and spent as much time fighting among themselves as against the communist north. Our fight was well done militarily, but there was no will from the vietnamese people to support our goal, so we just stayed in a state of bloody stalemate. In the early 1970's the democrats in congress defunded the war and the Army had to withdraw. This was viewed as good by the anti-war crowd because this immediately got american forces out of the conflict, so we suffered no more casualties.

The outcome for the whole of southeast asia was pretty bleak though. The north vietnamese came into the south and started a purge of everyone in a position of power militarily or governmentally. This created a huge refugee crisis in which the conservative estimates of dead start at 1.5 million people and go up from there. Additionally, the vietnamese then supported the overthrow of the Cambodian government by the Khmer Rouge who systematically killed upwards of 2 million cambodians.

So I think we can say that our involvement and the outcome of the Vietnam war was pretty bad.

Iraq is much easier. Saddam was killing his own people (prewar estimates put the number at as many as 100,000 per year). He invaded Kuwait, tried to invade Iran, and threatened the entire gulf region. The one thing that everyone seems to miss about us going into Iraq, and saying that it was an illegal war, is that Iraq violated the cease fire brokered by the UN from the first gulf war. That, if nothing else, authorized the attack.

Differences with Iraq. The people have elected the government, the regions are governing themselves, the economy is coming back, and the sectarian violence is reducing. The mistakes we have made so far are that we did not kill enough of the Baathists during the war (they surrendered to quickly), we prevented the shia majority from purging the suuni minority that had been terrorizing them for 30 years, and we did not close down the borders with Iran and Syria. That is the basis for the insurgency and the sectarian violence that you see.

The plus side is, of the 19 provinces of Iraq, only Bahgdad province and Anbar province have continuing violence (of course that's all you see on the news). In the other 17 provinces it's actually safer than it is in most american cities. Even if you factor in the number of violent deaths it is still more dangerous to live in LA than to live in Iraq.

If the government in Iraq works this can be an example to the other dictatorships that surround it and would hopefully help to stabilize the world oil market. If it doesn't work, the best case scenario would be a region wide war that would kill millions, halt the flow of oil, and destroy the world economy.

I think even at this point we can say that vietnam was a bigger mistake, but only time will tell.

Answer 3

It depends on the repurcussions of Iraq. If the Iraq invasion leads to the collapse of the whole middle east into war, or the use of nuclear weapons by/against/in the defense of Israel, then Iraq.

At the moment I think Vietnam, because we can see all the consequences of that war laid out in front of us. Thousands of conscripts dead, a country that is STILL affected by the chemical weapons used against it and nothing really achieved.

Answer 4

we backed Iraq when they fought Iran and if the truth was known we gave them the chemical weapons they used. WE stuck our nose in Afghanistan when the Russians were fighting their we gave them rockets to shoot down their helicopters.we should have kept our noses out of it . and in Vietnam we were going to show the french how to win that war we should have stayed out of it. and if bush or Cheney had to fight we would never have gone to Iraq.

Answer 5

'Iraq war', because the effects of vietnam war have already shown its impact and it's all over, but the Iraq war has not yet over, and its outcome will be tell by the time...

Answer 6

certain. I see it as a intense priced, unjust warfare. There are those who imagine wiping out Sadam justifies it yet, utilising that line of reasoning, we ought to continually be wiping out each dictator on the face of the earth. the position would it not end? a minimum of in VietNam there become the excuse that we were combating antagonistic to the improvement of communism in case you wanted us there - no longer that I agreed with that warfare both. It become adult men my age who fought there.

Answer 7

Nither are mistakes to begin with.

The only mistake of the Vietnam was was politians

Answer 8

we will only know at the end of the war right now its quite hard to answer

Answer 9

iraq war i think
i mean people are still suffering.the guy hanged right,so why does all of iraq still have to suffer??why??

Answer 10

voting bush jr for the second term!