GVPT 200 Blog 2

Thomas Shelton

GVPT 200 FC01

Mark Shirk

Blog Post #2

                             

               As the Iraq war had played out it has increasingly began to resemble the Vietnam War in the campaigns initial plan, outcome of the conflict as well as the reception by the public. Both wars have been heavy debated whether or not the U.S had been successful in their goals for each campaign.  After wasting twenty five years, seven hundred and thirty eight billion dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives you would have think that the U.S would make sure another military conflict like that would never happen again however, here we stand.

               The goal of the Iraq campaign was to find and remove the supposed weapons of mass destruction because the U.S feared the weapons could be used against them. However it eventually evolved into nearly a decade long fight with members of Al-Qaeda. Al Qaeda employed guerrilla warfare tactics to effectively maximize damage to the U.S/Iraqi security forces and minimize their own casualties. Vietnam similarly initially was initiated to halt the spread of communism throughout the eastern world because the U.S had feared it would endanger democracy across the globe but mostly feared it would create more allies for the U.S.S.R. Both military conflicts were predicted to be in and out campaigns and be over in a couple years at most; George W Bush was even bold enough to claim that the war in Iraq had already been won after merely a month and a half. After Vietnam the U.S should have learned invading solely out of fear would only lead to disaster.

               Once the U.S had ended their campaign the socialist forces of North Vietnam took over all of South Vietnam in fourteen months creating the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. After the establishment of the Republic two million Vietnamese citizens were sent to “reeducation camps” which were essentially death sentences. Likewise after the U.S pulled out of Iraq even though a slightly stable government had been established there was a huge surge in terrorist attacks orchestrated by Al Qaeda. Even today there are reports of racketeering and ransoming campaigns that have been established by Al Qaeda as well as reports of Al Qaeda influence in multiple Syrian bombings. Even though both campaigns initial goals had been reached almost immediately after pulling out it was as if nothing had been changed in either nation. If our precaution against Vietnam failed only fourteen months after leaving why would we expect anything better from the campaign in Iraq?

               One of the effects of both wars was that it effectively diving the U.S population into those in favor of continuing the war and those who wanted to withdraw the troops as soon as possible. This lead to each group to butt heads on nearly every issue regardless of its relevance to the war and effectively halted the political and social progress of the U.S. Another aspect of the wars that was almost completely forgotten about was the treatment of the veterans returning from the war. Many of the veterans were despised by the public because of the heavy civilian casualties form the napalm strikes, heavy shelling and use of agent orange in Vietnam; after Iraq the veterans faced a similar situation because of the drone strikes, artillery shelling, and airstrikes. This mistreatment of veterans in both wars once again created a rift in the U.S populations which only hurt us further. One again we failed to learn from the past and change the way we treat the returning veterans for both their finical and mental needs.

               After all of these points I am still wondering how many times do we have to hear the cliché  “history always repeats itself” before we actually try and change for the better to prevent such disastrous campaigns such as the Vietnam war and more recently the Iraq war. Hopefully we will not fall into the same cycle if we choose take action in Syria and without looking at the repercussions of our previous mistakes.