Then and Now

Vietnam! Vietnam! The mere mention of it still sends shudders through Americans — and for that very reason it is alluded to almost weekly in the columns of Maureen Dowd, Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman, et al. After all, Vietnam was purportedly our Sicilian expedition, with 58,000 American soldiers dead, $150 billion spent, a country torn apart in a decade of protest, and, at the end, defeat and the vow “never again” to send American ground troops to wars in far-off lands about which we know little. Yet here we are again with televised images of foreign irregulars toting RPGs and killing Americans while Europeans advise us to get out and avoid their all-too-familiar “colonial” mistakes.

Is Iraq anything like the debacle of Vietnam — an impossible situation in which almost all the odds were heavily stacked against the United States? So far, the resemblance rests mostly with those who invoke it. The protest generation that in 1968 was 20, on campus, and angry is now 55, worried about 401(k)s, but also entrenched in the universities, media, and government. Once again they are increasingly furious that we are at war. Familiar critics have reemerged — now aging — ready for one last muster at the barricades. In lieu of the photogenic Eugene McCarthy, there is the maverick Howard Dean, similarly poised to triumph in the New Hampshire primary by promising to pull the troops out. Today’s Democratic senators are as shaky about their past votes for American action in Iraq as their forebears were about signing on to Vietnam.

About the Author

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won; and a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.

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Vietnam! Vietnam! The mere mention of it still sends shudders through Americans — and for that very reason it is alluded to almost weekly in the columns of Maureen Dowd, Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman, et al. After all, Vietnam was purportedly our Sicilian expedition, with 58,000 American soldiers dead, $150 billion spent, a country torn apart in a decade of protest, and, at the end, defeat and the vow “never again” to send American ground troops to wars in far-off lands about which we know little. Yet here we are again with televised images of foreign irregulars toting RPGs and killing Americans while Europeans advise us to get out and avoid their all-too-familiar “colonial” mistakes.

Is Iraq anything like the debacle of Vietnam — an impossible situation in which almost all the odds were heavily stacked against the United States? So far, the resemblance rests mostly with those who invoke it. The protest generation that in 1968 was 20, on campus, and angry is now 55, worried about 401(k)s, but also entrenched in the universities, media, and government. Once again they are increasingly furious that we are at war. Familiar critics have reemerged — now aging — ready for one last muster at the barricades. In lieu of the photogenic Eugene McCarthy, there is the maverick Howard Dean, similarly poised to triumph in the New Hampshire primary by promising to pull the troops out. Today’s Democratic senators are as shaky about their past votes for American action in Iraq as their forebears were about signing on to Vietnam.

About the Author

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won; and a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.