War vietnam-Iraq - Essay Example

These two conflicts while located in different regions of the world have a lot in common as well as a lot different. For the Vietnamese however the conflict had been continuous since 1945 when the Viet Minh began a campaign against French troops based in Haiphong. It was not until the Viet Minh attacked Dien Bien Phu and decimated the French forces that the United States started to send political convoys over.1 In 1961 President John F. Kennedy orders support for the South Vietnamese and begins to send military advisors and support personnel.

The first official combat mission conducted by the United States against the Vietcong was 12 January 1962 where United States Helicopters were used to fly South Vietnamese to Saigon in an attack. This also marked the beginning of a ten year conflict that resulted in more than 3 million American serving in the war, 58,000 American dead, and over 2000 missing in action.2 The war while officially over in March of 1973, actively carried on until 30 April 1975 and for many veterans is still raging internally.

Similar Iraq has been in conflict both internally and with external powers since 1920 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The United States did not become directly involved until Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. On 9 August 1990 United States troops land in Saudi Arabia and in January 1991 the Persian Gulf conflict began. Between 1991 and 2002 when the United States launched their next full campaign against Iraq, the United States attempted to peacefully end the hostilities but the President Saddam Hussein continues to disobey the regulations and puts Iraq on President Bush’s axis of evil list.

On 11 October 2002 the United States congress authorized an attack on Iraq. That next spring on 19 March 2003 President Bush declares war. While as of December 2011 the United States is not actively engaged at war in Iraq, there are still military and political advisors to aid the Iraqi military and government. To date more than 4,400 soldiers have been killed. The Vietnam conflict enlisted those soldiers straight out of high school who thought that their government was right and the war was just.

3 It was not until the soldiers hit ground that they realized that corruption, lies, and manipulation were more important than the mission. The mission was to liberate the South Vietnamese against the communist North. The truth was that women, children, and other civilians were being killed in the process. This was the first war that a large number of civilians were killed on a daily basis. Rather the reasons were greed, hatred, or accident, soldiers started to realize that this was not their father’s war.

The media while censored was still able to get many of these images back to the United States were the civilian attitude of the war changed. The Iraqi conflict was similar in that many people believed both military and civilian that this was a righteous conflict. Protecting an ethnic group of people from a warlord seemed worthy. As the conflict continued, especially with George W. Bush as President it became clear that this war was not just about cleaning out a bad government but there also ulterior motives.

Gas, national resources, and money were all involved in this seemingly straight forward conflict. Soldiers coming home from this conflict are having the same