In my humble opinion - and that's not
just an expression with me,
I really mean it - comparing the
Vietnam War with the
Iraq War is an insult to all Vietnam vets and the families of soldiers killed in Vietnam. There's virtually
no comparison, save the fact that we (America) went into a country fighting a war we shouldn't have been. Thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers were killed in Vietnam, a great number of them draftees, kids just out of
high school, a good lot of them couldn't have even pointed to Vietnam on a map of the world before they were sent over there. The number of soldiers killed in Vietnam dwarfs the number that have died already in Iraq and by the time this is over it will still be dwarfing it,
rest assured. (And the number of soldiers who died in
World War II and
World War I each dwarf the numbers killed in Vietnam.)
This obviously will be of no comfort to hunt05 or anybody else who has lost a loved one over in Iraq. Of course that is always a terrible, terrible thing. But everybody over there had signed up for some type of military duty and most of them are serving their duty proudly and I support them. No draftees -- yet. (Casey Sheehan, son of Cindy Sheehan, even had signed up for a second tour before being killed, he could have gone home!) There's nobody over there - yet - who never wanted in the military, who may have abhored killing on every level and whatnot. Thousands of kids who had just attended their senior prom aren't being sent off to slaughter this time. Think about it.
Whether or not we should have been there in the first place is irrelevant now; we have to finish the job over there now that we've started it and if we pull out now all of the soldiers' deaths so far will have been in vain. They will have died for nothing.
We lost miserably over in Vietnam, let's not do that again. Let's all hope for a peaceful and Democratic Iraq, for our people and for theirs.
Thank you.