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I was not alive for Vietnam. But I did deploy to Iraq. Twice. Are the two wars different? Sure. Does that mean it's WRONG to look at the similarities between the two, and perhaps even apply some lessons learned from Vietnam? Of course not. Although to listen to some people these days, if you use Vietnam and Iraq in the same sentence, you might as well make exercise videos and drive a vegetable-oil bus.

Why the fear? Why the virulent "Iraq is NOT Vietnam!" as soon as the subject is raised? I mean, isn't it kind of obvious that the two countries have not-a-whole-lot to do with each other, that the Cold War world is not the Post-Cold-War world, that there are as few communists in Iraq as there were gallons of oil in Vietnam? The insistence that Iraq is not Vietnam comes simply from the deathly fear that defeat in Iraq will have the same traumatizing effects at home, on the societal and cultural front, as did did defeat in Vietnam. I don't think pulling out of Indochina really affected Americans in any other area than societal. Our economy did not suffer significantly. Our global standing did not suffer significantly. The real trauma of Vietnam, and what we are trying at all costs to avoid repeating this go around, is the poor treatment of returning troops. (I know some will say that we care about non-American civilians too. I just don't believe we do... Many, many more innocent civilians got killed in WWII, and die in civil wars in Africa today, than died in Vietnam or Iraq. Where is the protest?)

As I've said, I was not around to witness it, but seems like soldiers were spit on as often as they were thanked for their service.

Obviously, this was not the right thing to do.

Movies like "Born on the 4th of July" and "Forrest Gump" do a good job of showing youngsters like me how terrible things can be when you're returning from a hellish war, only to find that your fellow countrymen, instead of thanking you or at least sympathizing with your injuries, blame and vilify you.

However, reality check: there was a draft back then. There is no draft now. Every single one of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in today's Armed Forces volunteered. Most, since the military has more first-termers than career men and women, signed up after September 11, 2001. So very nearly everyone who is in the military today either decided to join knowing there was a darn good chance they'd be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, or had the option of separating from the service between the time

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