Keith Olbermann pretty much sums it up in his commentary.

In both cases, the first step was to demonize the enemy and gin up a threat that didn't really exist. WMD, 911, Saddam, etc. Gulf of Tonkin, communist aggression, domino theory, etc.

In both cases, the US government propped up corrupt governments. In Iraq, we propped up a corrupt government as a "stabilizing" force in the region and to keep Iran (and Syria?) in check. In Vietnam we propped up the corrupt South Vietnamese government to keep the communist revolution in check. The difference is that in Iraq we did this before the war and then decided the corrupt government was our enemy. In Vietnam we tried to establish and keep a corrupt government in power so we could have a military presence in Southeast Asia to keep communists in check.

From there the similarities start to diverge even more.

The media was more independent then. Vietnam was the first "televised war". There were daily reports and combat footage from the battle front. These reporters weren't like the "embeds" of today and the Pentagon didn't control their message so much. "Body counts" were the order of the day, and started to wear down American support for the war. The wartime politics of the U.S. and South Vietnam were also under the microscope of reporters who dug for the truth and didn't just transcribe the White House party line. The government had a much harder time controlling the message then.

It's hard to separate the fighting of the war from how all of this played out in public opinion. There were two established countries and their ideological allies on either side (US with the South and Soviet Russia and Communist China with the North) at war. There were conventional battles and military operations. The enemy (at least the NVA regulars) mostly wore a uniform and had a command structure. The Viet Cong guerillas operating in South Vietnam were harder to identify (and put the US forces in too many tough situations with regard to civilian casualties), but they still had a command structure and were fighting for a country with a government. In a sense it was a civil war, but the North and South Vietnamese chose up sides, flew a flag, and fought a mostly conventional war. And we knew who we were trying to defeat -- Ho Chi Min and North Vietnam.

I'm not sure America understands who the "enemy" is we are fighting in Iraq, and there is no government there any more. Who will we work out the terms of surrender with when we win? Who is in command of the enemy forces that will surrender their troops and weapons to us and stop the fighting?

And all this stuff about deferring to the generals and commanders "on the ground" (if I hear one more pundit or politician say "on the ground" I think I might get sick) doesn't make any sense to Americans who are paying attention. There is a huge geo-political problem in Iraq and the Middle East. The military's job is to kill and destroy the enemy, not establish governments and devise political solutions. We don't even know who the enemy is. This lack of civilian leadership or a plan is starting to make the Iraq war a much tougher sell than even Vietnam.

Then there are the casualties. Vietnam was a far more violent conflict. What is the tipping point in Iraq where America will say this is no longer worth it, whatever "this" is? In Vietnam it was 50,000 dead American soldiers.

Then there's the huge fundamental difference, which was the draft. This mobilized an entire generation and prompted organized student activism and protest across America that got huge media coverage and started America thinking and questioning. Then Kent State galvanized American opinion against a corrupt administration and their war. Then came the Pentagon Papers. That's when America realized they were being lied to and manipulated and started saying this is enough.

This, by the way, is what Charlie Rangel is trying to say regarding the draft.

America is losing confidence in this war and our goals. But at the same time Americans don't really seem to care so much. We watch the President joke about there being no WMDs, and we forget the Gulf of Tonkin. We watch the President restrict protesters to "free speech zones" and don't remember the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago or Kent State. And how sad is it that those students at Kent State gave their lives for their (and our) First Amendment rights and now we allow ourselves to be herded like sheep into those "free speech zones"? We see the photos from Abu Ghraib and hear about the American soldiers on trial for murdering Iraqi civilians but don't remember My Lai and CIA assassinations of government officials in Vietnam. A few of us might have heard about the Downing Street Memos, but we don't remember the Pentagon Papers. Except for the families directly affected, America doesn't even seem too concerned about the causalities. Some even say outrageous thinks like "it's only 3000" or "more people get murdered in the District of Columbia" or "they are volunteers and they knew what they were signing up for." Which is of course disgraceful. Regardless, the media has not done its job in the Iraq conflict, or people would be aware of all this and see the parallels.

It would be easy for us to declare victory in terms of our original justification (WMDs neutralized, Saddam overthrown, elections held, constitution written, mission accomplished) and let the Iraqis sort it out. It seems, however, that if and when we leave, Iran and Syria and who knows who else (maybe even Turkey?) will swoop in to pick over the bones unless the Iraqis get their act together and establish a capability to defend themselves, which they probably won't do as long as we are there and may not be able to do if we leave. So it's a Catch-22 and it doesn't appear there will be a winner, except maybe Iran. And America will have another unnecessary war and failed outcome to be ashamed of.

I think the biggest parallel is in the sale of the war. If you watch /The Fog of War/ you will see a lot of news reel/network news footage where McNamara & Co profess that the US is winning the war and making progress. This image was losing luster before Tet, but really came home to roost after it. The credibility gap simply widened too much.

I can't speak about any similarities or differences on the "we can't pull out because it will hand the enemy a victory".

The biggest difference has been the change in tactics of the opposition. In part, this task is made simpler because Democrats did not start the war (though many in the Senate voted for it), and we have a more clear division on foreign policy than we did in the '60s. Having "learned" lessons of Vietnam war opposition, and trying to avoid appearing unpatriotic in the face of stratospheric war & Bush approval ratings, Democrats consistently couple any war opposition or criticism with "support for the troops", pushes on Veteran's issues, etc. This has made war opposition much more palatable than during Vietnam war; note that approval of how things are going in Iraq was already net negative less than 18 months after the invasion, much fastor than Vietnam, where it took 3+ years.

Also the other large difference is that there's far, far, /far/ less social upheaval today than there was in the '60s. It's not even in the same ballpark.

I recently watched Born on the 4th of July and was struck by the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq.

I was drafted in December 1969 and was in Vietnam the following September. I admit I was only a REMF (regimental-level communications). But I saw some differences (unlike Rumsfeld and Bush, Johnson and Nixon didn't try to wage war on the cheap), and I saw even more similarities. I read descriptions in Stars and Stripes (usually quoting someone like Henry Kissinger) of what was happening IN OUR OWN AREA that bore not the faintest resemblence to what we saw. There were the goals of 'winning hearts and minds', but getting reports of evacuating civilians from villages that had been occupied by those families for generations (thank the 'strategic hamlet' program); families were uprooted from their ancestors, from their ancestral lands. Only two guys in our company spoke Vietnamese. We were trying to re-create America in Vietnam (for that, communism would first have to win, and then 30 years would have to pass). We did not understand the culture. We didn't understand the nature of the enemy. We didn't understand the kind of war we were involved in. So, yes, there are a lot of similarities. (I wonder how their drugs are.)

But we didn't have the outsourcing. Brown and Root was in Vietnam, but we hardly ever saw them, and I didn't learn their name until I got home. We didn't have the communications revolution. We got free postage on letters home, and satellite phone calls happened once in a blue moon. By the time I got there, there were a lot of guys like me, who had protested the war at college, and we were less suspect than I guess earlier incarnations would have been. We were doing our time (Everybody there knew the motto: 'Nothing is ours but time'.) We didn't have to worry about being extended or sent back for another tour (unless we volunteered). Everything revolved around your RTD.

There are lots of good books on both wars. Right now I'm working on Thomas Ricks' 'Fiasco'; for a parallel read, there's 'Fire in the Lake' by Frances Fitzgerald; for battlefield stories, try 'We Were Soldiers Once... and Young' and especially (now Senator) Jimmy Webb's 'Fields of Fire'.

I was born about the time Vietnam flared up. It got particularly lethal while I was a toddler. I saw newcasts occasionally and knew many Americans were dying, but it seemed a heroic death to my young mind. Tonka trucks meant everything, Gulf of Tonkin nothing.

You old farts can tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me a major difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that reserve units were treated as reserves during Vietnam, but as invaders in Iraq. Watching the American people passively allow National Guard troops to be used like enlisted men was one of the saddest of many sad episodes during the long, national malaise of Bush the Coward.

marat mentioned Brown & Root. The extent to which the Iraq invasion was run by mercenaries and war profiteers exceeds Vietnam or any other war in American history by a long shot. Never has so much been taken by so few for so long while so many slept.