glenn1
Lifer
- Sep 6, 2000
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I'd like to at least think that the people involved in getting us into Vietnam truly believed in the Domino Effect, as opposed to Iraq II where everyone important knew full well that they were misleading the public into war.
in terms of geopolitical impact, Vietnam seems pretty stable and self-contained. Iraq seems to have had the most impact by destabilizing the entire region and undermining US foreign policy (though Korea would leap to the forefront if they ever launched a nuke or something)
I'd like to think it also, but admit it's hard to do so in hindsight. You could cite dozens of similar instances in U.S. history where we got involved in things where we had no real interests or logical reason for doing so (hello Nicaraguan Contras, Grenada, Dominican Republic, etc etc etc etc). But thankfully they never spun out of control the way that Vietnam did.
We may need to just disagree on Iraq. The idea that Iraq had WMD was widely accepted by nearly every government and politician of the time and substantiated by prior poison gas attacks on the Kurds. There was a standing U.S. law in effect seeking regime change in Iraq and several UN resolutions supporting action. So you can certainly say the supporting justification for Iraq was more than Vietnam, but I understand your position.