War. What I$ it good for? 

The comparison between Vietnam and Iraq isn't perfect, but there are definitely similarities.  For starters, the wars started on questionable intelligence.  The Gulf on Tonkin was doubtful to begin with, but some recent confessions of high level players makes us wonder if it was always a completely fabricated myth.  Likewise, we know now that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.  Its doubtful he had made any meaningful progress in his nuclear weapons program in over fifteen years and its doubtful he had any stockpiles of biological or chemical ones, either.  Terrorism?  Well, we know Saddam had some diplomatic relations with Osama, but there's no sign of financial or structural assistance.  Even if you agree that the case for war against Iraq is a strong one, you would have to believe there's a similarly strong case for Saudi Arabia or Syria or especially Iran.

The similiarities extend to the type of fighting America experienced in these wars.  Unlike World War II, where we had great success fighting a large-scale conventional war, the wars in Iraq and Vietnam have been guerrilla insurgencies, populist uprisings against the United States as a foreign aggressor.  Regardless of the true presidential intentions, this is how the Pentagon's incursions have been viewed by the native populations of the invaded nation.  Rather than battling with heavy vehicles and standard troop assaults, these battles are fought over infrastructure, commerce, and any military targets of opportunity.  Booby traps replace squads and the weapons come in from other countries, fueling an underground, black market economy supporting the anti-American military force.

 Its called a 'battle for the hearts and minds' and that's exactly what it is.  Not only does America attempt to convert people to its corporate-socialist religion, it attempts to do so by doing physical violence to the most patriotic of the invaded nation's citizens.  On the homefront, the American presidents, Bush and LBJ, fought hard as well to get American hearts and minds behind the war.  Both presidents tried, but found very little popularity for such an obvious farce.

Even more damaging to the American claims of moral superiority in the face of pre-emptive war is the fact that both of these presidents attacked ex-European colonies.  Vietnam was originally a French colony, but unfortunately we did not learn from the French experience with guerrilla warfare - maybe we just believed we would succeed where the French failed, maybe the generals thought they had found the elusive solution to defeat a popular insurgency.  Iraq was a British colony following World War I, but history did not repeat itself there.  In the 1920s, the Iraqi people were more likely to believe the story of liberation after having spent years under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.  In 2004 when we prepared for attack, they were less likely to believe it since they had been free for fifty years already!