War can repeat itself

Even though the Vietnam War was decades ago, its affect on the United States hasn't gone away. We still remember all the pain and struggle the war brought. The Vietnam War was very controversial, and is the only war we have ever lost as a nation thus far. There was so much drama and debate over the war, it caused riots and protests all over the nation. After so much trauma, you would think the United States would avoid finding itself amidst anything like it again, but as the saying goes, history always repeats itself. In this case, history seems to be repeating itself with the war we are experiencing today in Iraq. Many people believe we should have never gone overseas to fight. We have had troops there for some time now, and we have not found any weapons of mass destruction. The main reason we went to war was to find and destroy any weapons. Now that we realize there aren't any, the whole war is beginning to seem even more pointless for the already disproving citizens. The same went for Vietnam in that after so many young men lost their lives, and so much national energy was put in, we lost the war. We came out of it feeling very much unsuccessful.

I came across an article in the New York Times that compared the two wars. It was an article from 2007 that summarized Senator Ted Kennedy's speech at the National Press Club. Even though this article is a couple years old, the ideas still remain the same, and we still have soldiers in Iraq. One of the opening lines was what really caught my eye. Kennedy said that the Iraq War was "George Bush's Vietnam." After years in war, Bush made the decision to send addtional tens of thousands of soldiers to Iraq. Kennedy went on to argue that the majority were against the war, and even more were against sending more troops. Just the same, the majority of people today are still against sending more troops, and continuing a war. Kennedy then states that people should have greater voices in terms of this matter. The citizens should aid in the decisions concerning war and additional troops. During the Vietnam War, people were trying to find a say. In this speech, Kennedy tried to offer an outlet for citizen's voices.