Iraq And The Lessons Of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past

Description

Leading scholars of Vietnam examine the links between the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq - and the obsession of US foreign policy makers with the Vietnam Syndrome. Contributors look at the unlearned lessons of Vietnam and consider how the US has again found itself in the midst of an ill-advised war without any chance of a quick victory with sweeping regime change.

Lloyd C. Gardner is professor emeritus of history at Rutgers University. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including The Long Road to Baghdad, Three Kings, The Road to Tahrir Square, and Killing Machine, and a co-editor, with Marilyn B. Young, of The New American Empire and Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam, all published by The New Press. He lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Marilyn B. Young is a professor of history at New York University. She is a co-editor (with Lloyd C. Gardner) of The New American Empire: A 21st Century Teach-In on U.S. Foreign Policy and Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past and (with Yuki Tanaka) of Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History, all published by The New Press. She lives in New York City.

"Iraq is not Vietnam, the makers of war tell us, hoping we will forget. The writers in this volume insist that we remember, and in these thoughtful, sobering essays they explain why. It is history at its best, meaning, at its most useful." -Howard Zinn, author of Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal and A People's History of the United States "Vietnam and Iraq are the main signposts that militarism and imperialism are out of control and undermining the American republic. In both cases planners deliberately created threats out of whole cloth to justify going to war. This book tells us the correct lessons of Vietnam. There is a great deal of wisdom in these ominous essays. " -Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic