Comparison of headlines between Vietnam and Iraq: Notice anything similar?

This weekend I spent an afternoon at the library comparing newspaper headlines from the Vietnam War era with contemporary reporting from Iraq.

While there are lots of people making comparisons between the two conflicts, I was curious to see if there were any similarities in the way they were explained and reported in the press.

The answer: Sadly, yes.

In fact, several times while doing this project, I had to check the dates to confirm I wasn't looking at the same war.

Below are four examples of news from Vietnam that are spookily similar to the news coming out of Iraq today. There were many others I could have posted; such as stories about soldiers being arrested for refusing to fight, or complaints from the puppet-governments that the US was meddling in their affairs. But I decided to stick to these because they seemed the most apropo.

Exhibit A: Military experts assure Americans that we're only going to be in that country for 18 months - then we'll start withdrawing. Honest.

Then: (1967)

Now: (2003)

Exhibit B: The US is very careful to not kill civilians.

Then: (1967)

Now: (2006)

U.S. Raid Kills Family North of Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3, 2006 -- U.S. pilots targeting a house where they believed insurgents had taken shelter killed a family of 12, Iraqi officials said Tuesday. The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping.

A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed Tuesday from the house outside the town of Baiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

A U.S. military spokesman said that American forces take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties and that they were working with Iraqi authorities to determine what happened at the farmhouse in Baiji. "We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Exhibit C: Senators warn that if we retreat, the bad guys will spread all over the region and then attack us on our own soil! Better to take the battle to them, then fight in the streets of the US.

Then: (1965)

Now: (2005)

Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire

"Well, the best place to get intelligence, quite honestly, is the breeding ground of these terrorists: Iraq, Afghanistan. And so that war in Iraq and Afghanistan is, as the President has pointed out a number of times, taking the war to them to find them before they can find us."

Exhibit D: The occupation isn't working and we're losing control of the situation - so the President decides to throw more troops at the problem. The press will call it an escalation a surge.

Then: (1968)

Now: (2006)

Bush's Speech committing to a surge in troops

This is a strong commitment. But for it to succeed, our commanders say the Iraqis will need our help. So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

Read counterpoint here.

Tags: Iraq - Vietnam - Newspaper clippings - Pointing out the obvious - Historical research

Disclaimer: All the above newspaper clips needed some changes in layout with Photoshop to fit on this page. In some cases I removed paragraphs.

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