Do any Veterans see any similarities between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War?

Biggest similarity is DC has no clue what a war is or how it gets properly fought. The big churn now in politics is all the candidates are going student body left on "knowing now would you still invade". I was against it back the for the same reason I'm against it now. We have no strategy to win, no strategy to decisively get the region to a point where an exit strategy would work, and no strategy to make sure the region moves positively forward.

We have no strategy to make the Arab countries in the region responsible for their own messes. There's other strategies missing like energy independence, economy growth, etc.

The only thing different is the political types and general public are more appreciative of the military coming home. Remember McNamera and the Wiz Kids? Yogi had it right; Deja Vu all over again.

I find that there are some definite similarities, however, I feel that Iraq could have been won from the get go or at least been less of a problem had we done things differently. By differently I mean we should have planned for the eventual military defeat of Iraq and had something in place for the aftermath yet we didn't seem to. From everything I've read what happened after we beat Saddam's military is that the troops weren't given any orders or authority to take control and could only just sit by and watch looters tear up the country's infrastructure. Had we established some sort of government, like declaring the General in charge of the campaign military governor and established martial law things would have been a lot different. The infrastructure would have been still intact and you would have had a lot less unrest because everything was broken, this would have allowed many businesses to remain open, basic services to remain up and running, and less for people to complain about.

The other big mistake made was the sacking of the entire Iraqi military, that was stupid and probably a direct contributor to the insurrection that eventually happened. What they should have done was to disarm the military and restricted them to their bases/barracks but kept on the roles and paid them while going through and seeing who was a die-hard Baathist and who wasn't. You then promote people to fill the holes left by the Baathists that get arrested or fired and you'll have a whole bunch of the Iraqi military thankful to the US for their new promotions. You'd also have a military force that you wouldn't have to rebuild and retrain from the ground up, you'd still have experienced personnel who could then be trained up to a higher standard.

I see lots of the same on both and talking with fellow vets at the VFW we share lots of the same things

I think that beyond the obvious glaring similarities, there are two very important, yet subtle ones that we need to be aware of. In none of the following do I attempt to editorialize or arm-chair general these events.

1: NCA and JCS ignorance of second and third order effects. This was illustrated in the Vietnam era by our offensive actions against VC and Main Force units in Laos and Cambodia. By conducting offensive operations across those borders, we gave impetus to the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge insurgencies. Indirectly setting the stage for a collusion/confrontation between those communist insurgencies and the politburo of Hanoi. (see the Cambodian Civil War 75-79)
In our time, we can point to the destabilization of the Sunni awaking, forcibly enfranchising even a benign proto-insurgency begins a slow slide towards destablization of a central governement, and we can all agree that the Iraqi central government was never very strong to begin with.

2: Lack of honest assessments of our allies and Host Nation partners. The South Vietnamese in late 1955 were unprepared to assume logistical responsibility for their army. The war in Indochina makes for a long story, but two facts stand out. In 1965, the US had to go in on the ground to prevant a complete RVNAF defeat. It could not conceivably do so without the helicopter, jetstrike, artillery, communications and logistics support provided by U.S. forces. In addition it is apparent that in almost all the programs that were cited as successful during the Vietnamization period, American units were actively involved, providing labor and material. The Vietnamese were merely recipients of a service. By providing services to the Vietnamese, the American command failed to involve the Vietnamese actively and therefore failed to teach them how to perform the work themselves or convince them of tie program's value. American units did the work while the Vietnamese sat idly by.
In our time, I could change dates and the word Vietnam to Iraq, but that would be insulting to my readers.

In all the reading I've done either for pleasure, research for my degree, and research for my duties on deployment, these two that I've mentioned seem to be the crux of any argument that we're always having to relearn the lessons of the last war for our current one.