A GREAT editorial in Opinion Journal about whether Iraq is turning into the next Vietnam:

The answer, sadly for the people of Vietnam, is: Fat chance. For all Iraq's many troubles, the Vietnamese should be so lucky as to have the opportunities now before the Iraqis. Vietnam is one place where the great American superpower is entirely unlikely to come clamoring for a rematch in the cause of freedom. For most of the Western world, Vietnam lives on not as a real country inhabited today by 80 million real people, but simply as a sort of eternal shorthand for lost causes, a TV talk show sound bite: "Pick-yer-debacle: The next Vietnam?"

...The fall of Saigon in 1975 was followed by brutal moves to collectivize the south. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly relocated, tens of thousands sent to labor camps. Terror and hunger produced an exodus in which ultimately more than 1.5 million people fled Vietnam--many by boat, braving pirates and sharks in the South China Sea.

...Out of 192 countries surveyed earlier this year by New York-based Freedom House, Vietnam ranked among the 16 most repressive regimes.

...Compare this with today's Iraq, where, despite the complaints, there has been no stampede for the exits. People are now free to speak as they please, worship as they choose, print independent newspapers, read them, and raise their voices in the debate over the framing of a new constitution.

In the race to "frame" Vietnam as the pinnacle failure of Right Wing foreign policy, MANY historical facts about Vietnam are conveniently forgetten.  This article focuses on the gruesome aftermath of US withdrawal - a bodycount that student protestors of the day conveniently chose to ignore in their pot-themed victory parties.

In casual conversations out here, I find folks are often taken aback by a couple of points that I make about the causus belli of the Vietnam war:

• South Vietnam was an independent, slightly democratic country.  It was the victim of a "foreign funded" insurgency and later invasion (the ratio of "invader" NVA's vs. "insurgent" VC's doing the fighting is hotly debated but let's just say that more NVA found themselves in the South rather than the North; the limiting factor on NVA incursions was logistics, not intentions).

  The most common reaction I get from others?  "I thought the US invaded..." -- Freud would have a field day analyzing the psychology behind this belief.  I've got a theory or two about it myself.

• South Vietnam ASKED for help from the other democracies of the world. The US had a prior treaty obligations to render military assistance  - particularly via SEATO (the South East Asian Treaty Organization - a mutual defense pact modelled on NATO in Europe).   As a result of SEATO, Australian and NZ troops were alongside us fighting in Vietnam ... and taking casualties.
• The vast majority of US casualties (north of 70%) were volunteer enlistees - not poor, black draftees
• JFK, for all his exalted status, had a big hand in the build up of the war.   LBJ and later Nixon took most of the fall.   Nixon, the Republican, campaigned and won on a "withdraw troops from Vietnam" platform.   (he admittedly didn't quite execute on this and his record was overshadowed by Watergate)
• Many "Right Wing" advisers, in their heart of hearts, saw a future for South Vietnam like South Korea -- a laboratory of democracy + capitalism right next to a communist regime sharing identical cultural/ethnic petri dishes.  South Korea had just been reborn a few years earlier using this model;  West Germany was firmly pulling ahead of the East and even Taiwan was on track to dramatically outperforming its communist big brother.

Americans like James Webb thought we were fighting for Freedom in a Tocquevillian sense for the South Vietnamese.   The VC / NVA believed they were fighting for their own brand of Freedom as well -- from us and their own entrenched elites -- communist ideology was often just a convenient vehicle.  Many were simply crass opportunists who saw the opportunity to get ahead in a new land grab.  The S. Vietnamese government had no shortage of elitist kleptocrats - many of whom only come out as the 'better' if you compared them to the kleptos in the North.  

I'm not revising history or making a giant "what if" calculation.  Nor, for that matter, am I necessarily saying that I think we should have stayed longer and done more in Vietnam. At the very least, even if further / longer involvement in South Vietnam was a Good Thing, I'm forced to acknowledge that there are many Good Things which aren't Feasible for one reason or another.  In the Real World, feasibility overrules many well intentioned plans and feasibility issues abounded in Vietnam (let's start with the war plan...).

HOWEVER, too many people are simplistic with their conclusions about Vietnam.  The mythology that it was a 100% bad idea to simply be there distorted the debate then and still has a powerful, lingering effect today - almost 25 years later.  The tactics & strategy might be debatable but, just as now, can we at least acknowledge that some of the intentions were not?  Not every parallel with Nam has a bad ending.