Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam Or, How Not to Learn from the Past

Essays by Christian G. Appy, Andrew J. Bacevich, John Prados, and others offer “history at its best, meaning, at its most useful.” ―Howard Zinn
 
From the launch of the “Shock and Awe” invasion in March 2003 through President George W. Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” two months later, the war in Iraq was meant to demonstrate definitively that the United States had learned the lessons of Vietnam. This new book makes clear that something closer to the opposite is true―that US foreign policy makers have learned little from the past, even as they have been obsessed with the “Vietnam Syndrome.”
 
Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam brings together the country’s leading historians of the Vietnam experience. Examining the profound changes that have occurred in the country and the military since the Vietnam War, this book assembles a distinguished group to consider how America found itself once again in the midst of a quagmire―and the continuing debate about the purpose and exercise of American power.
 
Also includes contributions from: Alex Danchev * David Elliott * Elizabeth L. Hillman * Gabriel Kolko * Walter LaFeber * Wilfried Mausbach * Alfred W. McCoy * Gareth Porter
 
“Essential.” ―Bill Moyers

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 (1937–2017) was a professor of history at New York University. She was 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.