The first difference separating the two conflicts also sets the Iraq invasion in 2003 apart from all other large-scale military actions taken by the U

The first difference separating the two conflicts also sets the Iraq invasion in 2003 apart from all other large-scale military actions taken by the U.S. This was that there was no policy process leading to the decision to launch the invasion into Iraq. There was never a meeting of policymakers or an agenda or even an options paper on the subject. The national security bureaucracy had no opportunity to add their two-cents on the decision, apart from being called upon to help convince the public. If there was any relevant source of expertise both inside and outside the government, it was specifically shunned. This is in complete contrast to the decision-making process that led to the Vietnam War. Even though the Vietnam War decision-making ultimately became increasingly closed with a focus on president Lyndon B Johnson and his Tuesday lunch group, the initial choices taken in 1964 and 1965 to start U.S air and ground wars in Vietnam were the product of a wide-ranging policy process. The bureaucracy of the time was engaged, and the policy alternatives, proposed by ‘doves’ in the governing party like Democrat Mike Mansfield, were discussed and fully examined. Thus, however mistaken the decisions may have been, they cannot be attributed to any shortcuts in the decision-making processes as LBJ was known for having run a Cabinet government where the Cabinet were collectively seen as responsible for governance. This allowed President Johnson to give both sides a fair hearing in order to create a sense of cohesion.
The second difference that sets apart the Iraq War from the Vietnam War was that it was a war of aggression by the U.S. It had been the Americans first major offensive they had started in over a century. Prior to this Iraq invasion, the U.S military ventures of the 20th century were either a minor venture such as the one in Grenada in 1983 or, in the case of major wars, a reply to the use of force by someone else. The U.S involvement in South East Asia is an example of the latter. It was a response to the insurgency by North Vietnam to seize South Vietnam. Even Operation desert storm in 1991 was a direct response to the aggression by Iraq invading its neighbour Kuwait. When that aggression was reversed by expelling the Iraqis from Kuwait, the U.S had achieved its aim. Thus, when Fulbright scholars like Heather Marie Stur compare the two conflicts involving Iraq in their articles for newspapers like The National Interest, they are wrong. These conflicts cannot be regarded as similar since the U.S aggression is a key distinguishing factor that establishes the context for each conflict.
The third difference is related to the first. The Iraq War of 2003 was the plan of a small gang of war-seekers – what Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson has called a ‘cabal’ who could get an inexperienced president in foreign policy to go along with their scheme, selling it to the president as achieving his political objectives. These neo-conservatives used the post 9-11 political situation to conjure up supposed alliances with the Axis of Evil and terrorists in the ‘war on terror’ speech. This mustered up enough jingoism to launch a war. But the base for starting the neo-conservative plan was always narrow. The Vietnam War, in contrast, was a U.S intervention based on a widely held conventional wisdom concerning the rising tide of a monolithic communist movement. The conventions of Containment, The Domino Theory, and the need to uphold American credibility gathered a large base of support for an interventionist foreign policy which sucked the U.S into the quagmire which was the Vietnam War. At the time of the intervention, there was barely any opposition, if there was any it was narrow. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allowed the use of military force in Vietnam passed with only two votes against it from senators Way Morse and Ernest Gruening. There was no opposition in the house of representatives. Even prominent journalists like Neil Sheehan would only later identify the fallacies and faults with the intervention in Vietnam. Thus, the conventional wisdom pervaded most of the public and the media.