Colonel Horn say to Gates (Clooney) who is disillusioned with 1991 Gulf War saying:
Just tell me what we did here, Ron?
Horn: You want to occupy Iraq and do Vietnam again, is that what you want?
Then four years after the movie (1999) a US led coalition defeated then occupied Iraq officially for nearly 9 years with a lot of similarities of the Vietnam War.
If you are not willing to give up everything, you have already lost
Except for invading and occupying can you really say there are any fundamental similarities between the two? I mean the most obvious difference is that Vietnam was lost and the Communist government flourished not so in Iraq. Saddam was captured and tried by an Iraqi court.
I've had a lot of sobering thoughts in my time Del Boy, it's them that started me drinking!
And thus after Saddam's execution there was a puppet government installed that didn't even have the ability to secure the new post Saddam Iraq.
It left a power vacuum which is now being filled by ISIS which have actually stolen a lot of US military hardware that the US gave the Iraqis all the way up to tanks and aircraft. They won't fly any of those aircraft because the US would blow them out of the sky as soon as they were to take off!
If you are not willing to give up everything, you have already lost
Another large similarly is the rise of extremely repressive groups in neighboring countries. Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and ISIS in Syria. Of course there are differences given the vastly different geopolitical situations of the time.
shareAs soon as you as a Dictator is removed from power like many of the North African nations in the 2011 Arab Spring such as Tunisia, Algeria, more importantly the removal of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and also the removal and death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has left a large hole or power vacuum that is getting filled by Terrorist organisations like Islamic State!
In the 1991 Gulf War President Bush decided not to fight all the way to Baghdad and overthrow Saddam who is a mass murderer and used Chemical weapons on his people (the Kurds). He was just happy with the liberation of Kuwait, destruction of Iraqi Air Assets and SEAD missions, Economic Sanctions and UN Weapon Inspectors.
This would have been the perfect time to invade and dispose of Saddam (which the Iraqi people wanted) and Operation Desert Storm had literally over 540,000 US Troops alone not including US Navy Carrier Battle Groups and US Air Force Fighters, Bombers and Attack aircraft based in Saudi Arabia or other Coalition Assets.
Just like it says in the movie President George H. W. Bush told the Iraqi people such as the Kurds in the North and the *beep* in the south to uprise and have the support of the US led coalition but they were left with their dick in theirs hands and ultimately into Saddam's infamous torture chambers!
In the 2003 Iraq Invasion only 192,000 US Troops were used as well as 45,000 from the UK and 2,000 from Australia. In the end George W Bush finished what his Daddy started costing 4,491 US lives, a trillion dollars and an 8 year official war of occupation and starting an insurgency!
If you are not willing to give up everything, you have already lost