Vietnam and Iraq: is there a comparison and, if so, what is it?

Keith Taylor, Vietnamese Cultural Studies, Cornell University

For more than a year, academics and politicians have debated the plausibility of comparing US policy in Vietnam and in Iraq. I offer my views on this debate in a historical context and in relation to thoughts arising from my own experiences in the Vietnam War, and memories of it, and to meditations upon what if any meaning there is today in observing the 11/11 Veterans' Day.

K. W. Taylor graduated from George Washington University in 1968, served in the US Army 1968-71 (in Vietnam 1970-71), and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1976 (Sino-Vietnamese History). He taught in Tokyo, Japan, from 1976 to 1979, at the National University of Singapore from 1981 to 1987, at Hope College 1987-89, and has been at Cornell University since 1989. Beginning in 1986, he has frequently gone to Vietnam for research, and he lived in Hanoi for two years 1992-94. He has published on Vietnamese history and literature and has taught Southeast Asian history, East Asian history, historiography, Vietnamese history, Vietnamese literature, classical Vietnamese, the US-Vietnam War, and translation studies.

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