Well, its about a year and a half since the Iraq conflict started and its time for some Marines to be heading back for a second tour.
Their outlook from their first tour versus what they're thinking about the second time they're heading over.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Nightline/W...e_040912-1.html
EDIT: An excellent New York Times examination of the comparables of the first 1000 dead Americans in Vietnam versus Iraq and the public mood.
In the fall of 1965, the death toll for American troops in Vietnam quietly passed 1,000. The escalation in the number of American forces was just underway, the antiwar movement was still in its infancy and the word "quagmire" was not yet in common usage.
At the time, the Gallup Poll found that just one in four Americans thought sending troops to southeast Asia had been a mistake. It would be three years before public opinion turned decisively, and permanently, against the war.
And:
For a variety of reasons, military experts and historians say that for now, support (for Iraq conflict) is likely to remain steady. The stark experience of Sept. 11 and the belief among many Americans that the fighting in Iraq is part of a global conflict against terrorism have made this war seem much more crucial to the nation's security than Vietnam, they say.
"The Vietcong didn't so much as toss a firecracker into the United States," said Maurice Isserman, a history professor at Hamilton College and co-author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960's."
"There was fear of nuclear war and Communist subversion and espionage," he said. "But the reality is, no American died in the continental United States during the cold war. There was nothing comparable in the 1960's to that image of the twin towers falling."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/weekinre...2dao.html?8hpib
Cowperson
