Soldiers Lost in Iraq Top Those Lost in First Four Years in Vietnam

Expert on the '60s Reflects on Similarities and Differences "The nearly 2,000 Americans killed in combat (1,998 on October 24, 2005) in Iraq since 2003 are more than were lost in Vietnam combat in the first four years of U.S. combat (1961-1965, when just over 1800 died). This total is more than were lost in the last two years of combat (1971-1972, when just over 1600 died)," recounts Maurice Isserman, co-author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s." "Today public opinion polls show that the percentage of Americans who believe that it was a mistake for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq is roughly comparable to the number of Americans who believed it was a mistake for the U.S. to go to war in Vietnam in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive in 1968. The principal difference between the anti-war opposition of 2005, and that of 1968, is that in the Vietnam war a significant group of Democratic Party leaders - starting with Senators Morse and Gruening in 1964 and eventually including such figures as Senators Fulbright, McCarthy, Kennedy (Robert and Ted), and McGovern - joined the opposition to the war. This lent legitimacy and influence to the opposition. Today, the Democratic party, with a few brave exceptions, mostly in the House of Representatives, is supportive of or silent about the war," observes Isserman. Maurice Isserman, Hamilton College Professor of History, is co-author of "America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s" (Oxford University Press, 1999, rev. ed., 2004). Isserman is an expert on 20th-century U.S. history and is widely acknowledged as one of the preeminent historians of the events that lead to and defined the '60s. He is also the author of "If I Had a Hammer"¦The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left."