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Crap.
On Iraq:
Comparing Iraq to Vietnam works fairly well, but it is more distant from Korea.
The beginning of the Korean war did go fairly well for the USA and the UN it dragged in as scantily clad cover for the enforcement of Trumans containment doctrine. However, all momentum was lost with the entrance of the Chinese, and the only real final achievement was to repulse the North Korean offensive back to the previous border. Yes, Kim Il Sung did start the war after Sec. of State Dean Rusk did not include South Korea in the countries covered under the USA's containment and nuclear umbrella, but most historians agree that this is simply an excuse for an invasion that Kim had wanted to do for a while. Korea shares some similarities in that it did have a large amount of guerilla warfare and lack of boundaries. However, the main difference lies in the outside help offered by the Chinese, which would be comparable to Iran mounting a counteroffensive to the US invasion once we had occupied the country.
The Iraq War is similar to the Vietnam war because of the nature of the war. The guerilla style employed by the insurgents in Iraq is very similar to the Vietcong and Vietminh in that they both effectively used civilian populations for help and cover and they fight without any sort of front, with pockets of resistance that constantly change. With Iraq, the US was the aggressor, and this is probably the case with the Gulf of Tonkin (from what I have read, it is very probable that some of the military actions reported by the US Navy could have been fabricated to give the US a reason to jump into war, but I am not clear on this point. A military official famously stated,"For all I know, we were shooting at whales out there").
In both cases, the country that was attacked was of dubious merit in a geopolitical sense, and in both cases the US administrations have failed to recognise that the schisms in the ideology that is being fought. In Vietnam, we failed to realize that Ho Chi Minh was primarily a nationalist, and could have been played against China and the Soviet Union. In invading Iraq, we toppled the ruling Sunni minority, which was in conflict with the ruling Shiite government in Iran. The democracy we introduced in Iraq allowed the Shittes to gain control, and now Iran has lost its focus on regional conflict and now has standoffs with the US.
From a foreign policy standpoint, Bush has had a very unilateral and Reaganesque stand the entire time. His rhetoric of "with us or against us" sets up a very black and white picture. This is mirrored in the "war on terror." Bush view terrorism as a monolithic organization that is out to get the United States and all it stands for. This is identical to Reagans view of communism during the 1980s. However, this attitude was proven incorrect with the opening of China by Nixon in 1972, which allowed the US to play the Chinese against the Russians, and add allies to our side. While the eventual fall of the USSR was primarily caused by economics (massive military spending to keep up with Reagan which overstrained the already weak economy), this use of other factions gave the USA a foothold in communism. This same mistake has been repeated with "terrorism." The USA has not reached out to gain allies because of our unilateral foreign policy, and we have failed to exploit the factions that lie between terrorist groups. An example lies in playing the Shea against the Sunnis (both branches of Islam), which has already been mentioned.
Personally, I view the occupation of Iraq will end much like the defeat of the French in Vietnam at Dienbienphu in 1955. While I feel immense compassion for the people of Iraq, I do believe that the eventual result of our invasion will not be democracy, but warring factions. Honestly, it seems that the sooner we pull out and let the Iraqis settle this for themselves, the sooner some sort of resolution to this mess will come. Saddam was a dictator,and acted as such. However, the majority of Iraqis were better off in terms of less violence and everyday luxuries such as running water and 24 hour electricity, both of which are not available to many ollowing our takeover, but were previously there under Saddam. The real lesson to be learned here is that you should not fuck with geopolitics if you do not have a very significant reason, and that the invasion of Iraq will probably be the biggest mistake that Bush has made.
I could talk about other mistakes such as NCLB, the destruction of natural resources and the government departments that oversee them, the horrible economic policies, but I really think I have typed enough.
