Yes, the Iran War Really Is Similar to Vietnam

How Similar Is the Iran War to Vietnam?

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Analysis:

Yes, the Iran War Really Is Similar to Vietnam

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Analysis

Yes, the Iran War Really Is Similar to Vietnam

Trump’s war is “The Best and the Brightest”—but without the best and the brightest.

!Howard French

*Howard French*

*Howard W. French*

By **Howard W. French**, a columnist at *Foreign Policy*.

!Trump speaks at a podium; Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth stand behind him.

*Trump speaks at a podium; Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth stand behind him.*

U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the nation alongside Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, seen in the White House in Washington on June 21, 2025. Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

*
*

August 14, 2026, 12:25 PM

Iran War

Analysis and news.

One of the sturdiest conventions about human affairs is the notion that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This sage original formulation comes from the Spanish-born American philosopher and poet George Santayana, but close variations abound, correctly or wrongly attributed to a wide variety of thinkers and politicians, from Edmund Burke to Winston Churchill.

One of the sturdiest conventions about human affairs is the notion that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This sage original formulation comes from the Spanish-born American philosopher and poet George Santayana, but close variations abound, correctly or wrongly attributed to a wide variety of thinkers and politicians, from Edmund Burke to Winston Churchill.

Last week, I reread a modern classic by the late journalist David Halberstam, *The Best and the Brightest*. Originally published in 1972, Halberstam’s account of the arrogant way the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson led the United States into a senseless and unwinnable conflict in Vietnam offers a series of potent reminders of the wisdom of Santayana’s insight at a moment when Washington has once again stumbled into war.

Much has changed about the United States and the world since the Vietnam War, which was a human tragedy and a profound debacle from the perspective of U.S. power. But many of the basics of the cognitive blindness that Washington displayed in pursuing that conflict are on exhibit in the Iran war today. They have even deepened and become more glaring.

***The Best and the Brightest***, David Halberstam, Ballantine Books, 720 pp., $20, October 1993 (first ed. 1972), paperback

One might start with Halberstam’s title, which at first glance may appear to be an endorsement of the intellectual brilliance that Kennedy assembled around him and relied upon for foreign-policy advice. The title is, in fact, meant to be ironic. Kennedy’s advisors, many of whom were retained by Johnson, were indeed avatars of almost absurd excellence, measured by their achievements prior to entering the president’s inner circle.

McGeorge Bundy, to take one, had graduated at the top of his class at the elite boarding school Groton, where he once feigned to “read” an assignment out loud that he had not bothered to write, extemporaneously delivering his composed thoughts so coherently that his professor and fellow students were left stunned. After racking up numerous distinctions at Yale and Harvard, Bundy was named dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the age of 34, when most academics are struggling to obtain tenure. He eventually served as Kennedy’s, and later Johnson’s, national security advisor.

Robert McNamara, a former head of Ford Motor Company who served under both presidents as secretary of defense, was another of the brilliant technocrats, men who believed fervently in the ability of applied reason, intelligence, and learning—sheer brain power, in other words—to overcome all but the rarest of problems. One of McNamara’s reputed superpowers was his sophistication with data, coupled with a legendary memory.

As Halberstam writes, “Once, sitting at CINCPAC \[a military presentation] for eight hours watching hundreds and thousands of slides flashed across the screen showing what was in the pipeline to Vietnam and what was already there, he finally said, after seven hours, ‘Stop the projector. This slide, number 869, contradicts slide 11.’ Everyone was impressed, and many a little frightened.”

The current U.S. president, Donald Trump, is fond of pointing out that the present war and the Vietnam conflict bear little comparison because, despite his initial boast that the Iran campaign would be concluded in a matter of weeks, it remains incomparably shorter than the latter. It is hard, nonetheless, for anyone who reads Halberstam today to come away less than impressed by how much the two wars already share with each other.

Each was pursued with ill-defined and frequently shifting goals. Each proceeded on the basis of designs drawn up by ideologically driven people bereft of expertise in the country that Washington had decided to go to war against. The planning of each was conducted largely in secret, with little public airing of strategy or aims, let alone consultation with Congress or with allies. Each gave almost no room for dissenting voices to be heard. Each placed unshakeable faith in the ability of superior U.S. technology and overwhelming firepower to ensure victory. Neither White House thought clearly about what victory would look like, or how to know when and how to get out. And as the respective tragedies unfolded, each fell under the spell of its own rhetoric. “Being verbal seemed to be an end in itself,” Halberstam wrote in an updated foreword for the 1993 edition of his classic.

Th