The historic reasons for choosing to sent troops to Vietnam are very different from the historic reasons we chose to invade and occupy Iraq. So was the means of getting the troops there. In Vietnam, we first sent "advisors". The troops got there through "escalation" of hostilities. We did not declare the leaders of Vietnam our enemies, we did not accuse them before the world community of creating stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and of giving those weapons to Buddhist terrorists, and we did not pre-emptively invade and occupy Vietnam.

The war in Vietnam was carried out as part of the US' geopolitical strategy to contain China and the spread of communism.

So how are the two wars the same?