The Struggle for the Soul of America: Is the Iran War Becoming Trump’s Vietnam Quagmire?

The Making of a Quamire by Pulitzer Prize winning author David Halberstam tells how the United States created a major foreign policy disaster for itself in Vietnam in the 1960s.[1] The book recounts the blunders and misconceptions of American military and political leaders which resulted in the prolonged Vietnam War that the United States eventually lost after approximately $1 trillion spent in today’s dollars, two decades of fighting and over 58,000 American fatalities.[2]

In February 1965, President Lyndon Johnson “authorized Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing of North Vietnam.”[3] Similarly, in February 2026, President Trump unleashed Operation Epic Fury, a very extensive air attack on Iran.[4] Five months after Rolling Thunder began pummeling North Vietnam, Johnson made a pivotal decision to significantly escalate US involvement in the Vietnam War. Distorted evidence regarding American ships being attacked in the Tonkin Gulf,[5] withholding important information from the public and the Congress about the state of the war, and false projections propelled our nation into full-scale warfare in Vietnam for another eight years.[6]

Now, over sixty years later, Trump also “has lied about the reasons for the war and about its progress…”[7] Having misled the American people, he faces the same perilous choice Johnson did of whether to greatly escalate his war against Iran. On the one hand, Trump claims “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”[8] On the other hand, the president is sending several thousand “new U.S. ground forces near the region and continuing to strike Iranian targets.” At the same time, Trump is also threatening to obliterate Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz.[9]

Then, last Monday, Trump postponed strikes against Iran’s power plants for five days claiming that “very strong talks” to end the war were occurring. But a top Iranian official quickly denied such talks were being held.[10] That raised the distinct possibility that Trump is just buying time to get the U.S.’s next offensive, which would most likely include ground troops, ready to strike. Once again, the great con artist is trying to pull one over on the American people. By now, however, a strong majority of Americans get Trump’s self-serving doublespeak and don’t trust anything he says.

If Trump does choose to go down the road of increasing American attacks on Iran, we are likely to see a continuing military buildup similar to that which occurred during the Vietnam War. With no clear objectives or end game in sight, the president could very well be thrusting our nation into an Iranian quagmire for who knows how long. And for what? Not being a student of history, Trump fails to recognize he is taking the country down the same dead-end road that left the Taliban running Afghanistan after 20 years of our fighting to remove them from power.[11] Believing he’s invincible, Trump overlooks the fact that the Iraq War proved to be a failed, costly endeavor for the United States as well[12]

With a protracted war in Iran, the best Trump could hope for is an agreement that would, in all probability, be no better than the one Obama made with Iran in 2015.[13] Being an extreme narcissist who always thinks his way is best, Trump tore up Obama’s accord after he became president. Our con artist-in-chief has since tried to make Americans believe that he would make a deal with Iran that was better than Obama’s. And even if he did — the chances of that being extremely slim – would it be worth the hundreds of billions of dollars and the loss of thousands of lives such an outcome would require? Not to mention all the critical domestic needs our America First president would have to ignore in the process.

Clearly, the GOP does not have the chutzpah to deter Trump from this Vietnam-like tragedy in the making. Nor do the minority Democrats. But the American people can stop him. We must do everything in our power to prevent Trump from taking our country over this foreseeable cliff.

Call or write your Congresspeople. Write letters to the editor. Join the No Kings protest on March 28^th. Get involved in the mid-term elections. Make your voice heard. The stakes are too high to sit this one out.

Bruce Berlin, JD

A retired, public sector ethics attorney, Berlin is the author of Breaking Big Money’s Grip on America (See breakingbigmoneysgrip.com.), and his new memoir, From Camden to Kathmandu. (See bruceberlinauthor.com) He is the founder of New Mexicans for Money Out of Politics, a former U.S. Institute of Peace fellow, and the founder and former executive director of The Trinity Forum for International Security and Conflict Resolution. He can be reached at bruceberlin45@gmail.com. Subscribe to this blog at https://breakingbigmoneysgrip.com/my-blog-3/

[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_a_Quagmire.html?id=H77nHlw3qs8C

[2] https://www.warcosts.org/conflicts/vietnam-war

[3] https://millercenter.org/president/lbjohnson/foreign-affairs

[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/peace-through-strength-president-trump-launches-operation-epic-fury-to-crush-iranian-regime-end-nuclear-threat/

[5] https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2008/february/truth-about-tonkin

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/29/opinion/lying-about-vietnam.html

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/opinion/iran-war-trump-lying.html#:~:text=From%20his%20first%20announcement%20of,crimes%20can%20become%20more%20common.

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/us/politics/trump-iran-offramp.html

[9] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/22/nx-s1-5756308/trump-threatens-obliterate-irans-power-plants-iran-strikes-2-israeli-cities

[10] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/23/world/iran-war-oil-trump

[11] https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5

[12] https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/shock-and-awe-life-in-iraq-twenty-years-after-the-us-led-invasion/#:~:text=ultimately%20fruitless%20enterprise.-,The%20invasion%20of%20Iraq%20is%20widely%20recognized%20as%20a%20costly,veterans%2C%20have%20been%20widely%20discussed.