[Colonol Dekker]

Ten years today since war began according to the news. Makes you think, how long was world war two? Vietnam?

[NGTM-1R]

Vietnam?

Vietnam, depending on how you measure it, lasted from slightly under eighteen to slightly longer than twenty-five years.

[headdie]

I suppose the biggest difference between Iraq/Afganistan and WWII/Vietnam is the intensity of the conflicts, the recent conflicts have been low level wars with periods of high intensity with a steady but small numbers of casualties where as the older conflicts were more meat grinders which depleted the prime generations of the time and there was a very obvious casualty problem, combined UK and US casualties are in the 2000 region for Afghanistan (about 2500 or so for the overall coalition casualties) a couple of battles in WWII or Vietnam would far exceed these.

[Mars]

Vietnam was (on the American and French side) very low level too. They were still using purple hearts that they didn't use left over from WWII throughout Vietnam. Iraq and Afghanistan are, even more low level though, as you said. They are however quite expensive.