"Mr. Bush has introduced the Domino Theory in reverse; Iraq, he has proclaimed, will become a democratic example for the rest of the world. He will use his bombs, his torture chambers and his soldiers to force it to be so, completely regardless of the will of the Iraqi people."

It’s been said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Those who remember 1968 have seen dramatic changes in technology, medicine and other fields, but for the United States, 2008 is not all that different from 1968. This is a sad and damning indictment of U.S. society.

A generic description may be interesting: the reader can guess which year it refers to.

The U.S. is mired in an unwinnable war, led by a highly unpopular president. The war is opposed by most Americans. Young men and women who resist the war and want no part of it are fleeing to Canada. Some of them have seen the war first hand and know that it has nothing to do with keeping America safe.

The economy is quickly deteriorating as the country goes deeply into debt to finance this current military folly. All over the world the reputation of the U.S. is in tatters, as most of its closest allies oppose its involvement in the war.

A presidential election campaign is underway. One candidate seeks to continue the unpopular policies of the incumbent; the other talks vaguely about extricating the U.S. from the war. Congress wants the nation with which the U.S. is at war to take a greater role in its own defense. An escalation of U.S. troops has had a deadly effect on the other nation.

If one read the above and guessed 1968, one would be correct. If one guessed 2008, one would also be correct. In forty years, the U.S. has not learned much.

After the debacle of the Vietnam War, many people talked endlessly about the lessons the nation could learn from that tragic misadventure. The need to wage war only for the defense of the U.S. or its allies; the requirement to gain United Nations approval, and thus the support and aid of other nations; the absolute necessity of never sending young Americans to risk their lives for any cause less than the survival of the United States were all lessons discussed, analyzed, examined but apparently never learned.

There are, however, significant differences between 1968 and 2008, and many of these are not positive. In 1968 U.S. citizens sitting in their comfortable living rooms at least saw flag-draped coffins return home from Vietnam. This is not allowed in President George Bush’s America.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s it was only the president’s office that was wiretapped; today any American making an international call risks having the government listen in. The right to privacy is another of the U.S.’s myths.

But there are more similarities than differences. During the Vietnam era, the world heard of U.S. soldiers running murderously rampant through the village of My Lai, indiscriminately killing innocent men, women and children. A generation later it watched the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

As the Vietnam War escalated, the spectacle of Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in the streets of that city in protest of the war was common. Forty years later Iraqi suicide bombers take many others with them to death as they fight their U.S. oppressors.

In Vietnam, the U.S.’s Vietcong prisoners were interrogated and sometimes then stabbed to death, shot to death or thrown from airplanes. Today, the U.S.’s political prisoners experience horrific torture at Guantanamo and other ‘rendition’ sites around the world.

One of the battle cries of the Vietnam era was the need to prevent the spread of ‘godless communism’ around the world. The Domino Theory, very popular at that time, suggested that if one country ‘fell’ to communism, those around it would certainly follow suit. Little consideration was given to why some nations, suffering from abject poverty, might see communism as more appealing than American-style capitalism.

Today the battle cry is somewhat different: there is a new monster to fear, and its name is terrorism. It must be routed, we are told by Mr. Bush and his minions of yes-men, so it doesn’t spread. Little thought is given today as to why some nations may hate the U.S. Decades of U.N. sanctions against Iraq, for example, pushed by the U.S. and which have had no impact on the government of that nation but tragic consequences for the people are ignored. As former New York City mayor and one-time presidential candidate wannabe Rudolph Giuliani proclaimed during a debate, in discussing the September 11 attacks on the U.S: they “came here and killed us because of our freedom of religion, freedom for women, because they hate us.” This was in response to Congressman Ron Paul’s (R-TX) comment that those attacks were, at least in part, the result of long-standing hatred of the U.S. due to its imperial aggression against nations in the Middle East.

And Mr. Bush has introduced the Domino Theory in reverse; Iraq, he has proclaimed, will become a democratic example for the rest of the world. He will use his bombs, his torture chambers and his soldiers to force it to be so, completely regardless of the will of the Iraqi people.

The U.S. has long been the bully on the international school yard. That has not changed for generations, and the military power of the nation allows it to spread its terror at will, completely unchecked. From the innocent-sounding initial sending of ‘advisors’ to Vietnam, to the ‘Shock and Awe’ invasion of Iraq, where population centers were targeted despite the fact that over fifty percent of the Iraqi population was under the age of 15, the U.S. attempts with more than a little success to force its will upon the world. Issues like the age of its victims are unimportant: one political prisoner who has withstood unspeakable torture at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr, was only15 himself when he was shot and thrown into that American torture dungeon. He has now undergone six years of torture, with no respite in sight.

Yet the imperial success of the U.S. is not without cost, and does not come as easily as it once did. After marching around the world for generations, expanding its territory and establishing colonies, the U.S. struggles for new successes. The Korean War lasted three years and was not a conclusive victory for the U.S. The Vietnam War lasted at least 11 years (if the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident in 1964 is seen as the start, and 1975, when the last Americans fled, as the end), and was a clear defeat for the U.S. Quick victories in the first Gulf War and Panama and Grenada may have emboldened the U.S. once again; after all, the country needed some victories after the disgrace of the Vietnam defeat. It is unfortunate for the world that the U.S. lost sight of the fact that it was its involvement in Vietnam, and not the victory of that nation over the U.S., that was the disgrace.

The Iraq War has now dragged on for over five years; the war in Afghanistan for nearly seven, and an American victory is in sight for neither of them. The realities of the war – the determination of the peoples of those nations to resist U.S. efforts to conquer them, the opposition of the citizenry of the U.S., the futility of the efforts themselves – do not seem to have any impact on Mr. Bush and his neo-con cohorts. The same could be said about Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon when they faced the same realities in Vietnam but refused to acknowledge or act upon them.

In the year 2048, historians, politicians and others will look back at 2008. They will look at the campaign for the presidency, and compare it to the campaign that will be held that year, assuming elections are still allowed in the U.S. by then. What will they see? What will they learn from history? Will they marvel at the inability of the U.S. to learn? Will they wonder why it has been so impossible for it to change? Or will the reasons be as clear then as they are now? Will oil still be the major world commodity on which the U.S. must get its hands, regardless of whose blood is spilled while doing it? Will elections still be under the control of conservative leaning corporations who will pour as much money as is necessary into the campaigns of their chosen candidates to buy them their elections? Will legislation be controlled by lobbyists rather than by the people?

There is no reason to believe things will change by that time; each election cycle brings the U.S. a new candidate of ‘change,’ and each election only ushers in more of the same. Little has changed within the U.S. since 1968; it was an imperial power then and remains so. There is nothing to suggest any significant change any time soon.

Robert Fantina is author of Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776 - 2006.