The real human demand of Vietnam was with a very narrow subset of the population - young men between the ages of 17 and 45 (with a heavy bias towards the lower end) - for a comparatively limited term of service (average 1 year). By contrast, the Iraq War didn’t employ youth conscription. It used the “backdoor draft” to deploy national guard reservists and to force existing enlisted troops back into repeated deployments for upwards of eight years. That also didn’t have a meaningful impact on unemployment during the Bush Administration (notable for a comparatively high unemployment rate, particularly post 2006).
Trump doesn’t fix a flood of unemployed people (particularly older people) with war. If anything, he just amplifies the domestic dissent against his administration, which will likely result in more economic pain and higher rates of joblessness.
Unemployment during Vietnam was about as low as it is today.
The real human demand of Vietnam was with a very narrow subset of the population - young men between the ages of 17 and 45 (with a heavy bias towards the lower end) - for a comparatively limited term of service (average 1 year). By contrast, the Iraq War didn’t employ youth conscription. It used the “backdoor draft” to deploy national guard reservists and to force existing enlisted troops back into repeated deployments for upwards of eight years. That also didn’t have a meaningful impact on unemployment during the Bush Administration (notable for a comparatively high unemployment rate, particularly post 2006).
Trump doesn’t fix a flood of unemployed people (particularly older people) with war. If anything, he just amplifies the domestic dissent against his administration, which will likely result in more economic pain and higher rates of joblessness.