Robert Reich, who lived through the Vietnam War and lost friends there, draws a parallel between that conflict and the current US-Iran war, noting that Trump received a medical deferment for bone spurs rather than serving. The bone spur claim is well-documented though disputed—Trump's own doctor later expressed doubt, and fact-checkers have questioned the diagnosis, but the deferment itself is factual. Reich's core point is an analytical comparison: both wars involved government deception, escalation without clear strategy, and public doubt—a pattern historians and policy analysts widely recognize from Vietnam and are watching in Iran.