Today's cliche: Opening Old Wounds

The US Marine Corps is hunting down deserters...from the Vietnam War. The article speculates that the reason is to discourage current Marines from deserting the Iraq War. And while I'm not familiar with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, apparently there is no statute of limitations on these sorts of things and it's entirely fine to track these people down and even prosecute them (though I doubt they'd do that). That's the law, they broke it, no problems. But as a policy it's kinda stupid. First of all, it was four decades ago, so, yeah, let it go. Dudes got away to Canada, let 'em go, why do we have to chest-pound and track these people down. Yeah, we all hate hippies, but this is one of them, whatcha call, bygones that need to be let bygone. Isn't it largely acknowledged that deserting the Vietnam War wasn't exactly the worst idea? Second of all: really, really? You're afraid that Iraq desertions will be that much of a problem? 'Cause I'm willing to bet that a lot of Vietnam deserters were ill-prepared draftees who shouldn't have been there to begin with or at least people who signed on, went to Vietnam, saw the fucked-upness factor hit 10, and just checked out, consequences bedamned. Now the armed forces are all volunteer and there's still a desertion problem? How fucked-up is Iraq? Vietnam level? Because if we're approaching Vietnam levels of nightmarish-parody-of-civilization-comparable-only-to-the-depraved-feaver-dreams-of-jungle-outcasts, then I gotta say that maybe we should go ahead and rethink this whole operation, cheif.