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Vietnam is still the comparison to Iraq, when the comparisons are so lame. In Vietnam, it is said we were defeated by the insurgency. That is wrong. The Tet Offensive destroyed the Viet Cong. After Tet, the U.S. was mainly fighting the NVA (North Vietnamese Army).
The U.S. did not lose the war, but withdrew from the battlefield. Congress stopped funding the war and there was no longer any way to fight it.
Out withdrawal was costly on a couple of fronts. For one thing, the people that supported the U.S. were systematically slaughtered. How many millions died from the North Vietnamese?
The other front was Osama bin Laden. He looked at the U.S. ignomious withdrawal and concluded we were a paper tiger that would not fight a protracted war (The jury is still out on that conclusion). That’s one of the reasons he attacked the U.S. He figured we would not respond and if we did, the response would be short lived.
One can make the logical conclusion that our “defeat†in Vietnam as cost 3,000 lives on September 11, 2001.
Posted by Ted at January 26, 2005 9:39 PM