[andy_card]

While I have to agree that US localized strategy and battlefield tactics were often pretty moronic, I still don't believe that we could have won in any meaningful sense of the word. The Vietnamese could effectively take infinite casualties, and we couldn't. We could have escalated the war by invading the North and Laos, but what would that have done? We could have bombed the dams and dikes of the North, killing many thousands, but again, that escapes the underlying reality of the situation: we had no clear military objectives. The Vietnamese wanted to fight a war of attrition, and we lacked the political will to fight one. I think, however, that the war symbolized a larger theoretical failure on behalf of our political leaders. All war, at its root, is politics, and the politicians at the top became focused on body counts, not on accomplishing the more important underlying objectives.

[Arioch7]

I think we are on a similiar page here. Redleg Duke, I agree with your assesment.

Andy, I think you may be right but perhaps we could have saved SOME of the Vietnamese population from the Communists. I am sure that even though we could not knock out North Korea that the South Koreans are very happy that we went there to help them out. I would be. :D