theseeman

I agree entirely re Ho Chi Minh (and I've heard it said that much the same applies to Castro; that the main reason he went for Soviet allies was American pique at his refusal to carry on business as usual, i.e. to be an American satellite, and consequent American sanctions.). The root of it, so far as I can see, is that American policy in the 40s and 50s was tacitly colonial (as opposed to the explicit colonialism of the British and French) with quite a lot of chauvinism involved. That chauvinism is surely the underlying emotion in the American decision to go in after the French failure.

Public opinion certainly played a major part in the American withdrawal. However it's not entirely clear to me that the US was winning militarily; I read a report of a Pentagon study on infantry operations in VN (written about 1978, IIRC) that said that while American soldiers won probably 80% of the engagements, they only initiated 10% of them. That's an appalling number. That means that the enemy dictated pretty much when and where the fighting took place. Now firepower is all well and good, but if your enemy is dictating when and where you fight, you're probably going to lose the war.

That brings me to the next reaction I had to the USCav piece: that it assumes, from word one, that most American ground operations will be as occupying forces.
(Bearing in mind that in Vietnam, American forces had local allies all the way through. Unreliable, self-serving and sometimes out-and-out treacherous, but local allies none the less.)
How can the US reverse that 10% number in its future occupations, without local allies? It'll have to increase its reliance on machines, and it'll have to increase the training of its soldiers, in technology and in languages and cultures, because they will need to be able to talk to the locals of wherever they're occupying.
Result: Expensive military, man for man.
- Consequence A: Smaller military, at least in numbers. Cheap low-tech opponents become more and more of a problem, because cheap means a big advantage in numbers. (Vietnam again; American failure there is at least partly due to refusal to provide enough men on the ground, and consequent reliance on firepower, which meant lots of collateral damage, producing domestic loss of faith in the war and a lasting stain on America's image in the world.)
- Consequence B: Every casualty is enormously expensive and hard to replace. That hardens public opinion against military action, especially as the military shrinks and fewer people have serving relatives.

Back to Tet and politics: Tet was a bodyblow to American public opinion re VN, and maybe the key moment in the whole sorry business; certainly the point when ordinary Americans started seriously to ask questions about it. The primary lesson of Tet, so far as I am concerned, is that war is a continuation of politics by other means. This is a serious problem to the American military and the American hawks generally; they have lost sight of the reason they're doing this, because all the firepower in the world won't protect you politically in a world where your prosperity relies on imports (America with 4% of the world's population consumes 25% of the world's resources, or thereabouts). I can't see any serious way forward (i.e. one that's not going to make matters worse) until that understanding comes back to American foreign policy.