Quote Originally Posted by JohnTRourke View Post
Yeah I knew that and everyone agrees that Abrams had the chops and "saved" the army. But 4 years of idiocy? I mean are they just believing each other's BS? stroking each other off? Westmoreland had naked pictures of LBJ? 1 or 2 years I get, but after that, I don't get it.
I think you need look no farther than Afghanistan to see the Vietnam mentality in practice to this day. I was there in '03-'04 and left thinking "I don't know what the Hell we're trying to do here. I just hope my son doesn't end up fighting my war." He was 6 at the time and is now 18 and wants to be in the military after college. The way things are going, he may get the exact same hootch I slept in.

Vietnams and Afghanistans happen when the military promises to win a political war. Vietnam was a civil war that we went over to fix and never developed an idea of how to win or even what "winning" looked like. So like a blind man in a dark room, we flailed about getting Americans killed and not really accomlishing anything.

Don't get me wrong. Afghanistan started as a "good war". However, as soon as we defeated the Taliban and brought some measure of peace, we should have claimed victory, came home to parades and left that hellhole of a country alone, never to be thought of again. However, we decided to build a peaceful, stable, harmonious democracy in a county that has NO interest in doing that. So, 16 years later, my son may get the "priveledge" of fighting my war. Sounds a lot like what happened in SE Asia.