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What does "militarily" matter? The U.S. military was thousands of times more powerful than that of the North Vietnamese. If the U.S. hadn't had military victories, it would have been astonishing.

Read again what I said: "The military doesn't exist as an end in itself but as a means to an end."

Saying that we killed a bunch of enemy is pointless. We LOST, because the military objective is irrelevant without the political. The military EXISTS to serve the political ends of the nation. If those ends are frustrated, you LOSE, no matter how many tons of ordnance you manage to dump on the heads of the bad guys.

Illbay, you under-estimate that north vietnamese were a strong opponent. We were not 'thousands' of times more powerful than them. Look what the north vietnamese did to the french, I think 10-15 thousand french died in the big battle, dien bien phu??, if I'm wrong in that number, somebody please correct me. That must've been a horrific battle, when did it happen, 1957? They were travelling all together in long single column. The communists had them surrounded and attacked. The communists were able to bombard the french with artillery at horrific rate. The french apparently had no air force to help in defense. They were slaughtered, very few escaped. The 'battle' took weeks.

Our opponent in that war was not a pushover. Remember what happened in 79? Chinese troops invaded north vietnam and were spanked big-time by the vietnamese. By the time the communists fought us in south vietnam they had been developing their military abilities for over 20 years by actively fighting either the japanese or the french.

But you are correct in that the strategic political decision to lose by leaders in washington was more significant than our tactical military victories on the ground in south vietnam.

Sadly, many americans are so out-of-touch with sacrifices made by those in the military. The abilities and achievements ofour military are just taken for granted, as if our military is a magic capability, wave a magic wand, win a war. watch it on CNN, cheer for victory and beat chest and still go to work next day like nothing happened.

People who know war understand that war is always bad. There may be good reason to fight a particular war, but even in that case war is still very bad. Weakening our military causes war, it also magnifies the suffering in war. When war comes we should try to face that war as a nation, instead we put all sacrifices onto a small minority of our people.

I don't blame anyone on this forum for this circumstance. I blame the news media, the politicians and the academics for letting us live in little fantasy cocoon world of unreality.

"The military EXISTS to serve the political ends of the nation."

The war was lost, not by the military, but by the political class. The military objectives were accomplished despite the defacto political surrender. The failure, and loss, in quantitative terms was political. The two parts are not divisible, but can be measured individually. As a whole, the "war" was a loss. Politically, it was a surrender and a defeat. A suicide. Militarily, by qualitative and quantitative measures, it was a victory. Hollow, yes. But, still a victory.