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>>"if the US wasn't trapped behind political barriers like the 17th parallel."

The NVA would have been crushed if the USA crossed that barrier and nobody else get involved in the conflict. The low probability of that happening is the reason for not crossing, so, it's actually a military barrier.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Actual_objecti...:

"The memorandum begins by disclosing the rationale behind the bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965: The February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China."

>>"The big takeaway is never get involved with someone else's civil war."

It seems that, more than a civil war, it has the characteristics of a proxy war.

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers#Role_of_the_Un...

"As acknowledged by the papers: We must note that South Vietnam (unlike any of the other countries in Southeast Asia) was essentially the creation of the United States."

> The NVA was completely outmatched and would have been crushed if the US wasn't trapped behind political barriers like the 17th parallel.

I agree with your "big takeaway". But the above is egregiously mistaken.

For two reasons. With Viet Nam, we're talking about a country that resisted invaders (France, China) with great tenacity and success. The North had a sense of nationhood, and favorable terrain, and a largely united political/military leadership. The US dropped more bombs on Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia than during the whole of WWII, drafted all the young men the country could stand, applied money and expertise, destroyed one if not two Presidents, and still did not come very close to winning. Hanoi and the northern mountains were never seriously threatened by US forces. One could go on.

Second reason. The US had just suffered a defeat/stalemate in Korea due to Chinese counter-invasion when it seemed the US might cross the Yalu River. The US did not want that to happen again in Viet Nam. Thus, in a very real "hard power" sense, the US did not cross the Viet Nam borders into Thailand or Laos, because of not wanting to engage China directly along a second front. This is not a political limitation, it's a very direct military limitation.

Resisting against France wasn't that much a big deal: it was just after WW2, France had lost control of Indochina during the war, drafted soldiers were never sent there and political support was never that string, especially with the big communist faction in France.

Think you got mixed up a bit there.

Ken Burns Vietnam documentary series was about Vietnam (1960s - 1975 ?), not the Korean War (1950 - 1953), no?

The 320,000 South Korean troops who rotated through the Vietnam War over 10+ year period were great troops according to many US veterans who were there.

And also I do not agree with the broad generalization that South Vietnamese troops were hopeless.

Yes, South Vietnamese. Specifically the SVA. It seemed pretty clear that the morale was poor and the leadership was corrupt and/or incompetent. The idea that they would be able to invade, capture, and hold Hanoi without direct US help seems implausible at best.

I never said it doesn't make a sense for US Army to do it, but that very small number of other countries could afford that approach. That's something only superpowers can pull off.

Getting involved in someone else's civil war worked out pretty well for both France and the United States around 1780.

Not for the Louie the 16th - the cost of bankrolling the AWI way was one cause of the French revolution