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Comment by firesteelrain | Hacker News Reader

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The US spend 20 years in Afgan fighting to remove the Taliban from power only to hand power to the Taliban.

The US spent years fighting north Vietnamese forces only to sign a peace treaty, leave south Vietnam and then 2 years later have North Vietnam take over South Vietnam and unify the country.

You don't consider completely failing your objectives failure?

No. Both cases were wins. Saigon fell 2 years after US combat forces left for example.

In both cases, Washington chose to stop sustaining a local government that could not survive on its own.

Saigon fell on April 30, 1975, which was a little over two years after the last US combat troops left Vietnam on March 29, 1973. US did not lose Afghanistan on the battlefield. US military overthrew the Taliban government, dismantled al-Qaeda’s sanctuary, killed Osama bin Laden, and prevented another major foreign-directed terrorist attack from Afghan soil for nearly twenty years. American forces were not defeated or driven out; they left because elected political leaders decided the mission was no longer worth continuing.

In both cases, the threats were eliminated. Hanoi is now friendly to the US. Iraq is friendly to the US. Syria is friendly to the US.

Bac Ho took back the country he liberated from the french, renamed the capital city, instituted a communist regime that held its own against china.

That establishes that North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam. It doesn’t establish that North Vietnam defeated the US military.

It wasn't a win for the US military. They spent 20 years in south Vietnam, trying to keep it independent, and ultimately failed. Their stated goal was south Vietnam independence and stopping the spread of communism. Both were failed goals.

War is a continuation of politics, and here, the US lost politically (in Laos first) even if they didn't loose strategically. But let's be honest, multiple times they got their asses kicked on the field too (Unless you think logistics don't matter for an army).

It was a win for the US military.

I agree the political objective ultimately failed. My point is that political failure is not the same thing as military defeat. The US withdrew; South Vietnam was defeated two years later.

Which military objective did the US accomplish in their "win"? Did they won on the battlefield? Do you consider the Korea war a win for the US military too? And if not, what is the difference with the vietnam war?

I'm pretty sure we have different definition of what a win is, but i would like to understand your point of view, genuinely.

Saigon fell, and the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan.

Definitions of "lose" have been updated by firesteelrain to exclude retreating after failing to achieve anything.

The nation-building project ultimately failed. That is not the same as achieving nothing, nor is a political withdrawal the same thing as being militarily defeated.

You can also do Victory parades regardless of losing.

And you can label every political withdrawal a military defeat regardless of what happened on the battlefield.

US achieved major objectives, failed at building self-sustaining governments, and eventually withdrew.

Who rules Vietnam? Who rules Afghanistan? Tell us.

I remember when I was young all the boat refugees from Vietnam. I could not understand why people said USA lost, but all the refugees were Vietnamese. If USA lost, whay were they not American?

In part because the communist government actively targeted former South Vietnamese military personnel, civil servants, and anyone who had collaborated with the United States.

It was a civil war that the US got involved in, and they supported the side that lost.

Again, the US ceased combat operations in 1973; the Republic of Vietnam fell in 1975.

Communist Hanoi and Taliban.

Who governs those countries matters, but America cannot spend unlimited blood and treasure ensuring that every country is governed by people we approve of.

The threats were eliminated. Mission accomplished.

Which is it, Taliban controls Afghanistan, or the threats were eliminated? Doesn't sound like mission accomplished to me. Americans can cope all they want, but those conflicts were utter failures.

The USA completely failed to eliminate the threat of a communist takeover of French Indochina.

Ask Pakistan if the threat of Afghanistan-based terrorism has been eliminated.

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