By "Vietnam" do you think he means "an entity that they tried to crush and demonize but is actually doing kind of ok in 2014, all things considering".
"One of the key lessons of Vietnam was the danger of what's colloquially called "the Slippery Slope": that a given course of action might yield some early success, yet further investment into that action yields decreasingly commensurate results and increasibly dangerous obstacles whose only solution appears to be greater and greater commitment of resources and/or action. Some have called this "the Drug Trap", after the way pharmaceuticals (legal or illegal) can have diminished effect after prolonged use, requiring upped dosage in order to yield the same results. Others call this "the Last Mile Problem": that as one nears the end of a problem, it becomes increasingly difficult in cost terms (both monetary and abstract) to find a 100% complete solution. All are basically speaking of the same thing--the difficulty of finding an answer that allows our hero to "finish off" the problem in question, completely and satisfactorily."
For history buffs from Europe, the experience of Germanicus (at least as recounted by Tacitus) in the swamps across the Rhine may have a similar implication. Oh look, we're the Roman army, the most powerful army in the world. Defeating a few barbarians should be easy! But then the actual requirements start piling up, one gets into the swamps, can't move about like one would have hoped, logistics gets disrupted, and eventually it takes outside help even to retreat.....
Wait... wat?
In the alternate history where the US did not turn tail and run out of Vietnam like a whipped dog, abandoning their former allies in the south to be utterly subsumed by their enemies from the north, how did the 1976 election turn out. Was it still Carter?
This is self contradictory. Failure of national morale in war is actually how wars are normally lost, not somehow something different than normal defeat. And its relevant to the analogy, in that...
> ORM are doing a good (well, at least passable) job of doing what they are intended to do, but are generally hated.
If that's true, its because what they are designed to do isn't what the people hating them need done. It indicates a gap between what is available and what is needed; intent may be interesting, but in the end not all that important.