Quote:The problem with every war since WWII:

 

"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it."

 

"One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda."

 

 - Douglas MacArthur

 

 

Indeed, wars are not won only on the battlefield.  Wars have to be won on the home front as well.  Even if we can debate whether the Vietnam War could have been "won" (whatever definition you want to put on that word), there is no doubt the war was lost on the home front, and that led to a loss on the military front as well.  

 

In the 1930s, the Germans liked to claim they had not lost WWI, for example.   They were on the verge of losing WWI, to be sure, but where they really lost was on the home front where the German people were on the verge of open rebellion and that is what forced the Germans to go to the Western Allies and ask for an Armistice.  And all through the 1930s, right-wing Germans kept insisting their troops had not lost, they had been stabbed in the back on the home front.  That was one of the Nazis' main propaganda points.  

 

Given the fact that wars have to be won on the home front as well as on the battlefield, by any reasonable definition of "winning" the Vietnam War was not won, it was lost.   So to suggest, as that video did, that the Congress lost the War in Vietnam, is to totally misinterpret history.   Sure, we could have fought on, and probably destroyed all of Vietnam in the process, but by 1972, the damage done to this country by that war, with 58,000 American servicemen dead and another 150,000 wounded, thousands and thousands of other men coming home severely damaged psychologically, and antiwar riots in the streets, what the Congress was doing was reflecting the will of the people who had decided by that time that the cost of that war was so much greater than the potential gain from "winning" that it could not continue.  

 

The speaker on that video is suggesting that the Democratic Congress lost the war.   The fact is, that war was one of the worst mistakes this country has ever made.   And to suggest that we could have won "if only..." makes me want to go throw up.  

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