The politicians didn't lose Vietnam. The logic of empire lost Vietnam.
https://x.com/nxt888/status/2037789389418553789
There is a particular type of American who, when confronted with Vietnam, says:
"We could have won if the politicians hadn't tied our hands."
Let us examine this claim with the respect it deserves.
Which is none.
At peak deployment, the United States had 543,000 troops in Vietnam.
It flew more than 5.2 million combat sorties.
It used weapons so advanced that Vietnamese forces had never seen anything like them.
It had total air superiority for most of the war.
It had naval dominance of the entire coastline.
It had satellite intelligence, chemical defoliation, electronic surveillance.
It had the full industrial capacity of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world pointed at a country where most people farmed rice by hand.
And it lost.
Not barely lost.
Not lost-on-a-technicality.
Lost so completely that the last image of American presence in Vietnam is a helicopter on a rooftop in Saigon and desperate people climbing the walls trying to get on it as the American empire evacuated its failure in real time.
Broadcast live.
On television.
Watched by the entire world.
"They tied our hands."
With what?
What hand was left untied?
What weapon was withheld?
What tactic was forbidden?
The truth is too simple and too brutal for that excuse to cover:
You cannot win a war against people willing to fight forever for their own land.
You were never going to win.
The politicians didn't lose Vietnam.
The logic of empire lost Vietnam.
Because empire always eventually loses when it meets people who refuse to accept that they are supposed to lose.
posted by Satish Sharma at
12:57
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