Vietnam: The War America Could Not Win and Would Not Stop

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — April 30, 2026

April 30, 2026 marks the 51st anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. On April 30, 1975, at approximately 7:53 a.m. local time, the final U.S. helicopter lifted off from the embassy in Saigon, marking the effective end of American presence in Vietnam and the collapse of South Vietnam. That same moment is also recognized within Vietnam as a point of national reunification—the transition of Saigon into what is now Ho Chi Minh City and the consolidation of Vietnam as a unified state after decades of war.

Early Commitments: From Advisers to Entrapment

The United States did not begin the Vietnam War as a full combatant force. Its involvement emerged gradually from Cold War policy and the aftermath of European colonial conflict.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States supported France’s effort to retain Indochina, viewing the conflict through the broader strategy of containment (Logevall, 2012). After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Geneva Accords temporarily divided the country.

Elections intended to unify Vietnam were never held. Instead, the United States backed South Vietnam and expanded a military advisory presence. By the early 1960s, that advisory mission had deepened into a commitment that would prove difficult to reverse.

LBJ and the Ownership of the War

The transformation into a large-scale war occurred under Lyndon B. Johnson.

Following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Congress granted Johnson broad authority to use force. What followed was rapid escalation:

• U.S. Marines landed at Da Nang in 1965
• Troop levels grew to over 500,000
• Sustained bombing campaigns targeted North Vietnam

Johnson did not initiate U.S. involvement, but he made it a full-scale American war.

Privately, Johnson expressed doubt about the conflict, describing it as “the biggest damn mess” he had seen (Goodwin, 1976). By 1968, facing mounting casualties and domestic unrest, he chose not to seek re-election.

A War Fought Without Understanding

Beyond strategy, the war faced a deeper problem: the United States did not understand the environment in which it was fighting.

As documented in The Decline and Fall of the U.S. Army (Cincinnatus, 1976), American forces operated with critical structural disadvantages:

• Most troops did not speak Vietnamese
• Communication depended on interpreters of uncertain reliability
• Units rotated on one-year tours, preventing continuity

This produced operational blindness. Soldiers could move through villages and conduct operations, but often lacked the ability to distinguish allies from enemies in a meaningful way.

The Viet Cong operated within the population, spoke the language, and maintained long-term presence. U.S. forces did not.

Metrics Without Meaning

The U.S. military emphasized attrition—reducing enemy strength through casualties. Under William Westmoreland, success was frequently measured by “body count.”

This created systemic distortions:

• Incentives to inflate enemy casualties
• Difficulty distinguishing civilians from combatants
• Reports of progress disconnected from reality

Westmoreland later argued that U.S. forces “did not lose the war” (Karnow, 1997). The claim reflects battlefield metrics rather than strategic outcome.

In practice, the war’s objectives were not achieved.

The War Reduced to Numbers

The emphasis on body count extended beyond military planning into public reporting.

Nightly television broadcasts frequently presented casualty figures as indicators of progress (Hallin, 1986). The war was reduced to arithmetic: how many were killed, how many operations were conducted, how the numbers compared.

This framing carried consequences:

• It prioritized quantifiable outcomes over strategic reality
• It obscured the political nature of the conflict
• It conditioned the public to equate killing with progress

At the same time, televised reporting increasingly contradicted those numbers. Coverage following the Tet Offensive exposed the limits of official claims.

The gap between reported success and observable reality widened.

Atrocity, Accountability, and the Limits of Control

The strain of the war extended beyond strategy and morale.

The My Lai Massacre became the most widely known example of U.S. forces killing unarmed civilians. William Calley was convicted for his role.

Subsequent reporting indicated that such incidents were not entirely isolated. Investigations into units such as “Tiger Force” documented patterns of abuse in certain operational areas (Turse, 2013).

These actions were not representative of all personnel. However, they reflected conditions within the war:

• Ambiguous identification of enemy forces
• Pressure to produce measurable results
• Weak continuity and oversight in rotating units

My Lai was prosecuted as an exception. It occurred within conditions that made such exceptions possible.

The War at Home: Narrative and Myth

The war was not only fought in Vietnam. It was also interpreted and presented at home.

The film The Green Berets, starring John Wayne, offered a simplified and supportive portrayal of U.S. involvement. The film depicted American forces as clearly justified and the enemy as largely faceless and inhuman.

This portrayal aligned with earlier official narratives but diverged from the increasingly complex and contested reality reported by journalists and experienced by soldiers.

The contrast illustrates a broader divide between narrative and reality.

Nixon and the Managed Withdrawal

When Richard Nixon assumed office in 1969, the war was already deeply entrenched.

His administration pursued “Vietnamization,” shifting combat responsibility to South Vietnamese forces while withdrawing U.S. troops. At the same time, military operations expanded into Cambodia and bombing intensified.

Nixon later wrote that “no event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War” (Nixon, 1985, p. 9).

The Paris Peace Accords ended direct U.S. involvement in 1973. Fighting continued.

The End—and the Absence

On April 30, 1975, the Fall of Saigon marked both the collapse of South Vietnam and the reunification of the country under a single government.

Johnson did not live to see it. He died on January 22, 1973, days before the peace accords.

He saw escalation and withdrawal—but not the outcome.

Conclusion: A War Beyond Strategy

The Vietnam War lasted roughly two decades. It evolved from advisory support into full-scale conflict and ended in strategic failure for the United States.

Responsibility was shared. Early Cold War decisions set the stage. Johnson escalated the war. Nixon prolonged and concluded it.

But beyond leadership, the war revealed a deeper failure:

The United States committed to a conflict it did not fully understand, measured success in ways that obscured reality, and sustained the war long after its limits were clear.

At the same time, the war’s end marked a beginning for Vietnam—a unified nation that would move forward on its own terms.

Johnson bore the weight of escalation. Nixon managed the exit. Neither saw a successful result.

A Personal Note on Memory and Repetition

When I was in college, I was told—directly and without ambiguity—that my generation was tired of hearing about Vietnam.

The message was clear: the war was over, it belonged to the past, and there was no value in continuing to revisit it.

At that time, the wars that would define the next decades had not yet begun. There was no Iraq War, no Afghanistan War, and even the first Gulf War had not yet taken place.

Vietnam was treated as history that no longer required attention.

I remember being challenged on it—loudly. The frustration was real. Vietnam had been discussed enough. It was time to move on.

That position did not hold.

In the decades that followed, the United States entered prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—wars that repeated many of the same structural problems seen in Vietnam:

• Long-duration commitments without clear end states
• Tactical success that did not translate into strategic victory
• Persistent gaps between official reporting and conditions on the ground
• Limited understanding of local political and cultural realities

The details changed. The pattern did not.

This record is not written for the generation that lived through Vietnam, nor for those who rejected continued discussion of it.

It is written for those who come after.

If the lesson of Vietnam was once dismissed, later conflicts demonstrated the cost of that dismissal. The war ended in 1975. The lessons did not.

Whether those lessons are finally learned may depend on those who are willing to read what others chose to ignore.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

If you read this and it matters, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

References (APA)

Cincinnatus. (1976). The decline and fall of the U.S. Army. Center of Military History.

Goodwin, D. K. (1976). Lyndon Johnson and the American dream. St. Martin’s Press.

Hallin, D. C. (1986). The “uncensored war”: The media and Vietnam. Oxford University Press.

Karnow, S. (1997). Vietnam: A history (2nd ed.). Penguin Books.

Logevall, F. (2012). Embers of war: The fall of an empire and the making of America’s Vietnam. Random House.

Nixon, R. (1985). No more Vietnams. Arbor House.

Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. Metropolitan Books.

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic”*…

Jennifer Pahlka— the founder and long-time leader of Code for America, the former US Deputy Chief Technology Officer, the author of Recoding America, and the cofounder and board chair of the Recoding America Fund— has dedicated her life to improving governance and government services. Here, she reflects on a core lesson that she has learned…

I got into government reform sixteen years ago, though I didn’t think of it as reform at the time. I thought of it as just trying to make a few specific things work better. Since then I’ve worked at the local, state, and federal levels, on benefit delivery, on national defense, on a handful of things in between. I’ve worked alongside a lot of people whose own paths in this work have run the gamut. Collectively we’ve seen a lot. I think we’ve learned a lot about what we often call the operating model of government.

But the government we have — the operating model it runs on, the rules and structures and assumptions that shape how it hires, procures, and delivers — was built for a world that no longer exists, and the distance between that world and this one is growing. We are approaching the kind of moment when that gap stops being a management problem and becomes a true legitimacy crisis. (Many will say that moment has already come.) It’s time to start asking whether the theory of change most of us have been operating under — incremental improvements off a pretty poor baseline — was ever going to get us to a government capable of meeting fast-changing needs. It hasn’t yet, and if we don’t do something differently, it won’t.

Kelly Born at the Packard Foundation recently shared with me a framework called the Three Horizons, originally developed by Anthony Hodgson and adapted widely in systems-change work. In it, Horizon 1 is the currently dominant system. It’s functional enough to persist but failing in critical ways, especially for people with less power. Horizon 3 is the future system you’re working toward, already visible in patches of practice that embody different values and different ways of working, but far from the norm. Horizon 2 is the turbulent middle where change agents work.

But the key insight is that not all Horizon 2 work is the same. Some H2 innovations genuinely create the conditions for the new system to emerge. Call those transforming H2, or H2+. Others, however inadvertently, extend the lifespan of the failing system by relieving the pressure that might otherwise force structural change. Call those sustaining H2, or H2-. Both feel like reform, but they have very different long-term implications.

H2- work is attractive because it usually produces real value in the short run. H2+ work can take a long time to pay off, and the path is rarely clear. In a stable environment, you can get away with a lot of H2-. In an environment where the underlying system has become truly untenable, the difference between the two starts to matter a great deal. I think that’s where we are now…

[Jen describes a few projects that illustrate patterns that play out over and over in the category of H2-, the work that sustains the status quo…]

… The H2- work I’m describing has been done in good faith by people. I am one of those people. Code for America, which I founded and where I spent more than a decade, is in important respects capacity substitution. USDR, which I also helped start, is as well. The healthcare.gov rescue (which I didn’t actually work on but tried to provide moral support for) was the rescue-and-rebuild cycle. For much of the past fifteen years, the H2- path was arguably the right call. When there was no political space for structural change, demonstrations were a good way to build the evidence base and develop the field.

I think we are in a different moment now. This moment is defined by disruption. I count three kinds.

Contingent disruption — pandemics, climate events, geopolitical shocks, financial crises — is unpredictable in its specifics but very predictable in its category: large, fast-moving, high-stakes demands that fall disproportionately on government. COVID was not an anomaly. The next version won’t look the same.

The most recent disruption to federal government, however, was political. Whatever the cost of its methods, DOGE made the brittleness of the current operating model impossible to ignore and created political openings for structural arguments that previously had no traction. The reform field did not create this moment. But it can shape what comes out of it.

AI brings structural disruption. This is a transformation already underway in the material conditions of work, economy, and administration. AI creates dramatic change in both the needs and conditions government must respond to and the ways in which it can respond at the same time. Yes, I certainly mean a social safety net not nearly fit to handle the levels of unemployment that are likely coming our way, and yes, I mean possible upsets in the balance of power between agencies and the vendors they rely on, but that’s barely scratching the surface.

AI is not only an exogenous shock that government will have to absorb. It is also moving the bar on what counts as acceptable service in the first place. People are already using AI to understand their medical bills, navigate insurance denials, and draft appeals for benefits they were wrongly denied. Soon they will expect to apply for SNAP or file their taxes by uploading a paystub and answering a few plain-language questions, not by filling out even the best-designed web form. The forty-page PDF used to feel intolerable. The well-designed web form will start to feel that way too, and faster than the last transition did.

And service delivery is only the most visible piece. The same expectation shift is going to hit regulation, permitting, enforcement, how quickly an agency can respond to a new problem, how a legislature decides whether a law is working. If a small team with the right tools can map a regulatory regime in a week, the timelines we have now, in which rulemaking takes several years–or even multiple presidential terms–become indefensible. If an advocate can stress-test a policy against thousands of edge cases before it gets enacted, the standard for what counts as due diligence in lawmaking starts to move. The bar is rising on the whole surface of what government does, not just on the forms people fill out.

Not everyone wants this shift to happen. Public sector unions have secured laws in several states forbidding the use of AI in service delivery, won contracts requiring union consent before autonomous vehicles can operate, and pushed legislation mandating staffing levels that the work no longer requires — as my colleagues Robert Gordon and Nick Bagley have documented. The concern for workers caught in this transition is legitimate. But blocking government’s transformation while the world around it moves on is not a strategy for protecting those workers. It exacerbates public frustration with government, weakens the case for investing in it, and leaves the people who most depend on public services with a system increasingly unfit to serve them.

So the gap we have been measuring, between what government delivers and what the public considers a basic level of competence, is widening from both ends at once. The system is straining to clear the old bar at the same moment the bar is rising.

In this environment, the benefits systems that struggled to scale during COVID will be asked to scale again. The regulatory processes that can’t move quickly will be asked to respond to developments they weren’t designed to anticipate. The civil service system that can’t attract the people it needs now will need to attract people with skills that didn’t exist a decade ago.

If I had to pick, it’s AI that drives this disruptive moment. But I don’t have to pick. You could just as easily imagine climate shocks, or the next pandemic, or an escalation of the current war. Truly, some combination of all the above is not that unlikely. Reasonable people may disagree about the size and shape of the disruption AI will bring, but betting against disruption generally seems deeply unwise at the moment.

If you buy that argument, then we must acknowledge that a reform field largely dedicated to H2- work is not what the moment calls for. In a stable environment, H2- work that buys time for a failing system might be much-needed, and might be a missed opportunity for transformation. In an environment where disruptions of all kinds are accelerating, it becomes a compounding liability. Extending the lifespan of a brittle system just means the system eventually fails more spectacularly. More people get hurt. More people look for alternatives to democracy.

That doesn’t mean we need to throw everything out and start over. For the reform ecosystem, it means existing actors need incentives to align their work toward structural transformation, new actors with adjacent expertise need to be welcomed into the fold (especially advocates and lobbyists, given how little influence muscle the field has today), and connections need to be made both upstream and downstream of where we’ve been focused. It means articulating competing H3 visions from a wide range of ideological and practical perspectives and debating them among, including the project that sparked this line of thinking, which Kelly funded and FAI and New America are currently working on. It means designing funding and partnership structures that reward structural ambition while staying grounded in meaningful near-term progress. Funders and grantees share responsibility for creating the conditions under which a diverse set of actors can aim higher by working together, and connecting the dots upstream.

For this to work, it can’t be a zero sum game. Government capacity is wildly neglected in philanthropy despite its high leverage. (Good luck naming an issue philanthropists care about that doesn’t benefit from increased government capacity.) Could the field stop doing some H2- work? Sure. That would free up some existing resources for more H2+ work, which has been too little of the field’s mindshare and resources to date. But that is not the path forward — it wouldn’t get us where we need to be. We need more resources, full stop. We need to make the case to philanthropy for greater investment in the entire field (that’s part of what Recoding America Fund is trying to do) and make the case to government leaders, including electeds, to invest in better plumbing, so that the investment in H2+ work isn’t coming at the expense of the essential life support…

[Jen outlines some of the key principles that animate H2+ efforts, then ponders “doing different things differently”…]

… I realized early last year that while I’d spent the bulk of my career trying to drag government into the Internet Era, that work has to change now. We are entering a new era, and if those of us who fought the last fight don’t adapt to the conditions and expectations of this one, we’ll make exactly the mistake the people who resisted internet-era ways of working made. We’ll become the blockers — the ones holding on to old ways of working because that is what we are used to and that is what we are good at.

None of which means rescue work should stop, or that demonstrations are worthless, or that capacity substitution isn’t helpful and needed. Some H2- work, done deliberately and named honestly, is best understood as experimentation: we’re running it inside the failing system precisely because that’s where we’ll learn what a new operating model has to do. That’s a different kind of work from rescue that produces learning incidentally, but both can be valuable.

But the field needs a shared frame clear-eyed enough to ask, with each investment: does this move the system toward H3, or does it prolong H1? That question should be driving how resources, talent, and attention get allocated now, not because the prior work was mistaken but because the moment is different and the cost of extending the status quo is too high. There will have to be work that sustains the status quo, but what tradeoffs are we willing to make?

But insisting we ask the question does not mean that answering it is easy: there is no objective set of criteria that distinguishes one from the other. What may look like H2+ to some may seem like H2- to others, and part of that depends on your particular vision of that third horizon (more on that in the coming weeks.) Some may see work as contributing to a transformation, and therefore H2+, but towards an undesired H3 state. Grappling with how to answer this question is work we all need to be doing…

… Some things haven’t changed. The community is still full of good, smart people with enormous insight into a very difficult problem. We’ve just run out of time to do it the way we’ve been doing it. A brittle system that gets propped up through manageable shocks will eventually meet a shock it can’t survive, and we are moving into a period where the shocks are neither manageable nor hypothetical. Every H2- intervention that returns the system to “good enough” is now a bet that good enough will hold. It’s a bet I no longer think we can afford to make.

The window for H2+ work has not been open like this before. It will not stay open indefinitely.

Eminently worth reading in full.

What DOGE coulda, shoulda been: “A Three Horizons Framework for Government Reform,” from @pahlkadot.bsky.social.

* Peter Drucker

###

As we face forward, we might recall that it was on this date in 1970 that President Richard Nixon formally authorized the commitment of U.S. combat troops, in cooperation with South Vietnamese units, against North Vietnamese troop sanctuaries in Cambodia.

Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had continually argued for a downsizing of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, were excluded from the decision to use U.S. troops in Cambodia. Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cabled Gen. Creighton Abrams, senior U.S. commander in Saigon, informing him of the decision that a “higher authority has authorized certain military actions to protect U.S. forces operating in South Vietnam.” Nixon believed that the operation was necessary as a pre-emptive strike to forestall North Vietnamese attacks from Cambodia into South Vietnam as the U.S. forces withdrew and the South Vietnamese assumed more responsibility for the fighting. Nevertheless, three National Security Council staff members and key aides to presidential assistant Henry Kissinger resigned in protest over what amounted to an invasion of Cambodia.

When Nixon publicly announced the Cambodian incursion on April 30, it set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations. A May 4, protest at Kent State University resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops. Another student rally at Jackson State College in Mississippi resulted in the death of two students and 12 wounded when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.

– source

source

Strategies & Tactics for #SocialChange
Some Lessons from the Movement in the US Against the #Vietnam War
https://world-outlook.com/2026/04/27/strategies-tactics-for-social-change/

from #WorldOutlook
April 27, 2026

In the past year, millions in the US have protested Washington’s attacks on democratic rights, #ICE terror, and imperialist war. Among them are many young people, alongside others who have never before taken to the streets.

These activists are testing strategies and tactics and debating how to push back #Trump’s march toward one-man rule. Many of the questions they face have been posed before, perhaps most notably during the anti- #VietnamWar movement in the #US in the 1960s and early ’70s.

As the #war escalated and opposition broadened, discussion flourished over how to build the movement. Debates often centered on the effectiveness of “#DirectAction,” or #CivilDisobedience, vs. mass marches and rallies, and on the demands promoted in these actions.

#news #politics #USA #protest #USpol #MassMovement

Ukraine Symposium

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from the American Heritage Museum about an upcoming event with a subject line “Symposium on the Ukraine-Russia War and Drone Technology in Warfare.” While the majority of us are fully aware of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 (the annexation of Crimea) and 2022 (invasion of the Donbas region), information disseminated to the public is distilled by the media. Although certain outlets are more credible than others, this symposium was an opportunity for a deep dive into the conflict.

This event was presented by the Ukrainian Freedom Fund (UFF). The UFF is a U.S.-registered nonprofit and international NGO focused on supporting Ukraine during the ongoing war with Russia. Its stated mission is to support “a free, democratic and independent Ukraine.” The UFF is a hybrid NGO that is both a humanitarian charity and provides expert support in military operations from retired United States service members. With an advisory board consisting of General David D. McKiernan, USA, Lieutenant General David A Deptula, USAF, and a host of others with impressive rank, there’s no doubt that the UFF is a well-led organization.

The symposium assembled representatives from both Ukraine and the United States. From General McKiernan and General Deptula, to Admiral Thor Voronchenko, Ukraine Navy (Ret.), and Captain Andrii Ryzhenko, Ukraine Navy (Ret.), to several outstanding dignitaries, military and drone technology experts. Although I have attended all kinds of events and symposia over the years, this was my first time listening to an expert military panel from two countries discuss a current war, rather than those of the past (WWII).

When the symposium started with General Deptula discussing the war’s impact on U.S. policy, it quickly became apparent just how important it is for Ukraine to win. First, a message needs to be sent to Russia that invading a sovereign nation will be met with strong resistance. Ukrainians are defending their homeland and will continue to do so with vigor and vitality—or has Russia forgotten the feelings to protect one’s homeland during Operation Barbarossa?  Second, at the start of this war, it was clear that Russia was not performing well on the battlefield, but while certain assistance came swiftly from the United States and other nations, it didn’t come fast enough, as time gave Russia the opportunity to regroup.  Third, the technological advances in drones, technology, and lasers are unprecedented. If there’s one thing we all know from war, it’s that technology expands exponentially in times of conflict.

It’s one thing for me to be observant, but the other element of the symposium talked about the importance of military doctrine, education, and training. With discussions about Ukraine joining NATO, there are numerous critical matters that make UFF even more relevant in terms of Ukraine’s military to adopt certain principles for its own national security objectives. This is where respective military experts from Ukraine and the United States work together to build a framework of victory.

One area I found particularly fascinating was their next-generation weapon systems when it comes to asymmetric warfare. Ukraine is fighting a nation-state (a former superpower) with vast resources. This conflict isn’t symmetric like we witnessed during WWII; Ukraine needs to be inventive in its approach (e.g., the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War). Thus, Ukraine’s advances and use of military drones are akin to what we see in science fiction movies. Their method of deployment and development is so advanced that countries in the Gulf, because of the Iran War, are asking Ukraine for drone defense assistance.

The symposium accomplished just what it needed to do. It not only informed us about the current state of the war but also educated us about the complications and internal issues that arise during such times. At the end of the day, Ukraine is under attack by a belligerent  Russia that has, by its actions, caused a staggering loss of life that never should have occurred in the 21st century.

Let us remember a quote from philosopher George Santayana—Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

RE: https://flipboard.com/@mercnews/top-stories-1g1nt4e5z/-/a-5NDsJiYDSp67CVJ_ZOmKGQ%3Aa%3A2034191127-%2F0

Cheetolini had his daddy’s doctor get him a #VietnamWar exemption on account of his “bone spurs”. so, of course, as the parasite nepobaby that he is, he truly believes he would have won the Vietnam War.

#Iran, #IranWar, #StraitOfHormuz, #IranianOil, #OilPrices, #GasPrices, #GulfOfTonkin, #Vietnam, #VietnamWar, #PoliticalCartoon, #EditorialCartoon, @Rattoons1776

https://crooksandliars.com/2026/04/strait-tonkin?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_content=114626