It's clear that a lot of people still don't see the forest, for the trees.
The Vietnam war was a battle in a larger war. That's important to remember.
Who was it that said it's no good to win the battle if the war is lost? Sun Tzu? I'm not sure anyone was able to really consciously understand this, but Regan was the one who put the cold war to bed and he was only able to do so because of the groundwork that had been laid during the Vietnam war.
Look at it this way - in the Vietnam war, the US spent an enormous amount of money and lives into developing offensive tools. The first laser guide bombs and the SA-2 SAM are awesome examples. It wasn't until the first gulf war until these vietnam war innovations were finally put up against each other, with a victor crowned. In the end, the culmination of US offensive warfare developments completely dominated the defensive innovations of the Soviet Union. In the gulf war, a single F-15E was downed by an SA-2, a defensive weapon that was introduced to great effect in Vietnam and virtually un-improved through the 1990s. The scale of technological development made it clear that the Western model of progress could out-strip the soviet/communist model in the long term. The Iraqis had the hands-down best air defense system money could buy, second only to the indegenous systems fielded by the Chinese and the Soviets themselves. And we took it down in about one week with a handful of losses.
That's the victory of Vietnam - we set the stage for the cold war conflict, and the best of the West, both in economic terms (Germany reunification) and military terms (Gulf war 1) came out in clear favor of western doctrine. Vietnam was no more than a single battle in the cold war and as tragic as it was, our withdrawl there was a tactical defeat but a strategic victory. It bled resources from our opponent that could not be recovered, and it led our opponent down a path of defensive military innovation that would ultimately be surpassed by our economic and military progress.
Right or wrong, that's what happened. And it's happening again, with the same crowd of nay-sayers shouting how bad we are for caring enough to act with decisive power. Look at the headlines from 3 years ago, check out the headlines from a month after the 9/11 attacks, and check the headlines from the no-kidding front lines in Iraq. Then take a guess as to what history will say about all this. My guess is that history will say the proximate cause for the war was flawed, but the background reasoning was sound and the results will speak for themselves. If only more Americans would work FOR something instead of AGAINST every damn thing.
