Old Blue:

As you say, the VC were broken by Tet and later some of them came to believe that was the real objective of Tet in the first place. “Throw the round eyes into the sea, and if that don’t work at least they will clean out the non-NVA elements for us, which otherwise might be a problem when we take over.”

Interesting statistic I recall: The North Vietnamese invasion of the South in 1975 employed more vehicles than the Nazi invasion of France in 1940.

So much for the brave little guys in black PJ’s running us out of there.

And as for the question of invading or not invading Iraq, I want to ask the opponents “What would you have done?” The sanctions were falling apart, Saddam had bribed everyone and his brother (the truth of all that still has to come out) and the existance of Batthist Iraq would have led to calls to look the other way
relative to Iran’s ambitions.

And aside from that, you may have to eat an elephant one bite at a time, but you still have to get started at some point.

There is a real analogy between our past policies in the Middle East and our extended refusal to allow drilling for oil on our own property. You can screw around with no strategy for just so long.