Vietnam 2

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A lot of people will tell you, some seem happy about it, that we lost the war in Vietnam.

No one would say that Robert E. Lee's victory at Chancellorsville meant that we lost "the Chancellorsville War". It is recognized as the loss of a battle. The Union won the Civil War.

Since then wars have become larger and so have the battles. The Allies lost the Battle of France in WWII. No one said that they lost the "French War". Similarly the Allies won the Battle of Britain.

It seems to me that the conflict in Vietnam was part and parcel of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. It lasted 45 years and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and an American Victory. Consider the following thought experiment. If it had not been for the Cold War, would we have been in Vietnam? I believe that the answer is clearly no.

Therefore, the argument should be about why we chose to fight a battle on such "bad ground" as Vietnam was. But Vietnam was not the "war that we were fighting", it was only a part of the larger Cold War.

Vietnam was a battle, which we lost, in the Cold War, which we won.
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