Vietnam didn't move on! That's the one thing they most certainly did not do. For decades the Viet refused to move on until they won. After they won, they then fought a war with China and another proxy war with America.
The Viet do not move on. They stick to their guns. Or feces covered bamboo sticks, or any weaponizable itsm they have on hand.
Nor did the Afghanis. They just kept at it until they won.
In fact, giving up and moving on is what just about only the peace loving Serbs did.
Vietnam won decisively and Serbia lost decisively; measured in destruction it was incomparably worse for Vietnam, but they have no outstanding border conflicts while experiencing peaceful economic development and national sovereignty since the last war in 1979. When your story has a happy ending (and your government needs the US to counterbalance China) it's a lot easier to move on.
This is essentially the reverse of former Yugoslavia where things were fairly placid from 1945-1980 then fell apart.
There's a tendency to equate the grievances of a generation with immutable national character because it makes analysis easy and change impossible. But this gets used for purposes of denigration of peoples or excuses for policy failures, if not by race and culture, then by economic class and individual good fortune.
I'm guessing you were born to educated professionals who immigrated or helped you do so, rather than say, grew up in a refugee camp with a non-citizen passport.
Vietnam, the US war, was dought in South Vietnam against local insurgents and regular North Vietnamese forces. It ended with a formal peace treaty, in which the US agreed to withdraw all troops, not send further military aid to the South, return prisoners, remove mines from North Vietnamese harbours and pay, even if called differently, reparations. Vietnam was pretty much a war the US lost, and one that was not exclusively fought against insurgents.
The US won zero strategic goals, Vietnam was reunited by force under the communist North. The US goal was to orevent exactly that. Nice spin so, calling Vietnam a defacto strategic victory for the US.
And Afghanistan, seriously? Before, anti-Talobam forces controlled at least parts of zue country. Nowy the Taliban are in full controll after they over ran Kabul following a hasty retreat of NATO forces from the country, that is as clear cut a loss as it gets. Had the US led coalition left after Bin-Laden was killed, one could have declared a victory. By staying and tuening the whole affaire into a foreign occupation without clearly defined goals, the US-led coalition could only loose. And they did.
My understanding from historians is that, whether or not the goal was right, it may have been an impossible situation.
Wars are politics and end only with a stable political settlement; without that, they can go on indefinitely - such as in Afghanistan recently.
Like Afghanistan, there was nobody in Vietnam that could run the country, politically, except the North Vietnamese. All the US could do was build someone else's capability, which wasn't working (in Vietname or Afghanistan) or fight indefinitely.
You guys won Vietnam. You just didn't achieve the best possible outcome. Really, Vietnam had a thriving economy by that time, growing industry in several cities, but after the war the country was nothing for a really long time. You bombed them into stone age, so it didn't even matter whether the country was communist, democratic or whatever else at that point.
There are two ways to win a war. Kill everyone on the other side, or make them want to stop enough to do what you want. The NVA wanted the US to leave, and to occupy the south. They got what they wanted. Of course after the US pulled out; that was what the NVA wanted. They certainly didn't look outclassed as they rolled into Saigon and took over.
The Viet do not move on. They stick to their guns. Or feces covered bamboo sticks, or any weaponizable itsm they have on hand.
Nor did the Afghanis. They just kept at it until they won.
In fact, giving up and moving on is what just about only the peace loving Serbs did.
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