[mythrowaway0]

Indeed, one of its finest defeats. Vietnam was extremely complicated, both on the battlefield and off, and it's not my area of expertise; that being said, a lot of modern maneuvers planted their seeds in that soil.

Americans grew tired of Iraq when insurgents kept picking off a soldier every other day and there was little to show for their loss. Similar themes presented in the latter years of Vietnam, combined with a complicated political picture stateside. That's the success of an insurgency: attrition not of materiel, but the minds, resolve, and fortitude of a belligerent. That was certainly evident in Vietnam, as well, and it's a great parallel.

[rdl]

I've always been curious if the "problem" from the popular-support perspective was the casualties (which, while high, were not THAT high for the total force -- in Iraq, most were due to IEDs/rockets and spread over a large number; in Afghanistan they're a bit more concentrated on actual combat troops), or the lack of progress, or some combination.

There really was ~zero progress (net; there were some wins and some losses) from late-2003 to early-2007 in Iraq, overall, and from ~2003 to ~2009 in Afghanistan (the 2009 end date is questionable; I'm reluctant to say Afghanistan overall is better right now than it was right after the CIA/ODA 555 operations in late 2001, as described in First In by Gary Schroen).

I was in Iraq watching this and was a lot more critical of the way the US was fighting from 2003-2006 than of the actual casualty numbers.

It's certainly more rational to be more willing to take a few hundred casualties if it brings a quick victory than to endure long slow bleeding of thousands, but I don't know if popular opinion is rational. I think casualties-per-second are much higher in offensive operations than in purely static defense, though.