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The US did famously well against groups with just guns and IEDs.
That stint in the Middle East was a quick 20 min adventure.
Vietnam turned out to just be a tropical vacation.
There's no Viet Cong in Texas. I don't see Meal Team 6 dig tunnels in the thick Texan jungle.
Yes and no. We played that game by rules only we abided by.
Had we gone in and stayed without those rules, it would've been over within a year. But then we'd have committed a genocide and would be ruthless savages.
I feel that's some hubris chief. Similar to Vietnam the military objective was met, but the reason for war, and so the victory conditions, are the political objective. We failed those. And breaking our rules does not de-motivate the insurgency or move us to the political objective. Let's remember that one of those is a democracy and US ally in government in those countries.
We did not exhaust all options in Vietnam either, we tried to achieve a near impossible victory while restraining the level of violence we could achieve.
The Soviets didn't exactly hold back in Afghanistan...
Apples and oranges