Quote:
Originally Posted by Dondilion
In all of this I believe we woefully underestimated the grit of Vietnamese people to rid themselves of foreign occupiers.
We looked and saw a thin, small guy in sandals and straw hat and said this
should be easy.
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See the epilogue to the movie 'We Were Soldiers,' where Mel Gibson as Lt. Col Hal Moore figures that out. Having studied the diary of a Vietnamese soldier he himself killed (in the movie at least), Gibson's character makes the pithy observation, "He had a life worth living, and he threw it away in an instant." The Colonel thus realizes that they were indeed up against the committed nationalism you mention, and that the US was committing itself to a war that could not be won.
But whether the real Hal Moore reached that thought at that time or not, it certainly made no difference.