The Vietnam war killed close to a million Vietnamese between North and South Vietnamese civilians and the Vietcong [1]

The Afghanistan war killed about 3500 U.S. & allied soldiers, and about 300,000 Afghans. [2]

The Iraq war killed about 5000 U.S. & allied soldiers, and about 1 million Iraqis. [3]

U.S. military power since WW2 can basically be summed up by "We can't win, but we can still kill you." If you end up dead, your side may win, but that's cold comfort (literally) for you.

The root of the discrepancy is the difference between winning as in annihilating your opponent and winning as in getting them to do what you want. Oftentimes, military force and lots of deaths actually just entrenches opposing ideology. Nothing like a common enemy that's trying to kill you to get people to band together. But you can still end up with a lot of dead people that are ideologically victorious. Always more people where they came from, and people may switch over to your cause.

Also, the huge irony of the Vietnam war is that by 1989, 15 years after the North Vietnamese "won", Vietnam was one of the most intensely capitalist countries on Earth. Because they realized that communism didn't work, and they'd all be better off with free trade and markets. Given the US's stated goal of preventing the spread of communism in southeast Asia, they would've been far more effective just letting the communists win and run the country for a few years and then dealing with the consequences of that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20241203211818/https://ucdp.uu.s...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Yeah but they're still independent.

> U.S. military power since WW2 can basically be summed up by "We can't win, but we can still kill you." If you end up dead, your side may win, but that's cold comfort (literally) for you.

Some of them, yes. But even for those who do die: haven't you heard "give me liberty or give me death"? Many people do feel this way.

> Also, the huge irony of the Vietnam war is that by 1989, 15 years after the North Vietnamese "won", Vietnam was one of the most intensely capitalist countries on Earth.

Yet where is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie? Why do Vietnamese billionaires not run the government like they do that of America, and why does their government not have to kowtow to American business interests like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea do? Because despite opening up their economy, their political system is far from a liberal democracy. You're making a false equivalence to try and pretend that the Vietnamese war was a no-op, that they should have just rolled over and accepted defeat like you're suggesting all the peoples of the world do.