How to lose a war without losing

It has happened. Consider Viet Nam or any other war that ended with occupation. If the locals were unwilling to be occupied, all they had to do was wait out the occupier while he suffered the proverbial death by a thousand cuts. This quote is worth considering:

It may be an apocryphal story, but it is told that after the American evacuation from Vietnam in 1975 an embittered American Colonel told a North Vietnamese officer, “You know, you never beat us in a single tactical engagement.” The North Vietnamese responded, “That may be true, but it is also irrelevant.”


Center for Defense Information