>>110015There is a reason we don't really call that a war in America. A war has clear objectives which you must attain in order to consider the war "won" or "lost".
For example, if it came down to destroying Northern Vietnam and taking over control of the country, we would have succeeded easily. This may have led to a war with China, however, and it wasn't our aim. So our goal was just to maintain a status quo. We did this until we decided not to do it any more. The day we pulled out the South was overrun.
It may seem like I am splitting hairs here, but if we had cause to simply maintain indefinitely like we were, we would still be doing it to this day. The problem with the Vietnam conflict is that it was a politically motivated action which would never have a clear winner. In marking our retreat many feel we lost. In reality by no longer wasting resources in a situation which was hardly even representative of our national goal to stop the spread of communism we won.
You don't really think the both Russia and the United States "lost" to Afghanistan, do you? When the goal is no longer straight defeat or conquest, no superpower can really win because they cannot commit to the actions necessary to win a real war.
