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I think his flippant dismissal of those two wars was perhaps poorly worded, but the point stands.
The USA could have obliterated Vietnam or Afghanistan if it had wanted. In many ways, it did! You can do a whole "yadda yadda soft people didn't have the guts to glass vietnam so they lost haha" but it's not a very useful lesson.
The USA lost the war due to politics and modern beliefs about the justification around ultra-violence. A USA where the people had the morals of Ghengis Khan would have won Vietnam.
And saying the USA are "weak men" because they "lost" Vietnam or didn't have the balls to genocide them (technical victory) or whatever is pointless, because the American Army could still absolutely demolish any other army on the planet easily. So "haha USA loses wars" has literally 0 predictive power as to whether or not the USA can kick your ass.
I don't know about Vietnam, but the Soviets went all-out scorched Earth in Afghanistan and still lost, despite their military having no concept of "war crime", and not having to worry one iota about how the optics would play back home.
This whole "we wulda won if we actually tried" rationalization comes dangerously close to cope.
You're also forgetting the context of the Cold War. North Vietnam was supported by two nuclear-armed superpowers. Nuking Hanoi wasn't some free action that would be totally devoid of consequences. The US wouldn't have done it even if they wanted to.
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America's Imperial wars of the past 100 years are best compared against various efforts to control uncontrollable hinterlands which were a constant feature of imperial history among the ancients. The Persians tried to subdue the Scythians, Varus tried to conquer the Germans, Pharaohs seemed to send an army to disappear into the south periodically, a powerful Chinese emperor would try to subdue the steppe. It's always part of the imperial rhythm to try to control economically marginal hinterlands, with mixed success.
I'm sure there's a term in military theory for what I'm talking about, but we're stuck in a thinking about wars that is primarily about peer wars, and we've lost concepts like the raid and the punitive expedition, which were much more common throughout most of history.
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