How do you know if you are winning a war?

The Americans in Vietnam never did develop a coherent set of performance indicators to assess their progress (or otherwise) towards victory. Even something as basic as what to make of captured weapons was problematic.

When I was in South Vietnam in 1974, there was a discussion on how to assess the significance of the captured Viet Cong weapons. If a large cache of weapons were located, did this mean that the area was swarming with Viet Cong and so the war was going badly? Did the Viet Cong feel so confident about victory that they did not mind losing weapons because they knew they could always get more?

Alternatively, if a large cache were located did this mean that the war was going well for the US because the Viet Cong were losing their precious weapons and so were gradually being disarmed? Did their loss of weapons suggest that they were dispirited and walking away from the war and wanting to return home?

The US never did work out how to assess the significance of captured weapons.

The Vietnam War was unlike anything the US had been involved in the 20th century. It was more like the Indian Wars in the middle of the 19th century. Westmoreland was a brave and gifted soldier (he was the top of his year at West Point). But he was unprepared for this new type of guerrilla warfare.

Thirty years ago, the US was driven out of South Vietnam. It seems hard to imagine the US ever being driven out of Iraq so dramatically. But, then, I was in the US Embassy in Saigon nine months before the US was forced to exit and so if someone had predicted that the US would be forced out, I would not have believed it. The unthinkable can happen.

Guerrilla warfare is a new form of warfare. It is very different from the conventional wars of recent centuries. In Iraq, since we do not know if we are winning, there may be increasing pressure at home to pull out of what seems to be an “unwinnable” war.