> There was nothing, militarily, keeping the US from executing a full scale ground invasion of Hanoi and decapitate the North Vietnamese regime. It’s likely the

> There was nothing, militarily, keeping the US from executing a full scale ground invasion of Hanoi and decapitate the North Vietnamese regime. It’s likely the US would have succeeded in that effort, much like it had 20 years earlier with invasions into German and Japanese held territories in WWII. That didn't happen. That's a militaristic fantasy. What Zinn is describing actually happened. This isn't a debate. > The risk of the US putting full effort into the Vietnam was not that the US would lose, it was that US would find its self in a direct armed conflict with other nuclear equipped powers, and this would have set off events leading to a global nuclear war. Mutually Assured Destruction isn't "winning". Luckily that didn't happen either. We lost.