[WATCH]: The Vietnam War: Reasons for Failure - Why the US Lost

In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted, "First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous." Some have suggested that "the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress..." Alternatively, the

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