War, Football, and Realism: If Any, by Fred Reed. Good analysis of the Vietnam war and period, by someone who was both there and on the home front, and later became a military specialist and authority on mercenary soldiers.

Can America be defeated this way again? Unlikely. The all-voluntary military means that body bags will contain only elements of society that the ruling classes don’t care about. Wars now chiefly involve bombing enemies who have no way of fighting back. Reliance on drones means no casualties at all, and the use of robots in ground combat, long a pipe dream, is nearing reality. The media are under control. America still loses its wars in the sense of not getting what it wants, but the public doesn’t care and you cannot sap a drone’s will. Here is the lesson of Vietnam.