Wilfred Burchett had already written a book about Vietnam:

The book he wrote after his first two visits to the Liberated Zones, Vietnam: Inside Story of the Guerilla War (International Publishers, New York, 1965) concludes with this short sentence: “The best they [the Americans] can do is to go home.” Vietnam Will Win confirms that.

Unfortunately, it took another seven years (1968-75) of death and devastation – and the extension of the war into Cambodia and Laos – for the U.S. to finally leave Vietnam in ignominy in April 1975. So here, chapter by chapter, Wilfred Burchett exposes the futility of fighting a people united in their struggle for independence, liberty and unity. It also explains, soberly and factually, why they were winning and how they won.

George Burchett, Hanoi.

Here we go with Taking On The Pentagon:

I asked if the battle of Chu Lai, which started on August 18, 1965, the first big confrontation between NLF and U.S. forces, which the U.S. Marines claimed as the “biggest victory of the war” with “600 Vietcong killed,” was an example of the NLF forces being caught “off-balance.”

“On the contrary,” replied Chan, “despite what the Marines claimed, we regard the Van Thong battle, which the Marines call Chu Lai, as another ‘Ap Bac’ demonstration that we can beat the Americans. It showed that with correct tactics we could stand up to the best, from their viewpoint, that they could hurl against us. We hit the Marines so hard at Van Tuong that they have practically never budged since. After that one battering of their elite troops, the Americans in fact had to change the whole strategy of their invasion force.

Really?

I had brought with me some newspaper clippings of the American versions of several battles, including that at Ban Bang, and I had never seen Nguyen Huu Tho and his aides laugh so uproariously as when the President read them, translating the highlights into Vietnamese, noting especially the reports on Ban Bang. According to the first official American version, a battalion of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division had been engaged in a battle that “raged all day” and American losses were “light.”

The Pentagon and media lied then and lie today. Why does America lose wars? Esprit de corps and the flexibility of small squads has been described as one of America's greatest advantages in WWII:

“One of the greatest weaknesses of the Americans, judged by the Bau Bang battle, is the lack of creative leadership of the officers, their inability to adapt themselves quickly to surprise situations, and the lack of esprit de corps among the men. This was something especially noted by our troops. In tough situations where success or defeat depends on men acting as a unit, they have an ‘every man for himself’ attitude which is perhaps a reflection of their individualistic social system, but in military situations is disastrous.

“The greatest difference between their troops and ours, however, is ideological,”

Motivation? The will to win?

Traditions are no substitute for ideology. Recalling the past in purely military terms could not inject the quality of morale which our politically conscious soldiers have to a high degree, and this was manifest in all stages of the action. In addition, the greater part of enemy troops killed were young men in their early 20s. We learned this from their personal documents. Despite the division’s traditions, individually the men had had no previous combat experience, and collectively they had no cause for which to sacrifice themselves. Our men were burning to get to grips with the enemy, while the latter dreaded the face-to-face encounter. Thus, despite their equipment, much of it our equipment now, they could not withstand the withering attacks of our troops.”

Poor leadership?

“Of all the surprises the Americans have brought with them,” Chau stated, “the biggest and most agreeable for us is the great disparity between the high quality of the equipment and the poor quality of strategic and tactical command of the officers and men. With us it is just the opposite, and we believe that the decisive factor is men and morale and correct leadership.”

Incorrect leadership or duplicitous goals?

Furthermore, motivation of troops must be taken into account. If the deepest desire of most U.S. soldiers was never to see a live “Vietcong” at close quarters, the deepest desire of most NLF soldiers was to confront live Americans at close quarters. Virtually every one of them had what they call some personal “blood debts to settle.” They wanted to settle accounts for villages bombed and relatives killed by the faceless, unreachable enemy that streaked down from the skies and disappeared back into the blue; for family members arrested, tortured, executed according to lists and orders drawn up over the years by American advisers sitting in air conditioned Saigon offices. Most NLF fighters had an accumulation of personal hatred that they wanted to get out of their systems in a very personal way. They had felt frustrated for years at never getting to grips with the real enemy, and welcomed the chance when tactics dictated hand-to-hand fighting as the best way of preventing the enemy from using his planes and artillery.

More troops vesus absolute supremacy on the political and moral front:

When I asked President Nguyen Huu Tho how he viewed the possibility of the Pentagon increasing its forces to 500,000 or more, he replied as follows: “We believe the strength of an army in time of war is composed of a great number of factors of which the determinant ones are political and moral. We have absolute supremacy over the Americans on the political and moral front. Our entire people wage this war and do not shrink from any difficulty or sacrifice. We are also stronger than the Americans in other fundamental aspects of the struggle, such as our strategic position, our rear areas, our actual conduct of the war. Our ground forces are superior to theirs; these are factors
that decide the outcome on the battlefield. Although the Americans are strong in material and equipment, they also have fundamental weaknesses, politically and materially, strategically and tactically.

Stretched too thin or no achievable goal?

“Because of their overseas commitments and their policy of world domination, total American power is not unlimited. The fact that they are engaged in a war of aggression thousands of miles from their own country, their inability to transform any part of our territory into a stable base for themselves, represents serious weakness…

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/19/vietnam-will-win-taking-on-the-p...

I have merely pulled out a few highlights and encourage you to read the whole article for depth and clarity. I suspect the remaining articles will include additional revelations and parallels.