re: Could any strategy have worked in Vietnam?

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The Viet Cong was mainly in the south and in Cambodia.

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Well, that's where the entire war was except for U.S. bombing in North Vietnam.

This myth the VC were all Southern communists is a lot of bunk, too. Maybe there was a plurality, perhaps, although I doubt it, a slight majority of membership from the South, but a huge number and particularly the leadership were infiltrators sent down from the North via the Ho Chi Minh trail.

On the political side, a hardline Catholic regime in the South wasn't really smart. No question that Diem was our man in Saigon and was a virulent anti-Communist, but
he was corrupt to the core and did not understand his own folks. His successors were increasingly ineffective.