The Vietnam War lasted 10 years, cost America 58,000 lives, and over a trillion dollars adjusted for inflation.

It brought down a president, stirred social unrest, and ended in defeat.

No one in hindsight believes fighting a losing war is ever worth the cost.

Consequently, the Vietnam War is usually written off as a colossal strategic blunder and a humanitarian disaster.

Yet historical praises might have been much different had the Vietnam War followed the pattern of the Korean War, which United States fought for almost identical reasons, the fence of freedom in Asia.

The US had military advisers in Vietnam during the 1950s but didn't become involved in a major way until 1963.

President John F. Kennedy firmly believed in the domino effect, the foreign policy theory that vulnerable nations without help would fall one after another,

like dominoes to external communist aggression.

Kennedy thus hoped to stop Soviet and Chinese back communist invasions, and the manner President Harry Truman had in Korea by taking a stand in Vietnam.

As with Korea was the war the United States did not seek, as with Korea Vietnam presented no imperial advantages, no natural resources, or resources of any kind that the United States needed to protect or wish to obtain.

As with Korea the aggressor was the communist government in the North intent on taking control of the South, and its military crossed an internationally recognized border to do so.

Following Kennedy's assassination in November of 1963, President Lyndon Johnson vastly escalated America's role in 1964.

But even as he did so, Johnson prosecuted the war with deepened vividence, authorizing significantly more troops and money for the war, but never pushing for total victory.

In contrast, the North Vietnamese never wavered. They ignored every one of Johnson's many offers to negotiate a settlement.

By 1971 the war was at a stalemate, neither side able to establish a clear advantage.

The President Richard Nixon pursued a two-pronged strategy to turn over combat operations to the South Vietnamese and to bomb North Vietnam.

The effort brought the communists to the Paris peace talks, and by 1973 the North agreed to a general settlement, establishing two autonomous Vietnamese nations, one communist, one non-communist, in the manner of North and South Korea.

However, the Watergate scandal, the subsequent resignation of President Nixon and the Democrats sweeping congressional victory in the 1974 midterm election, all helped to convince the North Vietnamese that America would not enforce the peace agreement.

They were right. Without US air support and material aid, the South Vietnamese had no chance against the North.

While supplied by the Soviet Union, the Chinese, the communists gained full control with the country in April 1975.

The war proved far more costly than Korea because the geography and landscapes of Vietnam were far more conducive to insurgency operations.

There were also far more restrictions placed on American commanders and during the Korean War.

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