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Well when's the war? If it is the 70s or 80s, Iran probably wasn't below replacement level fertility, so this observation would be irrelevant. When did Iran slide under replacement level anyway. Are below replacement level occupiers less resilient as occupiers too?

Why would you say so, in particular? Iraq outperformed Iran throughout the entirety of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, and then the US easily beat Iraq. That does not make the Iranians look stellar or North Vietnam level.

Ooh, so that's a different one. A US invasion of Iran from the air and sea during the hostage crisis in 1979-1981? Or an invasion via Iraq alongside Iraq forces from 1980 onward? An occupation of Iran, and an insurgency there, after a failed rescue and execution of hostages or a successful...

What will enemy efforts and coalitions look like? In Lebanon, are both Iran and the USSR and Syrians supporting groups against the USA? What magnitude of US casualties would we be looking at and for how long? What potential for escalation would there be to bordering nations? Would there be any...

Well @WolfBear, @Agent23, @Skallagrim, @sillygoose, @Val the Moofia Boss - Considering what I outlined in post #23 - imagine the US gets to skip the Vietnam war or Indochina War. How it does is not important. I calculated the most likely next occasions for a similar style of involvement would...

Well, here is what you have to ask yourself about whether any candidate future war would become an equivalent for the US's Vietnam War, if there was no US Vietnam War. This would apply to the Angola situation, as well as any other. Why would the US intervene in this other country (that it did...

Maybe not then at that time time, but in later periods, it becomes an issue. Hence, not a good candidate for a substitute Vietnam. Around time of Bay of Pigs, a US intervention won't be nearly hard or long or lost as Vietnam, even if its not exactly easy or uncontroversial. From the time of the...

@edgeworthy and @WolfBear - the problem with Central America, and much of South America, is that no matter how stupid America gets, the mismatch in power between America and its opponents in those areas means that the opponents can be made to pay pretty much the whole price of it, and the...

It's easier to think of potential early before Vietnam "Vietnams" than later after Vietnam "Vietnams". Examples of the former would include direct large-scale US intervention in the Chinese Civil War in the late 1940s, or large-scale, prolonged, and unsuccessful US intervention in the Russian...

Why does Communist and Nationalist have to be a zero-sum choice for Ho Chi Minh. It clearly was not a zero sum choice. Stalin, Mao, and the Kim and Castro family dynasties all were capable of being ideological bigamists, ready to sleep with Maryanne (nationalism) *AND* Ginger (communism) for...