Vietnam was the first modern asymmetric war. Overwhelming military superiority simply did not translate into victory, and short of total genocide it could have never been otherwise. It is a shame that all those lessons were so easily &quot;unlearnt&quot; after a single successful campaign (Kuwait), resulting in the mess that were (and are) Iraq and Afghanistan today.<p>It&#x27;s weird: on one side, killing more people than your adversaries is not as important as it once was, but this means that conflicts are now harder to solve on the battlefield, so they tend to be longer and more bloody than before.