"You can kill 10 of our men for every one we kill of yours," resistance leader Ho Chi Minh told the French who ruled Vietnam as a colony in 1946. "But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win." Historians who describe this remark as directed toward France's successor oppressors in Southeast Asia (the U.S.) are mistaken — though the error is understandable. France was trying to save its empire at the same time colonialism was dying; the U.S. wanted to stop the spread of communism.

Over three decades, the Viet Minh defeated two vastly superior military forces, France and the U.S., because their civilian leaders sent them to war without war aims that were clear, realistic and widely internalized by their own citizens.

What went wrong was well understood after the fall of Saigon. "We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one," Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state and architect of the secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos, summarized. "We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion."

In the 1980s, as the U.S. recovered from the trauma of defeat, revisionists challenged the view of the war as a misbegotten quagmire. Right-wing veterans, ex-officials and pundits argued that the political class had "stolen defeat from the jaws of victory" by not killing or bombing even more. Ronald Reagan portrayed Vietnam as a "noble cause," as did movies like the "Rambo" series, where Sylvester Stallone's character declares, "I did what I had to do to win! But somebody wouldn't let us win!"

Military superiority allows you to kill people and destroy infrastructure with gleeful abandon, but it's not enough to win a war. That lesson unlearned, U.S. forces went on to make the same mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. enjoyed total air supremacy, sophisticated surveillance, well-trained and well-supplied conventional forces against Taliban militia fighters with small arms. The U.S. military claimed one tactical victory after another in battle. But American strategy was a mess.

George W. Bush's initial war aims were popular, clear and limited: Disrupt al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban. With only a few hundred al-Qaeda fighters left in the country by 2002, Bush's goals were easily accomplished. Rather than declare victory and leave, however, the U.S. expanded into unrealistic, amorphous nation-building exercises like propping up a centralized democratic government that excluded the Taliban who had the most support among Afghans, promoting women's rights, and building a self-sustaining national security force in a fragmented, tribal society with no history of strong central governance. Goals shifted as Barack Obama, and then Donald Trump, took power without a coherent, realistic strategy or well-defined exit criteria that defined what success would look like. The Taliban, on the other hand, had one simple, consistent war aim: Expel the invaders and reestablish their emirate. They were also determined, had sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan and the ability to outlast American political will.

In Iraq, the U.S. again won its initial 2003 invasion with superior technology, airpower and ground forces. One of America's initial missions, however, was impossible to accomplish: After deposing Saddam Hussein, seize his WMDs. Which did not exist. Unlike with the Afghan War, American voters quickly lost faith in Bush's claim that Iraq posed a threat. A lengthy occupation brought about new goals: installing a stable democracy in a deeply divided country with sectarian tensions. The U.S. created a power vacuum filled by insurgency, civil war and ultimately a million dead people.

The Soviets in Afghanistan and the French in Algeria both lost for similar reasons despite enjoying overwhelming military superiority. You can blow up buildings and pump holes through human beings with terrifying efficiency, but you will still lose in the end without clear, realistic and popular war aims.

In its first five weeks, the joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has already failed to fulfill the war aims checklist, and spectacularly so.

Trump's stated goals for attacking Iran include eliminating imminent threats from the regime, destroying its long-range ballistic missiles and production facilities, annihilating its navy, preventing nuclear weapon development and stopping support for proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. As with Iraq's WMDs, several of these goals are unrealistic because they cannot be accomplished. There was/is no imminent threat from Iran. There is no Iranian nuclear weapons program. There are no Iranian intercontinental missiles. The proxy relationship has always been loosely knit. Polls show there is no buy-in for any of this from the American electorate.

Reading past the increasingly desperate and hysterical tone of his messaging, Trump's current top war aim is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Which was open before the war. When your goal is the status quo ante bellum, you have lost.

Furthermore, Trump's latest objective is unachievable: Emmanuel Macron said, "Some people defend the idea of freeing the Strait of Hormuz by force via a military operation." The French president continued: "This was never the option we have supported because it is unrealistic. It would take forever and would expose all those who go through the Strait to risks from the Revolutionary Guards but also ballistic missiles."

Unless he uses nuclear weapons, eliminating Iran's ability to launch missiles at the Strait of Hormuz would require a sustained, nationwide air and special operations campaign, and securing inland provinces as well as a coastal strip, which would require hundreds of thousands of combat troops — which the Pentagon does not have. Seizing the coast or islands like Kharg could not restore safe passage to shipping through the Strait.

Trump brags that Operation Epic Fury has "struck 13,000 targets, damaged over 85% of Iran's defense industrial base, destroyed the majority of Iran's ballistic missiles and destroyed 16 entire classes of Iranian warships."

All that may be true.

But it won't matter.

Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the brand-new "What's Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems." He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.

Photo credit: The New York Public Library at Unsplash