Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

By that measure, fine, yes, the US strategy in Vietnam failed, and it was basically due to the fact they left.

It had nothing to do with 'bad measures' like 'body count' and nothing to do with military failures or ventures.

The misleading metric of 'body count' really didn't change the fact that the US wiped out the VC and destroyed most of the North's ability to fight.

Militarily it was a definitive victory for the US.

And then the US bailed and it fell apart.

Let's not confuse the fact it was a terrible and ugly war, with way too many civilian casualties with things like 'bad measures'.

The 'bad measures' of 'body count' did not create an existential problem for the US strategy, really.

If (1) everyone is highly effective in getting tasks done, and (2) working on tasks that are reasonably well prioritized by both technical risks and business value, why exactly do you need to know more?

There are legitimate reasons that a business may need a date. But making sure people are working harder than hard by beating them over the head with a date coughed out by a gantt chart is not one of the legitimate reasons.

It's hard to quantify the cost of the bad PR that comes from killing children and grannies.

The military objectives of defeating the VC and North Vietnamese were still outright successful...The 'failure' in Vietnam was a geopolitical one

The programming objectives were successful...the startup's failure was an economic one. Right here, we go up one level of abstraction, and we see the more fundamental failure. Does it really matter how good the code was, if your company goes bankrupt?

My point is - the two are separate issues.

No. One is a means. It's a form of implementation. I should sincerely hope you aren't all about "art for art's sake" when the "art" in question is military action and deadly force. As for the 2nd thing -- the actual goal, living up to values -- that gets to the crux of the true failure.

The now accepted view of 'body count was misleading' actually did not fundamentally affect military outcomes. It was a bad measure, but the US still one. It affected some things, maybe a 'shock' to public opinion, but it was not existential in terms of changing the military outcomes.

I went to a military academy for a boarding school. I had a 1903 Springfield rifle (disabled) locked to a rack in my room. I was taught by Vietnam vets. I think the majority of them would agree with many parts of your assessment, but I suspect at least some of them would be aghast at how you're missing the point. Does it matter how a military or a government achieves it's objectives? Unless you think the ends justify the means, yes it does. Does it matter if the actions align with your values? Yes it does.

You, yourself, have noted how the repercussions have reverberated down the years, but I'm not sure you're correctly interpreting what that means.

In a way, it's the same sort of mistake made by the worst of the authoritarian SJWs. Let's say you use technically legal force, bureaucratic pressure, and bad PR tactics to frighten and coerce people into doing what you want, but in doing so you convince nobody while violating a bunch of values, principles, and feelings -- what does that actually get you? It gets you further from the underlying goal. By the same token, let's say you use military force and kill or frighten everyone opposed to your client state, what does that really get you? If you've turned enough of the populace against you, it gets you less than what you had before.

In 2018, winning is through convincing, not coercing.