It's important to remember that ISIS itself is not a single entity, it is made up of several distinct parts, the reason they have proved effective so far is that they have recruited Sunni ex Iraqi army, particularly in their officer cadre, they have also gained massive support from Sunni tribes in Iraq who have spent the last few years being treated like dirt by the idiot Shia 'we' left in charge in Iraq.
The extreme Islamic part of ISIS is the Syrian foreign part, run by the religious and political leadership, the ex Baathist officers and Iraqi tribes basically want to win Iraq back, or at least the Sunni areas, and you can't really blame them as they have been treated abysmally by Malki and the Shia, but they arnt historically particularly Islamic, this likely just a convenient flag to achieve their more limited aims under.
The real parallel with Vietnam is not US strategy but the US's utter misunderstanding of the country, history and culture of the people they are trying to 'help', along with their inability to believe that not everyone in the world wants to live like them.
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