Evwryone loses Viet Nam. And Afghanistan. They've got plot armour. In 200,000 years, when humanity is gone, the planet is solely populated by uplifted mantises and a life form that evolved from Shamrock Shake residue, the mantis capitals will be HCMC and Kabul.
Afghanistan being the graveyard of Empires is kind of an exaggerated. It's cope for losing in Afghanistan by USA.
Historically Afghanistan was part of countless empires going back to antiquity, often for long stretches of time. The British lost in 1842 but then they came immediately back to do a genocide in retribution and left, they would later invade in the 1878 and occupy it for about 40 years, only pulling out in the context of post WW1 stuff. The sclerotic late Soviet Union did quite badly, but also the Mujahideen were getting billions in aid and weapons from the USA. Even then the national government lasted a couple of years (even outliving the Soviet Union) but collapsed in the 90s, in part because they couldn't trade with the USSR anymore.
It’s unlikely that the average American even knows that china fought Vietnam shortly after the US lost, or that it was Vietnamese communists who stopped Pol Pot’s genocide. I’m 90% sure what they’re thinking is that China lost the civil war because the KMT retreated to Taiwan lol