With regard to Viet Nam, Corson was not alone. Most Officers and NCOs knew it was a doomed effort and many had figured that out by mid-1966 -- some even a earlier. They understood that there was to be no win, that the Government of South Viet Nam did not have the backing of most of the nation (neither did the VC or the North, the bulk of the populace just wanted to be left alone...). Most also knew the Army wasn't doing it right and that US political squabbling wasn't helping...

Nor did that knowledge remain confined to griping or bull sessions, those thoughts were officially and in-writing surfaced by many to their Bosses and up the chain until they hit the Party Line when they got buried in smoke and mirrors, can't have the Institution besmirched with dissent.

Much as is currently the case in Afghanistan and was the case in Iraq. War is an extension of politics, in our case, that's generally US domestic politics which overrule any foreign policy considerations. There are a lot of good, honest people in the Armed Forces and they know a bum hand when they see it, they are not afraid to surface that, they did it in Korea, they did it in Viet Nam as well as in the two more current operations but the services are heirarchial institutions -- when you get to the Bishops and the Cardinals, theology outweighs common sense or concern for the parishioners; survival of the institution means more than a few lives or a bunch of money. That's harsh but it's reality.

To return to the thread, the CAP program was a good program but it suffered from two significant limitations back in the day and neither of those problems has gone or will go away. It is not possible to routinely, uniformly and reliably aid or extricate (in itself a bad message...) the Squads / Teams or even ODAs in event of overwhelming attack. Far more importantly, there will never be enough people to use the technique in any nation or area of much size. One could, of course, rotate among areas of concern and play Whack a Mole -- we're pretty good at that.

An added consideration on that last is that not everyone is psychologically equipped to operate in that mode among a local populace that is poorly understood and with wildly different social norms. CAP was a throwback to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. That entailed using Marines whose standard of living back home was not far removed from that of the local people amongst whom they lived in those countries. Those days and that standard of US living for most were long gone by the time the program was instituted in VN -- they're even further behind us today...