Yes, Washington did lose the Vietnam War, which is why it didn't do another big, long, and expensive war like that till 2003. Nearly thirty years is a pretty long time to go without a big invasion in the history of an empire.
One of the reasons that US troops are dying in Iraq is that their country is run by conservatives who think that America could and should have won the Vietnam War (but for Jane Fonda, et al). :-0 Another reason is that liberals among the power elite feel that, while America didn't win the war, it won the peace afterward -- so there was no real loss . . . to them.
Still and all, the Vietnam War marked the beginning of the long decline of US hegemony:
<blockquote>The Vietnam War and the refusal of the administration of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to pay for it and its Great Society programs through taxation resulted in an increased dollar outflow to pay for the military expenditures and rampant inflation, which led to the deterioration of the U.S. balance of trade position. In the late 1960s, the dollar was overvalued with its current trading position, while the deutschmark and the yen were undervalued; and, naturally, the Germans and the Japanese had no desire to revalue and thereby make their exports more expensive, whereas the U.S. sought to maintain its international credibility by avoiding devaluation. Meanwhile, the pressure on government reserves was intensified by the new international currency markets, with their vast pools of speculative capital moving around in search of quick profits.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference></blockquote>
The hollowing out of the US economy doesn't concern either liberals or conservatives in the power elite, though -- unlike American workers, their fortune is not tied to it.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>