Problem
Excerpt from George Ball's Dissenting Opinion, 1965
A Losing War: The South Vietnamese are losing the war to the Viet Cong. No one can assure you that we can beat the Viet Cong or even force them to the conference table on our terms, no matter how many hundred thousand white, foreign (U.S.) troops we deploy.
No one has demonstrated that a white ground force of whatever size can win a guerrilla war-which is at the same time a civil war between Asians-in jungle terrain in the midst of a population that refuses cooperation to the white forces (and the South Vietnamese) and thus provides a great intelligence advantage to the other side.
Once we suffer large casualties, we will have started a well-nigh irreversible process. Our involvement will be so great that we cannot-without national humiliation-stop short of achieving our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives-even after we have paid terrible costs.
Use the excerpts from George Ball's dissenting opinion to answer the question.
Which was Ball's opinion of the U.S. containment strategy in Vietnam?