"In every case communism has thrived,"

Huh? Communism has not thrived. China, by far the largest practioner of communism, has basically given it up (though they haven't flocked to mirror a U.S. style economy, either.) North Korea may be the exception, though I would argue it is less communist than radically totalitarian (some would argue the two go hand in hand). Vietnam has been slowly but surely de-communizing. Cuba is another odd exception. And both North Korea and Cuba are far from their 'glory days' and don't command any type of world attention, let alone emulation. But the *biggest* communist threat, the Soviet Union, is history. And the way we 'played' those smaller wars played a large part in the larger victory.

For almost 5 decades, both the left and the right 'mainstreams' (and the presidents) more or less agreed on a policy of the 'waiting game' and limiting the escalation of smaller/proxy wars. In the end we had neither the Nuclear Holocaust so many thought was inevitable, not even the Soviet invasion of Western Europe, which was central to our military planning. "With hindsight" I'd say it took a long time and a lot of lives, but compared to alternative outcomes, the U.S. muddled its way to a pretty good outcome.