At least with Vietnam...

... no one genuinely believed that sending actual advisers--as opposed to 'advisers', i.e. battalions and freighters of weapons--would have made any difference at all.

The Obama plan for the cities: 

The Obama administration is sending dozens of federal officials to work in the city halls of six struggling cities for a year to try to help them solve some of their most intractable problems. The goal is to help local officials tap federal funds and leverage local and regional resources. The officials will provide technical and planning expertise to assist cities in carrying out the initiatives. "We need to provide assistance and support, not just mandates," U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said Monday in Detroit, one of the cities to get federal help.

I like that the nonsense discourse of welfare reform (oh how I missed you) has crept its way back into fashion: 'we need to provide assistance and support, not just______'. You can insert the missing word of your choice: handouts, jobs, compassion, grapefruit. We see the same thing with those hawking structural unemployment theories of the recession: people with skills that two years ago were in high-demand are now woefully obsolete, and should develop other, unidentified skills, that are in no greater demand than the skills they have at present.

But then the article identifies the specific problems on which these advisers are going to be advising:

"arcane federal regulations or an inability to contact the right people were all that stood between Detroit and much-needed aid. "We found they had millions in federal block grants that they either were not using or not using in the best way," Mr. Donovan said.

So, to be clear, the problems for which Detroit and other depressed cities [1] are going to be provided advice are ones that are largely the fault of the Federal government in the first place. Perhaps they could streamline these regulations, rather than send advisers to tell fully-capable men and women how to navigate the labyrinth.

And then, of course, the kicker:

The federal officials will try to persuade local philanthropic organizations and the private sector to provide similar expertise to the cities after the year is up and officials leave.

We re-create, at every level, the doff-your-cap economy, where all are dependent upon access to the 'expertise' of the rentiers, which consists primarily of knowing how to contact the right people.[2]

[1] Not just any depressed city, but ones that " have shown an ability to execute community programs, attract business and collaborate with other public and private sector players." That is, cities where public services and facilities have been gutted, where the tax code is intentionally manipulated to provide (unproductive, good old-fashioned rentier style) rent to businesses and land-developers, who in turn deploy the arts of petulance and cynicism (in the form of blackmail) whenever anyone suggests that a market system dependent upon constantly distorting the regulatory and tax framework for private persons and enterprises does not exactly merit the mantle of 'free market' in which they righteously wrap themselves.
[2] "An inability to contact the right people" reminds me of an explanation I once heard for why the unemployed, under-employed, and people who were unable to land/afford a prestigious internship or promising job-track right out of school had only themselves to blame. If they had just contacted the right people, doors would have opened up.