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Afghanistan: Think South Vietnam in 1965
President Barack Obama last week announced that he was ordering an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan, more than half the reinforcements that ground commanders have been seeking for months. By providing that half a loaf, the new president hopes to buy some time to absorb and analyze new strategic studies of a protracted, long-neglected war that's been going south on us at an alarming pace.
America's ground commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. David McKiernan, welcomed the news of the reinforcements that'll be on their way this spring and summer, but in a frank assessment of the situation, he said that we are ''at best stalemated'' in the war against a resilient, home-grown enemy that's proving to be very adaptable and dangerous.
McKiernan added, in what may be an understatement, that, ''Even with these additional forces, I have to tell you that 2009 is going to be a tough year.'' Providing even the 17,000 additional U.S. troops will impose new stresses on the Army and Marines, who have to provide those forces while Iraq continues to suck up most of our military manpower and a huge chunk of the Pentagon budget.
McKiernan said the additional U.S. forces would be sent to southern Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces are stalemated in their war with Taliban insurgents. He added that he hoped the reinforcements would allow him to make less use of U.S. airpower.
The shortage of ground troops has forced commanders to rely on American airstrikes in areas where they're the only option to fight the Taliban.
The airstrikes are blamed for increased civilian casualties, which have angered the very population we want on our side.
The White House has signaled that it needs time to develop a comprehensive AfghanistanPakistan strategy, one that relies less on military firepower and pays more attention to nation-building in the war-ravaged country and diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan's neighbors.
It's been eight years since the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban government in the wake of 9/11 -- eight years of neglecting what arguably is the more important Afghanistan-Pakistan theater while former President George W. Bush diverted our resources and our attention to his war of choice in Iraq.
While our eyes were turned toward Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan has grown ever worse. The government of President Hamid Karzai has succeeded only in taking the definition of corruption to a new low as his country has burnished its credentials as the world's largest producer of opium and heroin.
The Taliban now hold sway in two-thirds of the country, feeding on their share of the narcotics trade and operating from safe havens across the border in Pakistan. The insurgents are drawing ever closer to Kabul, operating with impunity within a dozen miles of the capital.
Although the Bush administration's stated goal in Afghanistan was victory over the rebels and the creation of a functioning democracy, it starved the effort of money and troops and turned a blind eye to the spread of opium poppy fields and the narcotics trade.
What's desperately needed now are a far more subtle definition of what constitutes success in Afghanistan and a simultaneous injection of aid projects to improve the lot of a population that's endured more than three decades of war and civil war.
The greatest need of all is an exit strategy that takes into account the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by neighbors, some of them predatory, who have a keen interest in the outcome -- Pakistan, Iran and Russia.
Meanwhile, U.S. commanders are stuck fighting a losing war in a landlocked country with long and insecure supply lines through Pakistan, where rebels and thieves pounce on the vulnerable convoys almost at will -- and more troops will need more supplies.
To put it bluntly, Afghanistan today has the smell of South Vietnam in early 1965, just as the U.S. began ramping up for a war that would last a decade and cost the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and as many as 2 million Vietnamese before it ended in our defeat.
It's just one more incredible mess that President Obama has found waiting on his desk, and he understandably appears to want to tread very, very cautiously into this uncharted minefield.
28 Comments so far
Show AllI agree with Joseph L. Galloway that we need to re evaluate our position toward Afghanistan, as we may be in the same position as the Soviet Union was decades ago. The Taliban doesn't need to win, it only needs to not lose. Time is on their side. If Pakistan refuses to change its position toward giving terrorists safe haven, there is essentially no way to win.
The parallels with Vietnam? America got involved in Vietnam after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The French lost their war and were being ejected. We were supposed to supervise an election. Ho Chi Minh was in route to a landslide win and we cancelled the election. The Dominoe Effect was popular back then, and the American government was concerned about one country after another falling to communism. The Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan was elected. A large majority of Afghan people support their new government and do not want a return of the brutal Taliban.
I have mixed feelings about Afghanistan because if we leave, the Karzai government would fall within a couple of months. The Taliban then would most likely do what they did previously, murder anyone that opposed their rule.
MM; karzai is the mayor of kabul, and that is all. start listening for the name of khalilzad.
To put it bluntly, Afghanistan today has the smell of South Vietnam in early 1965, just as the U.S. began ramping up for a war that would last a decade and cost the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and as many as 2 million Vietnamese before it ended in our defeat.
This is what I said a few days ago. It will be true a year from now or ten years from now. And it looks like Obama is going to be today's version of Lyndon Johnson, dancing his way down the rathole of national ruin.
So Iraq 2003 was not South Vietnam 1965? But I'm not giving up putting pressure on the Obama administration to back off of Afghanistan. Ok people, get to work now and join me in putting presssure on him to back off.
if any one thinks it is bad now, just wait. spring is coming. this is no longer an occupation, it is an attempt at colonization. if we can not get supplies how will we ever have an exit strategy. now there is talk about having iran cooperate for a supply route. to me this can only mean that the pak border will be a total war zone. the powers that be want a state of baluchistan carved out, so the pipeline will have access to the ocean. holbrooke is there to carve up the region. a new balkanization. the main difference between nam and afghanistan is ISLAM. the enemy of my enemy is my enemy.
Obama's Afghanistan thrust, aka Bush II policy, will fail-- The rationale for staying in Afghanistan is wacko-we're there to prevent them from attacking here. How many times have I heard this: From Russia, to China, Korea, to Vietnam, to Nicaragua, and on and on--same old story. Everybody is waiting to attack us--these evildoers will slip a bomb in with their underwear in their luggage and leave it in a Times square bus stop--and BLAM--we're done for.
Enough! No one will attack us--just stop invading and droning their countries.
Now Obama claims he wants to be friends with the Muslim world and yet sends drones to kill then in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I'm no expert but I can tell you the Obama plan of reinvading Afghanistan is DOA. Just ask the master of foreign armies dying in that country, Rudyard Kipling.
The place is still part of the "Great Game"--countries near and far want a piece of the action--energy routes, geopolitical control. So India fights Pakistan (solve this one and the whole region will quiet down!), the Taliban/Pushtuns fight Russia, USA, Iran. It gets so mixed up.
The place needs a grand bargain--make it neutral like Switzerland, offer a little something to everyone.
But whatever you do, don't send foreign soldiers there!
i believe Kipling may have written a line in a poem :"to the grave of a soldier" - some say from personal experiences in the east...
but somehow it makes sense to me that where Kipling was celebrated as the "poet of empire" for having glorified the british empire - before he witnessed its eventual fall and saw how it was happening , and also how his own son died in the first world war , whom he sent "for the glory of the queen and empire".....
he eventually did write that line , that seems symbolic also:
"HERE LIES A MAN THAT TRIED TO HUSTLE THE EAST".
as in perhaps, here lies Western imperialism.....trying to hustle and dominate...thinking it could be maintained and that the east would not just be biding its own time to eventually take apart the "empires" of the west that "tried to hustle the east".
as some very old Eastern sayings go:
"where the west thinks in years and decades or hundreds of years...the east thinks , at the very least, in thousands of years".
and there , i think another poem by Kipling or some other british traveler to the east during those days of british empire's greatness...i believe in china (which also planted the seeds of china's eventual response to foreign colonialism...the communist revolution) .. :
"the man of the west hurries, and runs, always wanting to achieve and acquire as quickly as possible...while the eastern man goes about his way, walking with patience.....and then the day arrives that the eastern man sees the white man, the western man -- exhausted, burned out, hollowed out and dead .....and walks on as before, as he always had".
and another very old subcontinental Indian saying goes:
"we were here long before you were tribes in the west......we will still be here long after your empires are no more".
Afghanistan has been called Russia's VietNam as they lost thousands of soldiers;billions of $;and had to leave in defeat, after many years there.It could turn into America's second VietNam . Karzi is hated by the majority of Afghans, as they see him as nothing more than a U.S. puppet that use to be on the board of directors of Unocal.
PR; is that not the same unocal that had the pipeline deal put together. when clinton and albright invited the taliban to the white house for tea. now with holbrooke in place, my next fear is that they will groom khalilzad to be the next viceroy of afghanistan.
"To put it bluntly, Afghanistan today has the smell of South Vietnam in early 1965, just as the U.S. began ramping up for a war that would last a decade and cost the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and as many as 2 million Vietnamese before it ended in our defeat."
Yes, but doesn't the thought of the enormous PROFITS to be made just make your mouth water, PROFITS that will make those of the Vietnam era seem like small change?
d.k.shaw
EKATON; NAM, had after effects much longer than a decade, as do all wars of choice. profits in poppy. the slogan for air america. the energy resource route is what this is all about. how far from the pipelines will the bases be? more blood for corporate oil and profit.
Exactly.
d.k.shaw
That "home-grown" enemy happens to be people defending their homeland, as we would do if some big bully invaded our borders and killed innocent civilians. It is time to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan! We are not making any friends by being there.
Are we supervising a civil war in Afgan?
Didn't finger the real enemy, the oligarchy and their MIC.
Is there some natural symbiosis between CIA/US military and the drug trade? Remember Kun Sa & the Golden Triangle, back in the 1970's? Now all the heroin traffic seems to flow from Afghanistan. Just serendipity...
Don't you just hate the DOD phsyco-babble buzz words "nation building". Let these peoples be! Let them build their own nation through blood, sweat, and tears like we did. Nobody says it is an easy thing to do. McGovern said " Come Home America", brother does that ring true today! Ground the robot drone-bombers, that somehow sanitize policy maker guilt and create enemies-for-life tribes of desparate people who chuck rocks,RPG's,home-made mines, and rifle fire at our armor to see us scurry back to base in time for popcorn and the latest NBA game. At least in VietNham we could go out the gate in civies, no body armor or weapons, drink warm beer and fall in love....OK...OK forget the last part.
Peace
The US entered Vietnam to support a French Colonial pawn - who suppressed his people in the name of democracy. Our enemy gained their "independence" at the Versaille Conference - under French oversight - and our enemy based the new constitution of Vietnam on the US Constituion. We were guided by paranoids from Harvard who belived in the Domino Theory... which in-turn allowed the covert operators from Harvard (the CIA) to establish a major drug trade to finance many years of covert operations (the model for Latin America and Afghanistan).
It is unfortunate that so many Americans and Vietnames died for imperialism. It may be the same in Afghanistan.
Why are we in Afghanistan?
1. To counter a resurgent Russia?
2. To control the oil and natural gas of Central Asia?
3. To build a drug trade which finances the CIA?
4. To work with India which has always had a relationship with Northern Afghanistan?
5. To counter the Shia threat posed by Iran and Pakistan?
6. To build democracy on a landmass which was never a nation?
All of the above?
We entered Vietnam to counter the Russians and build a drug trade. This is where the similarities stop.
I wounder if the Taliban are waiting for more American Troops, to fill American bases and out posts. And if the Taliban have rearmed with more advanced weapons, and are waiting to deliver a Dien Bien Phu to America.
Yeah, they'll do to us what they did to the Brits and the Soviets.
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Kipling
"What's desperately needed now are a far more subtle definition of what constitutes success in Afghanistan and a simultaneous injection of aid projects to improve the lot of a population that's endured more than three decades of war and civil war."
Bullshit. We don't need a "more subtle definition" of success, we need to get the hell out. Tell Congress: Cut the funding, stop the war.
Paul Siemering
right. these dingbats keep tying themselves up in knots with their "strategies". just leave.
sometimes -- what is irksome about even "antiwar" or "we are against more of this war" writers is something that might be either unconscious..........or not:
a ready assumption that comes from a western viewpoint about a particular subject:
in this case -- the USA is embroiled in war in afghanistan, things are pointed out as to why they are unwise, that there must be an "exit strategy"....etc:
but THEN comes a statement like below with a very telling phrase (in bold) :
"The greatest need of all is an exit strategy that takes into account the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by neighbors,
SOME OF THEM PREDATORY, ........... PAKISTAN, IRAN AND RUSSIA."
as IF the USA , ENGLAND, and NATO are not themselves PREDATORY.....being THEMSELVES the root causes of the very subject being discussed which supposedly requires an "exit strategy".....because of THEIR generations and decades of INTEFERENCES in affairs in a region that already has its thousands of years of complex relationships..and because of THEIR own PREDATORY and expoitative "surges".
the supposed "war on terror" however obama or england or the west wish to rename it - being waged in afghanistan and middle east - same as elsewhere - is the FRONT for the TRUE purpose of NATO, Western and American interferences in those regions:
OIL, ENERGY, GAS, WATER, LAND and continued Dominance of affairs and resources and people in the world. PERIOD.
so -- it is disingenuous for a writer or anyone to INSERT a phrase such as "afghanistan is surrounded by neighbors, some of the PREDATORY.....such as Pakistan , Iran and Russia"..........
where the USA ITSELF - much further removed from those "neighbors" who have THEIR cultural and ethnic complexities in their relationships with each other, including with afghanistan --
is the PREDATOR from
FAR ABROAD...but PREDATOR nonetheless.
if the neighbors are "predatory"...they at least have THAT excuse -- bad as it would be -- NEIGHBORS who naturally will spill over each other's backyards as the generations and centuries show.
the USA and ENGLAND and NATO -- have NO SUCH excuse to put their feet and noses in regions that takes MORE than just crossing lands and borders...but actually crossing entire oceans JUSt to "liberate" places they have NO business trying to dominate -- in the name of Liberation. ..because in REALITY --
it is the SAME OLD game -- western imperialism and lust for the riches and resources of regions, such as the EAST , among others -- in order to enrich themselves in the west.
it's no more complicated than that and writers need to DISABUSE themselves or their readers of such judgmental little "phrases" as to which countries are predators while somehow finding a subtle way of excusing the PREDATORY nature of the USA"s own presence in central asia or elsewhere.
it;s highly ironic that through all the well-considered explanations by the author what is MISSED entirely is:
the USA as the LEADING PREDATOR NATION ON EARTH ....economically as is now clear through its own history ..and militarily ...
actually sends from the air -- PREDATOR DRONES --
if nothing else than to REPRESENT EXACTLY what the USA IS:
PREDATOR NATION beyond compare. and to state that afghanistan's neighbors are predatory while IGNORING this fact ABOUT the NONneighbor USA being predatory itself and indeed the ROOT cause of the consequences of the "war on terror" for ITS policies of empire in regions it has NO business trying to dominate and doesn't even have the BAD excuse of being a "neighbor" whose interests spill across its borders - flies in the face of the US historay as predator nation number one..and in MORE ways than the combined predations of russia, iran or pakistan could ever muster!
it's quite amazing, that no matter how well-intentioned , sometimes western viewpoints betray their own biases so EASILY through such presumptions in statements...
that kind of presumption is right up there with American preaching against "regulation" and then scurrying for regulation when its own Holy Words about deregulation run into trouble....
or america's remonstrances and demands towards other nations to "NOT MANIPULATE" their currencies -- while being the NUMBER ONE CURRENCY manipulator of them all - such as using FedBank "lending rates" as a way to "correct" imbalances in trade, deficits, etc.....that are the result of ITS own economic policies but NOT the currency "manipulations" of other countries ..and in order to keep the Dollar Hegemony in place despite the fact that it has really NO natural right to ...nor , if the "free market" were to really be put in practice BY the USA -- the dollar would have NO SUCH dominance in world finance...and be the PREDATOR currency of the world...
or America's selfrighteousness about human rights and then resorting to torture and other dastardly means when its "security" or threats to its dominance are in play.
Teddy, you hit the nail right on the head !
I wish I could have said it as well as you did.
I am in complete agreement with your assessment of the USA's role n the world.
Paul Siemering
Yeah. Or not. Try just once thinking about Afghanistan as Afghanistan. A poor, defenseless country getting bombed without mercy by the world's most powerful arsenal for eight years.
Try thinking about all those villagers, the women and children, the mud huts, the wedding parties.
Then get the hell out.
Afghanistan, where empires go to die.
Vietnam indeed.
C'mon everyone, from the top:
Yeah, c'mon on all you big strong men
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam.
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lot of fun!
And it's one, two, three
What are we fightin' for?
Don't tell me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Afghanistan!
Well it's five, six, seven
Open up the Pearly Gate,
Ah, ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopie! we're all gonna die...
(with apologies to Country Joe and the Fish)
Who are the "enemy?" What do they want? Where are they? Why is the USA there? I don't believe any in this administration has asked or answered these questions.
With more troops, there will be more deaths, therefore, more need for more troops.
Do you see where this is headed?
BTW, oil transport pipe lines are the reason that the USA has any interest in this region. It has been an old dream of the oil and gas companies to have a pipe line from Central Asian oil and gas producing countries to the ocean through Pakistan and into India.
The guy who wrote this article has not a clue.
One difference is the terrain. Jungle is less friendly to occupiers, open space more so. The mountains of A & P are not dense w/ tree canopy. The fighters are open from the air, the Russians had them on their heels until the Stingers. With an increased capability to deliver ordinance silently and invisibly, the coalition forces will be tough.
IED'S, Suicide Bombers, Snipers, Booby Traps, POW's taken will define a war of attrition we won't have the will to persevere in.
Because unlike us, the Afghans will never break, for each we kill two will seek martyrdom dying fighting us. This calculus precludes victory.
Joe.