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This Sure Seems Like Vietnam
President Barack Obama insists that his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending in 30,000 more troops is not Vietnam all over again.
Well, it sure reminds me of the perils and the price of that unwinnable war and the political chaos it wreaked at home.
In Afghanistan, the designated enemies are remnants of the weakened al-Qaida network and the native Taliban, which has been growing in strength despite the eight-year war started by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 catastrophe.
Obama is too young to remember the national turmoil during the Vietnam War that resulted in the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and thousands of Vietnamese. That war also ended the political career of President Lyndon Johnson, who decided not to seek re-election in 1968.
In his remarks Tuesday, Obama rejected any comparison between Afghanistan and Vietnam, calling it "a false reading of history." He claimed that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is supported by "a broad coalition of 43 nations," that "unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency" and, unlike Vietnam, "the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan."
Well, yes and no.
The U.S. effort in Vietnam had its own coalition of anti-communist allies, including South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Laos. As in Afghanistan, the U.S. provided vastly more manpower than any of its allies in the Vietnam War.
Broad-based insurgency? By his own statements, Obama acknowledged Tuesday night that "momentum" has been with the Taliban and said his goal is to reverse that trend and deny the Taliban "the ability to overthrow the government."
That sounds like the makings of a civil war, as was the case in Vietnam, where the United States intervened to prop up the corrupt Saigon government against the Viet Cong insurgents and their North Vietnamese allies.
There is another huge -- but unspoken -- similarity between the U.S. war in Afghanistan and the Vietnamese War. In both cases, the American people became fed up with pouring more and more men and women and money into wars that went on for years, with no end in sight. (We've been in Afghanistan for eight years; U.S. military involvement in Vietnam also lasted eight years, 1965-1973.)
The war fatigue is aggravated by the devastating 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, where we still have more than 100,000 military personnel and where we have lost more than 4,000 Americans.
Obama omitted the single biggest difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan when he failed to mention that the military draft was roaring through every American town, suburb and city during the Vietnam War. Now, the U.S. military relies exclusively on volunteers.
The draft focused public attention -- and ultimately, public outrage -- on our strategy, our allies, the corrupt South Vietnamese leadership, the colonial legacy we inherited from the French and the failure of Presidents Johnson and Richard Nixon to articulate credible goals that would justify the continued loss of lives. The American people ended up rejecting both the Vietnam War and the national leaders who took us there.
President Obama, take note.
By choosing to deliver his historic address at West Point, Obama also evoked past memories of the times when both Johnson and Nixon could only travel to military bases and aircraft carriers without encountering loud crowds of protesters. Our investment in the Vietnam quagmire was incremental. But Gen. William Westmoreland's strategy of wearing down the insurgents through attrition required more and more U.S. troops. LBJ obliged -- up to a point.
That point was reached in 1968 when Westmoreland told the White House he needed 206,000 more troops, a surge that would have brought U.S. military forces in Vietnam to more than 700,000.
Johnson griped to reporters at the time that "all the generals wanted was more and more" troops. He gave Westmoreland 13,500 reinforcements, but shortly thereafter replaced him as the U.S. military commander in Vietnam.
Obama won a mandate in 2008 to pull up Bush's war stakes. He should listen to the people, not the generals, not the neocons and certainly not former Vice President Dick Cheney. That would be the same Dick Cheney who notably dodged the Vietnam draft but now is gung ho for more war in Afghanistan.
47 Comments so far
Show AllHelen Thomas's analysis is entirely plausible. As I recall the Vietnam and its consequences I get a deja vu feeling. Ms. Thomas is a wise woman.
Although Johnson replaced Westmoreland, Obama will replace only Generals that Glenn Beck tells him to replace.
The conscription draft was needed in 1968 to compete with all of the good jobs. The defacto draft we have in today's festering job market will suffice for years to come. Enlisting is the best job opportunity for tens of millions of Americans.
The military industrial media complex has been looking for an unwinnable war that will never end, thereby assuring a never ending revenue stream for them. The Ir-Af-Pak occupation is their golden goose!
Thank-You Helen.
It always seems that Boys want to play with their killing toys. I didn't support Hillary though, because it seemed she just wanted into that boy club. I had hoped Obama would have the strength to resist.
Men have defaulted on responsible leadership. This is too serious now for their ongoing hubris. We can no longer afford the humiliation and degradation of war. It is EVIL. No exceptions.
Take over ladies. Lysistrata, if necessary.
Yeah right, it's a gender thing and it's all the boys fault... except Hillary and that's just 'cause she's on the "boys' team", the war-makers. Um, except there's also warmaking, local government abolishing Thatcher... and warmaking, palestinian repressing Meir... oh yeah, warmaking, constitution suspending Indira Ghandi... and crooked Benazir Bhutto. Jeez ladies, send up a flare if you're ever able to produce one Olaf Palme!
Give 'em hell, Helen!
Helen Thomas is absolutely right on the mark as she refutes Obama's false assertion that Afghanistan is not like Vietnam. Obama's claim that this is not true does not change the reality that the United States has once again become bogged down in another fiasco against another under developed country for absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever.
One has to wonder if the people whom I have seen which have an Obama/Biden 08 stickers on their vehicles and then next to it have another sticker which actually says: Wage Peace have finally decided to exhibit buyers' remorse by removing those stickers from their vehicles as quickly as possible. But undoubtedly their faith remains steadfast. It would be difficult to locate another mantra which is so filled with hypocrisy and unintended irony as those two stickers.
"This Sure Seems Like Vietnam." –(Helen Thomas)
–Good people, people of conscience throughout the world hope that Afghanistan will be exactly like Vietnam:The defeat of Empire and American imperial fascism– albeit without the millions of dead indigenous peoples directly attributable to the United States.
That is why the military resistance of the indigenous Afghani peoples must be supported unashamedly against the state terrorists and the international cabal of war criminals.
"The Taliban, you say? Aren't they the bad guys? Weren't the Viet Cong the bad guys in Vietnam? Weren't the North Vietnamese and everyone who was not an American the 'bad guys?"
People no longer alive–my ancestors and perhaps some of yours– remember the sight of the American helicopters absconding in defeat from the rooftops, as the victorious North Vietnamese Army entered Saigon. Older American friends–they too remember cheering, along with the rest of the world the end of American barbarity in S.E. Asia.
May they rest in peace with those beneficent memories!
Let us all hope that the Afghani peoples are similarly blessed.
But then it would not only be the Afghani's who would be so blessed: It would be humanity itself that would partake in that now only imagined sacrament. Yes, even America would be so blessed.
Anything less than that means you actually support "Blackwater" as a permanent presence in Afghanistan along with the torture site of Bagram Air Force base. Although I'm sure you could make 'sound' arguments that purport quite the opposite.
You favor a 'phased' withdrawal where your beloved troops are air lifted into the new 'hot spots' of Venezuela or Iran-not the destruction of the occupation forces or a 'real' setback for imperial fascism.
–(Jill Bains)
Sorry Viet Nam was a great success for the usual suspects. America only produces war materials. They must be used so more can be produced. Perpetual war for perpetual peace-Vidal
"the Vietnam War that resulted in the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and thousands of Vietnamese."
That's millions of Vietnamese. Not exactly a casual throwaway line.
Indeed. I noticed that one as well.
Obama is too young to remember the national turmoil during the Vietnam War . . .
Obama has said more than once that he has absolutely no use for what happened in the sixties, except possibly the Civil Rights Movement (and I'm not really sure about that, given the right wing nature of his politics). As he learned nothing from the Vietnam experience, he will repeat it - or rather the present day version of the dogface and the grunt (not to mention the Afghans) will absorb the punishment while Obama, like LBJ, drags himself down into the muck where he truly belongs.
AFGHAN CLASS WAR
Only the intelligent ruling class in the cities of Afghanistan want the foreign troops on their soil, as only by the deadly force foreign invaders are they able to keep the laboring class in submission.
Obama too young to remember the 'Nam's last scenes of US choppers removing its embassy staff and RVN "allies" from its stairway to heaven in 1975? He was 14, the same age as I when JFK took one for Poppy! I remember, as does he!! As always, Helen blazes ... a fellow true Eternal Flamer!!!
People who are looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, have tunnel vision.
Helen Thomas must know that U.S. military involvement in Vietnam lasted much, much longer than 8 years; yes, 1965 is the year of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, but Eisenhower and Kennedy had U.S. troops in there long before 1965; these troops were called advisors but carried loaded weapons and used them. Many will say that "Afghanistan is not Vietnam," but the Afghanistan/Vietnam analogy is true enough considering that the United States' president invaded a Third World Asian country that never had attacked the United States, as had not Iraq. All three countries were invaded by the same outside power, which power used similar techniques to convince its public to support the invasions. If we begin with the French re-invasion of Vietnam, the Vietnam war lasted more than twenty years, and without a doubt, certain factions of the U.S. would prolong the Afghanistan invasion to that extent.
The boss class made fortunes from Nam. The boss class will make fortunes from Afghanistan. The mass class will turn against the war many years too late, just like Nam.
Obama calls it a "false read"... maybe for him and whatever he reads but not for those of us who resisted it.
Curtis: the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. (Vietnam era quote.)
Helen Thomas is right, of course. The parallels are astonishing; so obvious, that Obama felt required to deny them.
Those of us who remember the era of the Vietnam War face a dark duty: we have to warn the young what they're facing. This decision, and this war, will tear the country to shreds, just as Vietnam did. Please, if you don't remember it, read up on the history, and especially on the social and political disruption it brought. I was in the middle of that, and the thought of going back to it makes my skin crawl with incipient panic. The country never really recovered; in a sense, we're still fighting those battles.
Why is this speech,this decision, such a big deal? Because Obama and the Democrats are taking open responsibility for this war. Even his previous escalation was arguably (though not really) just momentum from the Bush era. Now his real agenda,his real nature, are out there for all to see. As long as the wars belonged to a Republican, there could be an illusion that we could solve them through normal politics, by electing more Democrats. We, or you, did that. Now it's the Democrats' war, and our desperation is plain to see. To make matters worse, it's happening in the midst of an economic crisis - and Obama's economic policies,too, are barely distinguishable from bush's.
The 60's were a boom time, so prosperity cushioned the impact (and required a draft, as someone noted). The next few years are going to make the last 8 look mild, as the people run out of patience.
We have just 3 options: rioting in the streets (as in the 60's), and probably bombs, too; mass boycotts and general strikes - which haven't happened here since the 30's; or overturning the political system. Realistically, all three.
If you're a peace lover and/or progressive, you can't be a Democrat any more. They don't even want you, as they've made utterly clear. We have to break the 2-party system. It's the only way to make real change, or prevent our collapse, without serious violence.
Unlike the 60's, there is now a left-wing political movement that we can start from. A big part of it is the Green Party, the only national peace party. It's a place to start, but it needs all the help it can get. It needs YOU. Join the party: www.gp.org. Next year's election is more critical than ever - less than a year off, now.
The '60s prosperity was due to MIC spending and the dispersal of home-grown defense industry to almost every Congressional district!
But I could be wrong ! Please let me know if I am.
We're not prosperous now with more War Spending than the 60's.
Many reasons for that and the biggest is the debt that piles up and up and up from a war economy with the profits goin to fewer and fewer people.
Think a bit and you will come up with many reasons why this is not the 60's anymore.
The War part is like Nam, but the prosperity is gone.
who was it that said:
"WAR IS THE HEALTH OF THE STATE". ?
that;s about the "prosperity" of the bankrupt USA now.
bankrupt people....running around scared for their livelihoods...being taxed in all manner (not just the usual IRS way) and by all means (such as higher prices, higher food expense, higher medication, higher premiums for "insurance", higher costs of living, higher heating and energy consumption pricese, higher "service prices" , higher bank and account penalties, higher extra other penalties and fees, higher this or that and of course higher COST to their well-being, peace of mind, joy, trust with each other, civility, education, appreciation of life...etc)
with a bankrupt government that is "healthY" FOR WAR. and fighting and quarreling, and policing, and building prisons, and incarcerating, and whining about small inconveniences, but frightened and cowed by IMPORTANT THEFT of their civil rights and liberties.....
amazing....and tragic what america has become...
not that it did not already have a DARK history of its own ...and realities, but it's even worsening ..like a lurid dystopian painting straight out of the medieval paintings of
"" by that famous dutch painter centuries ago :
Hyronymous Bosch . ..."THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS.."
where what started as "paradise" (from the left of the painting to the right)...gradually degenerated into HELL
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/GardenED.jpg/800px-GardenED.jpg
that's exactly what america has become...and it's REALLY , REALLY frightening and UGLY.
so sad to see so much potential for good , just wasting away .
it was a prosperity that was temporary , as we can see now, in hindsight , for having been built in a "peace" that was based on american hegemony growing globally through the intimidation of its militarism behind the facade of "democracy"...
we see the dozens of examples of this all over the globe, in just about every continent ....all serving the "american prosperity" ....
but THAT means that this prosperity has been based upon militarism, overt and covert , in order to PROTECT and uphold the DOLLAR hegemony which is the ESSENCE of american empire. without dollar hegemony and the MILITARISM that protects it - the USA could NEVER be as powerful as it has become, nor as "prosperous".
it would be a much more ORDINARY country , far from being exceptional..and perhaps even - on a truly FAIR global labor/capital exchange regime (had the world been ordered that way) -
only about as wealthy and powerful as its TRUE national treasure allows:
the POPULATION and its QUANTITY . 300 million people worth of prosperity - when all things are equal - and countries are allowed to reach their great potentials - their citizens prospering in a global culture of real fairness, every person counts, every man labor is valued properly....
300 million people can NOT possibly be MORE prosperous than , say
the 1 . 3 BILLION people potential of china.
the rightful "most prosperous" and powerful nation WOULD be china..by sheer VOLUME of its human potential brought to the heights in global regime of fairness...
every person's value equal to that of another's.
in fact, if that were the case: one one one -- nation compared to nation --
the USA would - with its 300 million - be OVERWHELEMED by the 1.3 billion chinese in PURE human potential and productivity and national value.
THAT alone and the disparity between that and the realities - show that there is something VERY wrong about the global regime of "economics" and "politics".
and THAT thing is USA imperialism, capitalism and dollar hegemony - aided and abetted by US militarism.
it's the ONLY way the usa COULD be the power and "prosperous" nation that it is..through "manipulation, torture, assassinations, fomenting instabilities against uncooperative countries, overt and covert wars.." (JOHN PERKINS, former CIA "economic hitman") .
basically - what the USA can not and could NEVER achieve by FAIR MEANS - has always been achieved by UNfair means...and THAT is expressed , above all, through its militarism and its capitalism.
they come hand in hand - as the american "way".
I bought a 4 bdrm house in 1973 for 13,000. I was making 16,500. Doing pretty well, actually. A house in the U district in Seattle could be had for 15,000. I bought a brand new truck the same year for 3500. Now it is true that house and vehicle prices had risen from the 60s, when your average working stiff could buy a house and raise a family with a stay at home wife/mother, take a vacation and buy a decent car. There was inflation, and the rich boys bitched loudly about it, saying it would ruin the country. All it was really ruining was their bank balance. BFD. The rest of us were doing great, thank you very much. The unions were still strong in America then. Yes there was some corruption, but no where near as much as there was, even then, in the MIC. Our prosperity at the time was not new, it was not a bubble, it was a strong and healthy country, BECAUSE THE WORKING MAN WAS WELL OFF. Everything that has transpired in the commercial world since that time has been a steadily increasing oppression of the working guy, the blue collar worker. As the buying power of the average guy has decreased, so have his options decreased, until we now have an economy in which fine, intelligent workers fight each other for jobs that pay starvation wages, with little or no benefits. Health insurance, after all is only for the well off. [and when this new bill is passed, we will REALLY be taing it in the shorts]
THANK FOR SAYING THAT RVRWALKER...you are a good american. someone that can be said of "to be proud to be an american" for having the conscience to see the country's error of ways and to try to "teach" what history has shown. thank you.
rvr reality where did you get your information? the green party isn't on the ballot in all fifty states and seems to have internal squabbles and have to get in sync.
all the things you mentioned have to happen again to make the powers that be
recognize that we mean business. there is only protest that will make them understand
they are too arrogant and stupid to get anything else!
The USA is too big to succeed.
What can't be fixed.
Must be thrown away.
What? you say.
Well, the USA.
But without contradiction, Americans are bigger than the USA. They are human whereas the USA is an artificial construct that is verifiably bad for the future of humanity.
Just do it.
Now Helen, I really must call you out for your obvious racist criticism of our President. Don't you know that because he is dark skinned and you and I are white, any criticism of him is racist?
And what is his crime: heavy borrowing from other countries to kill and maim citizens of a third country, with some doses of torture thrown in? What could possibly be wrong with that?
After all, as long as people buy US government bonds (or the Federal Reserve counterfeits even more money to buy them), our President can do whatever he wants.
The difference between the two wars, really, is the nature of the insurgency. The Taliban are backward and reactionary in most regards and hardly supportable. It was pretty incompetent as a government and insanely brutal to its subjects. The Karzai government and the warlords surrounding it are not a whole lot better.It's very unlikely the Taliban are capable of winning power yet again, although a continuing US presence may make another victory possible.
The National Liberation Front was a real and generally progressive anticolonial movement in Vietnam. It too had its brutal side but it empowered the masses of the Vietnamese people and was pretty popular. The Vietnamese people are a lot better off as a result of their expelling the US, and French imperialism before them.
But I agree with Helen Thomas on all the rest. We need to get the hell out of Afghanistan. And soon.
For 'backward Taliban' I read Pashtuns who have been driving out invading armies since long before Alexander the Great.
All the blithering and blustering analysis on earth won't mask the reality of American power exerted at gun point, in some of the poorest regions of the planet, for the benefit of a very, very few.
O'Nam.
`Nam and a half
PS: Happy Pearl Harbor Day!
What does it say about a country that put Raygun, Clinton and The Dim Son in office for twenty-four years?
You folks keep putting the same corporate rats in the House, Senate and White House and then you expect to get a different result (See Albert Einstein). It should be obvious to you by now, you get what you vote for! Obama is no different! And when you all figure out that he is no different than the afore mentioned, you will turn around and vote for Palin/Beck. In the immortal words of Buggs Bunny "What a bunch of Maroons"
Voters elect one of like mind.
So Obama being of the 40% intelligent middleclass,
he being funded by the 10% super-intelligent rich ruling class,
and the 50% who refused to vote last November being the
impoverished slow thinking laboring class, surely the
outcome was self-evident.
Unless of course your filled with pride and believe everyone
is born with the identical intelligence.
I think you'd better define intelligence. You're making a lot of ridiculous assumptions.
We should no longer discuss politics as though we had taxation with representation. Our visible government has been highjacked and we are left with a childish good cop/bad cop electoral farce every couple of years to tell us, "yes Virginia, there IS a democracy", a total sucker's game. Get angry and organize, they are eating us alive.
Tony Vodvarka
Helen Thomas for President, or Queen, or whatever.
Did "we" begin shipping jobs to under-developed countries, to make killing and getting shot at for profit, look like a good job in America?
Is that the same reason getting an education in America requires going into debt for the rest of your life?
Are we destroying the village (country/planet) to save it?
Be the first one on your block to learn how to live like a Peasant, because that's where we are headed.
Where is that Draft not coming from?
There is never a shortage of the intelligent class to fill the need for officers in the military, such glory and high honor, such power over us slow thinking laboring men.
So the Draft is coming from the need to enslave laboring men,
as the purpose of this intelligence dictatorship called earth
is to prove the harm in it.
AFGHAR WAR ---- INTELLIGENCE DICTATORSHIP
From the Russian invasion to the invasion of Empire USA, only the
intelligent ruling class in the cities of Afghanistan want the foreign troops
on their soil, as only by the deadly force of foreign invaders are they able
to keep their laboring class in submission.
It is so meaningless, just a brain dead existence being a slave without a
will to the next one more intelligent.
President Obama, learn from your elders. Thank you, Ms Thomas for your clear and sane comments.
The difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan is that with Afghanistan, we had a Vietnam we ought to have learned from for once and for all.
The MIC needs to give way to new industry of social responsibility.
We need in many places new public infrastructure such as water lines, bridges, public transportation, windmills on the rooftops of every large building, solar power, and retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency, and all green industries. We need to shore up our schools and create affordable access to public universities. We need to rebuild the healthcare structure by putting people back in health care vs. sitting behind an insurance desk.
We need to change over our department of war to a department of peace and offer to assist our global neighbors if they'd like and we need to stop a great deal of our wasteful military spending. How about armies of volunteer builders vs. killers.
We need to immediately start a national program of energy CONSERVATION hello! as well as immediately stop blowing up mountains for coal. OBVIOUSLY!
We need industries to clean up and start undoing all the toxic damage to the earth in the last 150 years.
We failed to turn swords into ploughshares, so how about if we stop bomb manufacturing and start manufacturing green equipment and farm tools for small scale farms, and grow healthy food.
We need to just do all this ourselves and ignore the government who won't help us do it and ignore the global corporate rulers. After a short while, they'll decide it's better to join us than beat us.
Helen Thomas, always a pleasure to read -- so much common sense, so much sanity in an insane world.
A draft I think would focus the populace into outrage, although at the moment we do have an informal "draft" as long as unemployment stays high. I'm sure Obama is aware that the military is no longer struggling to reach its recruitment goals.
"A draft I think would focus the populace into outrage"
just think what the re-introduction of slavery would do!!!
(clue - both are involuntary servitude, something prohibited by "that goddamned piece of paper")
be careful what you wish for.
I love the analysis and especially the part about the chick hawk "dead eye" Dick "whips and' Cheney, the big time draft dodging, war mongering dawg. Helen Thomas has historically been one of the few mainstream journalists who really stays on the case of those in power and demands answers to tough questions not taking excuses from any politician including presidents. She has been, and is, a great one.
AD
Ms. Thomas, as usual -- is right.
I'm not too young to remember Viet Nam.
I'm also not too young to remember George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
So -- this sure does seem like Viet Nam. Also, it sure does seem like a Bush third term.
Ms. Thomas is, as always, speaking to us with a clarity and honesty now lost in Washington and our elected "leaders". While I agree with most of the sentiments as stated here, I think that people are missing the larger point. And that point is that the American system is broken beyond repair. It has been corrupted by the greed of corporations, and their hired lackeys: the "K" St. crowd of lobbyists, and the general greed of those elected to represent us. AKA, the Congress.
If any working person thinks that they have representation in Congress they live in a dream world. The Congress is OWNED by the corporate special interests, and our "representatives" are corrupt by definition if not in practice.
Is it any wonder that the necessary business of the country cannot get done, when the needs of the American people are diametrically opposed to the needs of the American corporations? Since the corporations own the Congress...who do you think they will listen to? The real deception game is that we are continually told we have citizen representation, and we pretend to believe it. What a lie!
Nothing about the current state of the broken government is new. President Eisenhower warned the nation of these dangers way back in 1961 in his farewell address to the nation. See the link below. Unfortnately, nobody listened to him.
Our founding fathers gave us the means to control the government, but with a disengaged citizenry who is more concerned with football scores, love of the gun, violence, the thug culture, and the dollar...I would say that we now have the type government and the nation we deserve. I believe that the election of George Bush was the capstone of President Eisenhower's warning. And in this broken government situation it makes little difference what party is in power, or who occupies the White House. A car with 4 flat tires is not moving anywhere...regardless of who is driving.
That is why we see that Obama's promised change is really no change at all. Just another lie given to create the illusion of a government looking out for the people. Lest you think I am anti-Obama, I voted for him..knowing that little progress would ever be made, regardless of his real intentions.
This stalemate will continue until the power of the Corporations and thier lackey lobbyists are smashed. And this alien creature they have created called the US Congress is removed from office.
God help us all.
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html
The Vietnam War or as they say in Vietnam, The American War, was an extension of the French Occupation that lasted for centuries. We tried to protect the side of the civil war that was supporting the pro-French, catholic minority in South Vietnam, a country created in the aftermath of WWII, and a hot part of the cold war between The Soviet Union and the United States. The war in Afghanistan happened because of 9/11 attack launched by Osama Bin Laden operating in a regime of fundamentalist Muslims we armed to fight the Soviets.
Obama could abandon Afghanistan like we did after the Soviet collapse. At that point we had established ties, albeit covert, with people there and could have aided in the creation of a government that could actually do something for its people. Instead, we left people to work on their own tribal messes and those with the most guns and greater unity of purpose to create a state of religious thuggery.
It the truth be known, the various tribal warlords still rule and they can be persuaded with jobs, economic stability, and a higher standard of living. Indoor plumbing rules. Not for the rich, they can get the night waste hauled out by lowly servants. The better the plumbing the more folks stay out of hills shooting it out with Americans. Improving the standard of living there is less expensive than occupation, and a cell phone technology will bring the young into the 21st century.
American Foreign policy in the region is too tied to Israel to really solve the problems we have there, but if can Obama can provide enough security to get the economy out of the dirt there is a chance that jobs rebuilding the infrastructure, getting roads built, a expansion of the power grid, and getting schools built could usher in the better times Afghanistan fairly quickly.
Vietnam was a different war in many ways. There was no chance for our side to win the civil war. Ho Chi Min, beat the French, the Japanese, and the Americans because he was for Vietnam, an ancient culture with a language of its own.
John McCain still believes we could have won the war. And what would the outcome have been for the Vietnamese? They would have gotten another Marcos, and a series of strong-arm central government dictators like other puppet regimes that the US has propped up for decades.
So, who is happier, Vietnam or Korea? South Korea makes cars for the US and North Korea is starving and and held captive by a megalomanic. America lost the war in Vietnam. Good for Vietnam. Is it possible to exit Afghanistan and leave it a better place than we found it? I have to admire Obama for trying.