The analogy isn't exact. But the war
in Afghanistan is starting to look disturbingly familiar
by John Barry and Evan Thomas
About a year ago, Charlie Rose, the nighttime talk-show host, was
interviewing Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the military adviser at the White House
coordinating efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have never been beaten
tactically in a fire fight in Afghanistan," Lute said. To even casual
students of the Vietnam War, his statement has an eerie echo. One of the
iconic exchanges of Vietnam came, some years after the war, between Col.
Harry Summers, a military historian, and a counterpart in the North
Vietnamese Army. As Summers recalled it, he said, "You never defeated us in
the field." To which the NVA officer replied: "That may be true. It is also
irrelevant."
Vietnam analogies can be tiresome. To critics, especially those on the left,
all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires."
But sometimes cliches come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the
war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways. The parallels are
disturbing: the president, eager to show his toughness, vows to do what it
takes to "win." The nation that we are supposedly rescuing is no nation at
all but rather a deeply divided, semi-failed state with an incompetent,
corrupt government held to be illegitimate by a large portion of its
population. The enemy is well accustomed to resisting foreign invaders and
can escape into convenient refuges across the border. There are constraints
on America striking those sanctuaries. Meanwhile, neighboring countries may
see a chance to bog America down in a costly war. Last, there is no easy way
out.
True, there are important differences between Afghanistan and Vietnam. The
Taliban is not as powerful or unified a foe as the Viet Cong. On the other
hand, Vietnam did not pose a direct national-security threat; even believers
in the "domino theory" did not expect to see the Viet Cong fighting in San
Francisco. By contrast, while not Taliban themselves, terrorists who trained
in Afghanistan did attack New York and Washington in 2001. . . .
[The U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban suffered two logistical blows
Tuesday as the president of Kyrgyzstan announced that he'd shut a U.S.
airbase in his country and insurgents in Pakistan blew up a bridge,
disrupting the main U.S. supply route into Afghanistan.--Tom Lasseter and
Jonathan S. Landay, "U.S. supply routes
to Afghanistan suffer two huge blows," McClatchy, February 3, 2009]
M. Shahid Alam, "Afgahn
Pitfalls," mediamonitors.net, February 13, 2009
[The mountainous borderlands where Afghanistan meets Pakistan have been
described as a Grand Central Station for Islamic terrorists, a place where
militants come and go and the Taliban trains its fighters. Now Barack Obama
has made solving the 'Af-Pak' question a top priority. But could the battle
to tame the Pashtun heartland become his Vietnam?--Jason Burke, Yama Omid,
Paul Harris, "'Pashtunistan' holds key to Obama mission," Guardian, February
15, 2009]
[ . . . the annual budget for the entire Afghan government, which is largely
provided by the United States and other international donors, is about $1.1
billion, which means the annual price of the program would be about twice
the cost of operating the government of President Hamid Karzai.--Thom
Shanker and Eric Schmitt, "U.S. Plans Expanded Afghan Security Force," New York
Times, March 19, 2009]