Reading Material
No pho in Afghanistan
I find the idea that senior military and civilian policymakers are debating what to do in Afghanistan primarily by reading different books about Vietnam depressingly plausible. But there’s really something quite perverse about the American tendency to want to turn every conversation about every military engagement into a rehash of debates about Vietnam.
I’ll note in particular that hawks’ obsession with Lewis Sorley’s A Better War is pretty pathological. Whether or not you buy what Sorley is saying about military operations in Vietnam, you can understand the war on a strategic level without ever worrying about Creighton Abrams. Vietnam wasn’t, after all, an abstract exercise in U.S. military prowess. It was part of the Cold War. The hawks’ claim was that Communist victory in Vietnam would imperil the credibility of US commitment to key allies in Europe and Japan and set off a “domino effect” that threatened US national security. The doves said that was dumb, and Communist victory in Vietnam would have no dire geopolitical consequences.
We left Vietnam, and the doves were proven utterly and completely right about the main strategic issue.
Meanwhile, it’s really not clear that thinking about Vietnam can tell us anything at all about Afghanistan. And not just because the countries are different but because the situations are so different. I’ve been reading about the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which is at least the same country, but the presence or absence of superpower competition makes an enormous difference.
32 Responses to “Reading Material”
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October 19th, 2009 at 10:13 am
“In December 2005 in the Boston Globe, Hanoi-based journalist Matthew Steinglass interviewed experts in an outstanding position to evaluate Sorley’s claims about “clear and hold.” Steinglass talked to David Elliot, who interviewed 400 Vietcong defectors during the Vietnam War for the Rand Corporation (and later wrote The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930-1975). Elliot found Sorley’s claims absurd: “Only the ‘clear’ part was a success.” What was the “clear” part? “Indiscriminate bombing and artillery shelling which led to rural depopulation”–with some villages hit by more than 300 mortar shells a day. Another one of Steinglass’s interviewees was the chief Communist strategist, Gen. Le Ngoc Hien, who has been openly critical of the Communist side’s mistakes. He finds Sorley’s claim that the war effort became more successful because it became more sensitive “completely wrong.”
“Sorley is not much of a historian. He did not base his arguments on a canvass of a representative sample of relevant sources but instead on hundreds of hours of tape recordings of his hero General Abrams’s weekly staff sessions. And the number of outright mistakes and misconceptions in the book is staggering. He offers the rise of South Vietnam’s 4 million-strong People’s Self-Defense Forces as prima facie “evidence of both the loyalty of the population and President Thieu’s confidence in their support”; you wouldn’t know from A Better War that this corps was forcibly conscripted. He holds up the 1970 Senate repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution as evidence of a liberal stab in the back. He is unaware, apparently, that Nixon had engineered that vote, the better to prove his point that he didn’t need Congress’s permission to make war. Sorley cites Melvin Laird as a contemporary authority about goings-on in Washington, unacquainted, apparently, with the fundamental fact that during his tenure as Nixon’s Defense Secretary, Laird was utterly out of the loop. Sorley’s Lyndon Johnson is not mercurial, and his Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger are not liars. He thinks “the first Watergate revelations came to light” in April 1973, par for the course for a book so bereft of political context it doesn’t even discuss the 1972 opening to China, let alone the way it fundamentally shattered the supposed strategic rationale for the war.”
Rick Perlstein, “The Best Wars of Their Lives”
The Nation, September 27, 2007
October 19th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I think one important lesson you can take from looking at Vietnam is that. All an army can really do is beat another army. It can’t force a Nation to adopt your ideas. Ideas are spread through other means. Which are certainly more plenty full now, then back when France adopted democracy. Even in Afghanistan.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:18 am
“The hawks’ claim was that Communist victory in Vietnam would imperil the credibility of US commitment to key allies in Europe and Japan and set off a “domino effect” that threatened US national security. The doves said that was dumb, and Communist victory in Vietnam would have no dire geopolitical consequences. We left Vietnam, and the doves were proven utterly and completely right about the main strategic issue.”
Before 17 idiot neocons show up and begin weeping crocodile tears about the victims of the Khmer Rouge, allow me to rephrase Matt’s post slightly.
Every country in Southeast Asia that was bombed by the United States of America fell to communism. Every country in Southeast Asia that was not bombed by the USA did not fall to communism.
The Domino Theory had a certain amount of merit. Just not in the way its supporters intended.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Very good post Matt. I was wondering the same thing, reading all those articles in the NY Times on how Vietnam could have been won with the right military genius strategy, and the lessons for our troops in Afghanistan. Not one mentioned that maybe starting the war and not getting the hell out sooner was the biggest mistake of all.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:38 am
the situations are so different
They are the same: empire. Just change “communism” for “terrorism” and Vietnam for the current evil-doer, like this:
The hawks’ claim was that Communist (terrorist) victory in Vietnam (Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan) would imperil the credibility of US commitment to key allies in Europe and Japan and set off a “domino effect” that threatened US national security.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:38 am
So we shouldn’t consider the lessons of Vietnam while having with a democratic president with a big domestic agenda and tepid support among his party faithful at home? Or fighting in a predominantly rural society in a vastly different culture than ours while having no clear strategy for dealing with a corrupt local government and tenacious guerillas from a warrior-worshiping society?
Very odd attitude.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:39 am
While I agree The Vietnamese were primarily after independance from colonialism and it was a mistake for us to get so involved in 1954, my understanding of the Domino theory is the fear countries like Malasia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, would become communist , thus cutting off shipping from India to Japan etc. There was a strong communist presence in all of these countries in the late 50’s and early 60’s which was greatly lessened by 1970. So recognising our involvement as part of the cold war, while we lost the fight for Viet Nam, argueably we did achieve our strategic objective
October 19th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I’m old fashion and believe that the objective of a war is to destroy the enemy’s ability and/or will to continue fighting.
Those who claim that Tet was a victory ignore the point that the enemy continued fighting for years after Tet supposedly broke them.
The current revisionists are making the same mistake by completely failing to incorporate the enemies capacity to continue fighting into their analysis. At no point do they demonstrate that the supposed improved strategy was destroying the communist ability or will to keep fighting.
The south won almost every battle in the Civil War, but they still lost the war because they lost the ability to keep fighting.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Giving Vietnam back to France was the big mistake.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:12 am
The south won almost every battle in the Civil War, but they still lost the war because they lost the ability to keep fighting.
Did they win almost every battle? What about Sherman’s march to the sea where they destroyed everything in their path? That’s what Russia did in break-away Chechnya.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Some liberals arts wienies have a penchant for stupidshit grand theories instead of looking at the facts on the ground. In the case of the chickenhawks, they do not even have that level of integrity. They cut and paste theories to fit their predetermined agenda.
The domino theory had some plausibility in the years immediately after WWII when the world was in ruins. It had less plausibility to those who looked at the history of China-Vietnam relations and it had much less plausibility by 1970 after 25 years of US support had given the regional governments some stability.
Plus , as I mentioned before, the USA had a desperate need for tungsten to make the special steel alloys needed in huge quantities for the Cold War. A mine in Thailand adjacent to Vietnam was one of the few significant sources outside of Russia and CHina. By the 1960s that mine had been largely exhausted, we had imported a huge stockpile of tungsten and our motivation to waste blood and treasure in Vietnam was reduced.
I really wish people who conduct the national debate would bring a halt to people’s use of cartoon thinking. As Matthew said, assess the current fucking situation in Afghanistan instead of making bullshit metaphors to past occasions that are designed to confuse and mislead more than enlighten.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:26 am
#3,
“Every country in Southeast Asia that was bombed by the United States of America fell to communism. Every country in Southeast Asia that was not bombed by the USA did not fall to communism.”
Or, The United States of America bombed every country in Southeast Asia that was in danger of falling to communism.
I happen to agree with your point, but all your argument has is correlation, which clearly runs both ways here.
#10,
Ignoring for a moment your responding to an ‘almost every’ argument with a single counterexample,
Sherman marched to the sea leaving behind him an intact army, which then invaded Tennessee. Sherman didn’t fight any battles on that march.
For Confederate defeats involving significant numbers, see: Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Petersburg, Nashville. Every other meaningful Confederate defeat (New Orleans, Appamattox, etc) occurred in the aftermath and as a result of one of those.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:27 am
With allowance for minor differences, the motivational undercurrents for Vietnam and Afghanistan are virtually identical.
1. Fear (of Communism, terrorism, whatever works; media and pols will never cease pushing it into the collective face of the collectively gullible, i.e. the US Public in general and overall).
2. Profit (war is hugely profitable. As Charles E. Wilson, former CEO of General Electric, also former U.S. Secretary of Defense noted in 1944: “The revulsion against war … will be an almost insuperable obstacle for us to overcome. For that reason, I am convinced that we must begin now to set the machinery in motion for a permanent wartime economy.” (highlights added).
3. A Permanent Wartime Economy (see above) is now national policy, and woe be it to any S.O.B. that tries to get in its way!
4. Internal Conflicts: Both Vietnam and Afghanistan were dealing with their own internal conflicts. The US has plopped itself into each under the pretense that it has or should have an interest in the outcome. More than 58,000 Americans died for nothing at all in SE Asia, and sadly, no one in government cared. Nor would anyone care today if another 58,000 were to die for nothing in Afghanistan. Americans have been taught to take pride in having others die for nothing in far off, useless, and ultimately unwinnable wars.
How to stop it all? I suggest we re-institute the military Draft — conscription, in a word — and, as we did in the early sixties, force young men into useless and stupid combat. Eventually, those young men will smell the pig’s piehole and say no, sorry, not me. War will not end until the people demand an end to it.
Therefore, war will never end. Get used to it. The mess in Afghanistan will continue till it stops, and no intelligent voice will influence. Profits will accumulate, people will die; profits will accumulate, villages will be destroyed; profits will accumulate, generals will retire; profits will accumulate, fear will persevere. Fear will persevere, profits will accumulate, people will die, and America will proclaim her greatness to all who will listen.
The phrase “to all who will listen” does not include me.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I’m not sure who Don Williams is referring to, I totally agree the current situation is totally dissimilar and am commenting in response to what I see as misunderstanding of the circumstances surrounding our involvement in Vietnam.
There is historically great mistrust of the Chinese in Vietnam, as in all of south east Asia, as China periodically tried to invade and subject Vietnam with indifferent sucess. But the Vietming sought and accepted aid from China in their early struggle against the French, as time passed they turned more to the Soviets and the competition that developed between The USSR and China in Vietnam may have been a factor in the split between them.
The point is there are a lot of details from that situation that are totally irrelevant to the current one.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:50 am
war will never end. Get used to it.
There are many countries that have not been at war for very long periods and people get used to peace too. If you were telling Americans to get used to the US’ wars, well, remember that empires need treasure to maintain their supremacy and the US is currently at the brink of a financial meltdown. I would say, get used to living within your means, demographic transition, paying your debts, and not letting that beacon of light that shines upon humanity to continue clouding your vision.
The empire is crumbling.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Well the reason people always compare to Vietnam is that everyone promised never to forget the lesson of Vietnam. Which wasn’t *about* the details of the situation on the ground at all.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:57 am
But there’s really something quite perverse about the American tendency to want to turn every conversation about every military engagement into a rehash of debates about Vietnam.
In a country where every moral problem is framed in terms of what Jesus would do?
October 19th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Yum, pho+?
October 19th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
The point is there are a lot of details from that situation that are totally irrelevant to the current one.
Yes, including religion, geography, climate, eye shape, the way they spell their names — the list of irrelevant differences is endless. There are two principle similarities, however: 1. The main conflicts are internal as in North vs. South, as in Taliban vs. Karzai (with various permutations assignable, of course). 2. The US has no interest in either conflict beyond war and the profit it produces. We can pretend till the cows come home that we had vital interests in Vietnam, that we have vital interests in Afghanistan. Wrong. Our only vital interest is the profit (and sense of power) that war generates.
There are supposedly somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-200 legitimate Al Qaeda ‘terrorists’ in Pakistan that were once in Afghanistan. And we’ve budgeted something in the neighborhood of Sixty-five BILLION dollars, THIS YEAR, to catch them. We won’t, of course, catch them. But we may well put another 40,000 troops in there to give us a better chance. Or something.
One thing is sure: if unwarranted warmongering interference in internal foreign conflicts is as stupid as it is profitable to the M.I.C., then U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan is, fundamentally, identical in foundation. It’s also identical in eventual outcome.
October 19th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
“The south won almost every battle in the Civil War, but they still lost the war because they lost the ability to keep fighting.”
They managed to lose a lot of the important ones: Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Nashville, Atlanta, Mobile Bay…and Appomattox.
It’s flattering to the Lost Cause set to imagine they had all the best soldiers and leaders–and the United States really did manage to put some boobs in charge for a few years–but the idea that the Confederacy “won almost every battle” is just silly.
Many of the larger battles were inconclusive affairs in and of themselves, because the defensive was so strong–if you tried to push a “victory” home by charging the “beaten” opponent, you could very well snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yourself. So both armies generally ended the fighting in good order and what they did next was a question of logistics, politics, and willpower. Lee “lost” battles in the Seven Days but kept advancing. Grant worked out that he could do the same.
October 19th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
What we have done in Afghanistan is insert ourselves into a backwater tribal conflict in a strategically barren part of the world. Whether or not this bears any relation to what happened in Vietnam is beside the point. Our presence there no longer serves a purpose.
October 19th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias: I find the idea that senior military and civilian policymakers are debating what to do in Afghanistan primarily by reading different books about Vietnam depressingly plausible. But there’s really something quite perverse about the American tendency to want to turn every conversation about every military engagement into a rehash of debates about Vietnam. [...]
October 19th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
A senior US advisor or general (I forget which) when asked if the US ever sought any advice about VietNam from the French said, “Whe should we? They lost.”
I wonder if any current admin types or generals are taking to the Russians about Afghanistan? I know, they lost….
October 19th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Meanwhile, it’s really not clear that thinking about Vietnam can tell us anything at all about Afghanistan. And not just because the countries are different but because the situations are so different.
On the contrary, it is clear there is plenty our experience in Vietnam can tell us about how to handle Afghanistan.
Sure, there are obvious differences, pointed to at the expense of the even more obvious commonalities. Yglesias’ rather trite observation that Afghanistan is not Vietnam (duh) studiously ignores the core principles that parallel our involvement in both countries.
What’s worse, Yglesias trivializes the gravity of the situation in terms of the consequences for citizens of Afghanistan and for America’s resilience and health.
The parallel is stronger with Iraq— so you’ll forgive me if I include some similarities that are more applicable to that conflict.
1. Vietnam did not attack us. Afghanistan did not attack us; al Qaeda’s presence notwithstanding. Iraq did not attack us.
2. We lied our way into both wars. Gulf of Tonkin didn’t happen; there were no WMDs in Iraq and Saddam Hussein was not about to attack us. We have been inherently dishonest about our involvement in Afghanistan and with al Qaeda.
3. We are occupying a foreign country that does not want us there.
4. There was NO Congressional Declaration of War to militarily attack Vietnam, nor to attack Iraq, nor to go ito Afghanistan. The notion that a Resolution is sufficient to legitimate American wars of aggression is erroneous, and that has cost us blood and treasure and any real victory as we’ve pursued war without any real moral purpose or just cause to the moral high ground that would supply momentum to fight or any popular support.
Hostile climate: Vietnam’s rainforests and Iraq’s deserts are totally alien to American troops — but thoroughly comfortable to as well as Afghaistan’s barren
parallels and There are obv
October 19th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Woops. Submitted that comment before my 100-point list of glaringly obvious parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam was complete.
5. Unbelievably harsh climate: Vietnam is hot-wet, while Iraq is hot-dry. The rainforest and desert provide incredibly stressful conditions that to local citizens are hardly out of the ordinary.
6. We bombed the village in order to save it in Vietnam. In Afghanistan we bomb the wedding party and the family compound in order to save it. Surgical, see? Only the technology has changed, not the strategy or the moral stance or the failure of imagination and of will. It doesn’t matter whether we were carpet-bombing civilians out of a B-52 or deploying C-130s in Vietnam or using Predator drones in Afghanistan, in both cases some button-pusher was/is too far removed from the splattered civilians to see what was actually happening: one was at 30,000 or 60,000 feet, the other at a console in Las Vegas and facing, gosh, a long commute home after his shift riding the joystick.
7. In both cases on #6, wreacking total destruction from afar cannot effectively substitute for, you know, actually fighting for a politically viable or morally just cause. Without winning hearts and minds; without siding with home rule, local culture and upholding national sovereignty, we’re fighting a losing battle. This war is lost. And it was lost from the outset. We lost the hearts and minds; and you can’t kill the devil with a gun or a sword (George Fox).
8. We didn’t fight Vietnam because there was any sort of national security threat to the U.S.. We’re not fighting the Taliban because they will attack America, nor due to some asserted role as a safe haven, nor because they are any sort of threat to us.
9. Control of Vietnam was an attempt to control a massive swath of the globe. We’ve chosen Afghanistan as our continental Dien Bien Phu. Unable to learn from the French experience, we seek control of Afghanistan to control a much wider swath of the globe. Land war in Asia, anyone?
10. Notoriously difficult to master foreign languages: Vietnamese, Arabic, Hmong, Pashtun. What better way to lose a war spectacularly badly, than to do so by utterly failing to navigate the native language with any real capacity: so when local citizens are chattering away in Vietnamese, Arabic or Pashtun, it’s more than likely you won’t know what the hell they’re talking about. So, when 10-year-olds and 90-year-olds can thus openly speak of their sympathy with the resistance so that they can, well, defend their homes and families from you, you won’t even know it.
11. Refusal to respect local custom: frisk the women in Iraq or Afghanistan; bypass the elders in Vietnam when you hit on their daughter — it’s the same thing. Failure to honor local custom in the name of war, enrages the citizens American leaders claim to be protecting, and results in a military defeat.
12. Refusal to abide by core American political principles while occupying foreign countries. We fought the American Revolution in part to keep British troops from being quartered in our homes. We’ve got the 4th Amendment, the 2nd Amendment. Routinely, we violated and continue to violate those cherished ideals rather than honor the right of citizens in Vietnam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Burn a hooch in Vietnam; kick down doors in the middle of the night in Iraq — it’s all the same. And it’s the antithesis of what America is all about. Same attitude in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan.
13. Same Theater of the Absurd in both conflicts. Vietnam was notorious for flying VIPs in by helicopter, giving ‘em the dog-n-pony tour, complete with Potempkin Village, happy-camper local folk, and fake body counts. The VIPs would then be flown back to Saigon where all was peaceful and life was normal. This exact protocol was followed in Iraq: VIPs would fly in by helicopter from luxury hotels in Kuwait, be fed a line of total horseshit by military PR flacks at designated clean locations, given a fake tour and false information — and then they’d be flown back to their luxury hotels in Kuwait by nightfall. The sheer obscene absurdity of the procedure, in the midst of stop-loss, white phosphorus, military contractor murder of civilians, should give Matt Yglesias much pause before actually asserting there is nothing to be learned from Vietnam.
14. Waste, fraud and abuse. Unrestrained profit at the expense of American soldiers and the American taxpayer — without so much as a finger lifted in Washington, D.C., to put a stop to it.
15. The use of death squads and free fire zones to target individuals and used against the civilian population indiscriminately. Same in Vietnam; same in Iraq; same in Afghanistan. Not exactly an oversight.
16. Use of strategic hamlets: Same in Vietnam, same in Iraq, same in Afghanistan. Signals failure to choose a justifiable war: wouldn’t be necessary if what we were doing was right or reasonable or worthwhile. Signals the war is not politically viable and can’ be won. Occupation of Afghanistan, like occupation of Vietnam, waws the wrong side of the war and the wrong strategy. Both arose out of our refusal to acquire a legitimate Congressional Declaration of War — before going to war.
17. Use of torture is the same in both conflicts. Same waterboarding etc. was used in Vietnam as was used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Granted, some refinement of technique was developed in the ensuing decades, but you understand, Yglesias, the principle is the same.
If this point is unclear, just read Alfred McCoy’s documentation of torture by the American military in various conflicts. Or, you could just have read The Nation during the 80s to know this.
18. Impossible to secure border. Lesson #1 from Vietnam was studiously ignored in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan: Never invade and occupy a country if you cannot control its borders.
19. The role of heroin and drug money is probably the same in Afghanistan as it was in Vietnam. I refer you to Alfred McCoy’s seminal The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. Corollary: the role of the CIA in coopting the politics of the drug trade/ piggybacking off the flow of cash/ cooperating with drug lords — all to the detriment of American troops and American war effort — is also likely the same in both countries. This phenomena has been documented eight ways from Sunday.
20. Use of military contractors to evade control and accountability through military command or through civilian legal system: same in Vietnam, same in Iraq, same in Afghanistan.
21. Installation of U.S.-’backed’ — read, controlled — leader. Electoral fraud by Karzai mirrors electoral fraud in Vietnam. This is another variation of the U.S.’ continual deposing and re-installation of heads of state, which was an ongoing practice in Vietnam. Always a mistake, always boomerangs.
Need I go on? Because I could.
22. Abject abuse of American soldiers, who have to fight in always already untenable conditions described above: sans Declaration of War, without a viable political cause, without the support of local citizens, lacking body armor or armored vehicles for yeeeeaars. Soldiers attempts to inform superiors of the absurdity and hopelessness and bass-ackwards boomeranging tactics in both conflicts faced an unresponsive military and political leadership.
23. Suicide rates were up in both wars (again combining Iraq for obvious reasons); and are cultural touchstones ( I won’t say the stuff of legend as it’s obviously not the right metaphor). The cost of stop-loss and the conditions itemized above to the American soldier has been incalculable in both Vietnam and in Afghanistan. And in Iraq.
24. When AMerican soldiers pointed out that both wars were unwinnable, that we were losing and would lose — they were ignored. They were ignored in Vietnam when they pointed out the insanity of pursuing that war. And they have been ignored when the observed that winning in Iraq is impossible. And now that GIs have been observing that winning in Afghanistan is imposssible — American soldiers have been saying this for yeeeears — they’ve been routinely ignored by Congress-folk, by Presidents, by military brass, and by journalists. And by bloggers.
25. Even the NYTimes journalist released after 7 months ‘in captivity’ was shocked to learn that Taliban-controlled territory had better infrastrucure, better roads, better water and better communications than did U.S./NATO controlled land. Duh. Amazing what local folk can do when they’re all working in their own interest. Working in common cause, to protect and defend their homes and families from unwarranted attack, and to improve the general welfare of their neighbors. SAME THING was discovered after the Vietnam War wound down: the Viet Cong and Vietnamese had created whole infrastructures underground—for survival; and whole road networks to supply their efforts to provide for the common defense.
26. Roughly 12,450-mile supply lines for us; no supply lines for them — in both wars.
27. Mega-scale neighbors and tribal groups have economic, political and existential interests in supplying resistance forces in Afghanistan, as they did in Vietnam.
28. Nationalist movements /fierce insistence on sovereignty in both Afghanistan and in Vietnam played /are playing a huge role in defeating American military efforts in either country. The several thousand-year military and political histories of both countries explicitly indicate that waging a war in either one is a) foolhardy and b) a losing proposition.
If that’s not a parallel between Afghanistan and Vietnam, what is??? Both countries have a military prowess backed by millenia of experience; both tactically canny and in terms of ferocity of will and endurance of hardship, few nations can claim as formidable a heritage of successful warfare as the citizens of Afghanistan or Vietnam.
Again I ask, Land war in Asia, anyone?
I could go on. There are more parallels. But you get the idea.
Don’t you, Yglesias?
Because I find this:
Meanwhile, it’s really not clear that thinking about Vietnam can tell us anything at all about Afghanistan. And not just because the countries are different but because the situations are so different. —
— to be unutterably self-indulgent.
“it’s really not clear” is it? That “thinking about Vietnam can tell us anything at all”? Best not to think at all, then. Best not to think about what we’ve done in Afghanistan, Yglesias, or about what’s coming.
Only now do we get some traction in the Pentagon. Now that it’s too late.
29. Oh, one more: They will be still be there in Afghanistan in 25 years, just as the Vietnamese are still there in Vietnam. But we wont’ be. Just as we’re not in Vietnam.
Side note: Vietnam is slated to invest $56 Billion in high-speed rail. But America? We can only come up with a paltry $4 or $8 billion for a country many times the size. Who’s the Third World country now? In today’s terms? In the long war?
October 20th, 2009 at 12:39 am
One last point.
When you ’splain, Yglesias, that it’s not just because the countries are different but because the situations are so different.
That Afghanistan is a different country than Vietnam begs the question entirely of course, so that aspect is entirely out the window immediately. Of course it’s a different country and that hardly speaks to the issue of commonalities.
But then you actually go on to ’splain that it’s because the situations are so different.
So very different.
I call bullsh!t. That piece of unadulterated crap has been repeated over and over and over again in Washington, D.C. circles, and it’s too damn cutesy to let pass. It is factually incorrect, Yglesias, and tendentious, and you may get credit for repeating that falsehood, but it shall not go unchallenged.
Sure: there are differences. But they hardly negate the substantive parallels that have compromised America’s fatally flawed ‘enterprise’ in Afghanistan. Just as the same mistakes did in Vietnam.
Difference: Why, the Vietnam War was waged during The Cold War. And the Occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq took place during the Post-Cold War Era. So what? None of that negates the basic set of circumstances under which the war must be fought.
Difference: Why, The Soviet Union and Red China bristled at the deployment of American military might, and supplied Vietnam with advisors, and weaponry, and my goodness! with moral support. So what? Do you think that the immensely wealthy Saudi wahhabists are not supplying the Taliban with money and guns and tactical information? via the Paki ISI? via tribal social networks?
A porous border is a porous border, and our failure to control it is same whether Brezhnev or Putin is in charge.
Do you think the ideology that comforts human beings under unimaginably terrifying hardship is any less gratifying if it’s Islamic rather than Communist? (Although the point is the humanity at work and the survivalist imperative, not the given ideology at work.)
Further, do you actually believe that the role played by a supposedly monolithic USSR & Red China during the Vietnam War would be appreciably different during the American Occupation of Afghanistan? No matter what anyone tells you, the mega and major nations ringing Afghanistan are damn well going to be resupplying The Taliban with guns and butter.
Because of their continuing geopolitical interests.
Because there’s money in it.
Pakistan will get the guns and ammo in.
Turkey will get the heroin out.
And China and Russia will do what they can, covertly, to drain the United States dry while we’re bogged down in Afghanistan. Don’t let anyone tell you different: for very little effort, it’s all benefit and no cost from their point of view. I have no doubt they’re genuinely amused at our unbelievable fecklessness.
Difference: Afghanistan has no strong central government or national identity; it’s dominated by shifting tribal alliances. Vietnam conversely had fused a strong national identity with adjunct indigenous groups.
But so what? Does that in any way negate the undenialabe core parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan I’ve listed above? Of course not.
The national-tribal axis in each country is just a variation on a theme. Afghanistan’s tribal politics knits in a resilience that denies invading enemies a meaningful center of gravity to go after. Military power retracts into tribal strongholds, and to go after one allows the other to operate freely. Dealmaking strengthens one group who later re-ally themselves with others to reformulate loose national governance.
Yes, that is different. But the strategy adopted in many ways served the same function. When the national Vietnamese forces were under attack, military power was distributed everywhere. U.S. forces had to contend with the NVA, and with the Viet Cong — and with every other diminutive elderly grandmother who could tote a grenade. And if you’ve pissed off the grandmas, and even the 9-year-old can navigate the local minefield when GIs can’t, then you know you’re in trouble.
Vietnam forces retreated, melted into the countryside and went underground just as the French resistances did; they ceded half the country and pretended cooperation just as Vichy France utilized semi-autonomous status until circumstances drove other options to the fore.
That’s not so different from the resilience conferred by Afghani tribal factions. It’s more coordinated, but splintering takes place within one social political sphere.
What’s the same is the American inabliity to handle the intra-societal politics in Vietnam or the intertribal politics in Afghanistan. We hired the Hmong to fight for us in Vietnam, and they got annihilated. We hired al Qaeda and the Taliban to fight in Afghanistan, and couldn’t even keep on their good side — not too bright.
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Basically, in insisting that these are different countries, and that the situation is different, American analysts and commenters are displaying a distinct lack of seriousness. It impairs our ability to distill what actually bears on the situation, and what is really at issue. It precludes the opportunity to learn from our mistaks.
Most important, denial of the precise and firm parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan shows a fundamental ignorance of the details of our involvement in Vietnam and of the methods we used there — and exhibits a misreading of history, of our foundational history and the war that won our independence from the British Crown.
It’s willful denial of course. Getting ensnared in the details of one conflict and swamped in endless discussions of the variances and dissimilarities is a friggin’ waste of time. Meanwhile our GIs are bogged down in an unwinnable quagmire — a quagmire in Afghanistan just like the quagmire in Vietnam — because Yglesias and Beinart and Bush couldn’t bring theselves to name the glaringly obvious policy mistakes, costly methods and attributes that both situations have in common, and that make for all intents and purposes, make both Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan exactly the same. The same for our fighting men and women in uniform. The same for our stature abroad. The same for bleeding this country dry, economically and morally. The same for the wholesale corruption and death of honor, in the private sector and in terms of public leadership.
They are the same.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Or, to make the point another way:
The country at hand may be different. But the situation is the same. Here’s why: the issue is not whether citizens of the country we’ve occupied speak Vietnamese or Arabic or Pashtun.
The common thread is U.S. behavior. The issue rests on the techniques and rationalizations used by the United States in entering those wars, the methods practiced in prosecuting those wars and occupations, and the rhetoric and politics employed to justify and prolong our involvement.
Fixating on external details specific to each country, but which are irrelevant to the same basic MO practiced by America in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam will obviously miss the forest for the trees.
Which is the point: why yield a useful insight about the American foreign policies consistently practiced in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, when we can feign befuddlement and thereby refuse to upgrade our foreign policy game to the level of, oh, competence?
October 20th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Sorely might have his points. I might actually read it. Plus, if the Hawks are interested, I wanna know what they’re up to.
But I do know that the Great American Victory of TET, in January of 1968, didn’t help matters much, and that after TET and the 68 change in command we lost 30,000 killed in the next 2 and 1/2 years -so its not like things got a helluva lot better with Abrahms in command, at least as far as Americans getting butchered. What we had most of all in Vietnam was a body bag problem, and after June of 68, things just got worse in that department, plain and simple.
As for winning, what was a win in Vietnam? We had to leave at some point, right? And we did. And what happened, the North launched an offensive against the South, and despite being outnumbered and outgunned they rolled up the majority of ARVN forces in ten days. The rest of the campaign, after the North took Hue -the trail of tears, Saigon and the Embassy- was just a mopping up operation for the NVA.
Why did the South, with a numerically superior fighting force, really make no attempt to make a stand? Because they were defending an American fabricated shithole, and they knew it. TEN DAYS was all it took.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:11 am
30. Lying about the body count.
31. Taking out whole villages from the air, with mass casualties consisting of extended relatives, including the elderly, children, etc.
Then claiming contrary to all reason, that they were all Viet Cong or al Qaeda fighters.
The recent air strike in Afghanistan is a prime case in point. The local militia — remember when citizens of Lexington and Concord passionately believed a mlitia was a good and necessary thing? — had hijacked a fuel truck, and were delivering it to local villagers. It was called privateering in 1776, and legitimated by American leaders.
That fuel was badly needed and meant Afghan citizens would survive the winter.
American bombs struck as children and villagers raced to the semi-truck with cups and containers to bring back fuel to their families. 90 dead and maimed.
The villagers could not identify their own brothers and children — the corpses were charred so badly.
Yet the U.S. military claimed they were all Taliban. Blatant lies.
Collateral damage? No, just the repeat of fatally flawed methods that were used in Vietnam. Killing anyone costs any and all popular support.
31. Failure to distinguish civilian from enemy.
32. Which in turn results in indiscriminate killing.
33. Lying about who is to blame for the lack of military judgment, failure to win hearts and minds, and
34. winning battles but losing the war.
35. YOu can find additional points in this scenario.
Don’t ever say we can’t learn anything from Vietnam.
We’re using the same methods and making the same mistakes, with the saem eventual result.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
You all don’t seem to understand, The Vietnam war was never about Vietnam, as that area was never important, but Malasia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Malacca straits were and are.(look at what the Japanese did in WW2) During the 20 years we fought in Vietnam, the communists in these important countries were pretty much eliminated plus the spectre of monolithic international Communist expansion was over with the Soviet/ Chinese shism. Vietnam has to be considered in context with the entire cold war. It is not relevant to the current situation, other than for the need to carefully study and understand the situation, and have a realistic exit plan, etc. Emotional interpretations by either side of the Vietnam experence only muddy the waters.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
if you continue to insist we failed in Vietnam and this proves we are destined to similarly fail in Afghanistan, please explain how it was the British successfully quashed the insurgency in Malaysa during the identical time frame (1955-1970)?
there are lessons from Vietnam but the biggest one is to understand the situation as well as possible and make a clear headed decision
October 20th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
will we ever learn