* In Vietnam, the U.S. was fighting a native insurgency that it barely understood. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is fighting a native insurgency -- laced with arcane political, clan and familial complexities -- that it barely understands. (Need it be stated? The U.S. has precious few who speak the local languages; indeed, because they are gay, it fired a whole passel of intelligence agent in Iraq/Afghanistan/D.C. who did speak the languages.)
* In Vietnam, the U.S. had taken over from the colonial French, who were being defeated by the native insurgency led by Ho Chi Minh. In Afghanistan, the native insurgency had battled earlier British colonial control and later the Soviets. Both were forced to depart their stalemated wars, unable to afford the political and financial costs.
* In South Vietnam, the local government propped up by the Americans was venal, corrupt, brutal, well-versed in the arts of torture. A succession of military regimes came and went, and none of them earned the respect or support of the civilian population. In Afghanistan, we are propping up a venal, corrupt government that barely controls its capital, with many of the provincial governments run by drug lords (one of them the brother of the president) and warlords; this time, it's the U.S. that is often the torturer.
* In Vietnam, the U.S. administrations' experts warned all the presidents over the years (www.crisispapers.org/essays/ellsberg.htm) that it could not win that war. Despite overwhelming firepower and technological supremacy, the best that could be hoped for in this type of guerrilla conflict, these experts noted, was endless stalemate: a prohibitively costly quagmire. The various Presidents "stayed the course" anyway, and paid the price: The U.S. had to retreat from Vietnam in disarray, and is similarly likely to have to leave Afghanistan with nothing that can be called a "victory." Even President Obama has publicly acknowledged the likely military stalemate in that nation, a country that in no way can be considered a vital national interest to the United States.
(Remember Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, saying U.S. forces couldn't find anything in Afghanistan worth bombing?)
STICKING WITH CORRUPT LEADERS
U.S. policy in Afghanistan rests upon the continued strong presence of President Hamid Karzai. True, his most recent election was a corrupt electoral farce, but he's Our (Made) Man in Kabul and Obama will stick with him -- until the U.S. realizes it must cut him loose and push him under the bus. Much as the U.S. did to President Diem and subsequent Vietnamese rulers during that war.
One is left wondering why the new U.S. president didn't announce a staged withdrawal from Afghanistan after hearing from all his experts. Obama doesn't believe the neo-conservative B.S. that victory is possible in this war, so why keep sending in more and more troops to fight it? Is he trying to strengthen his "national-security" creds by going all macho, thus giving the rightwing little opening to attack him as a weak-kneed commander-in-chief? Is he saving the withdrawal speech until after the 2012 election? Is he a true believer in, and supporter of, the military-industrial complex that pulls the strings in Washington -- the same movers and shakers who might financially support his re-election campaign? Is he trying to wipe out the Taliban before the U.S. pulls out?
Certainly, not much good news is coming out of Afghanistan. Taliban leaders are killed, and the Taliban grows more leaders, gains new recruits. A recent poll of Pashtun areas revealed that 80% of these men are angry, a doubling of this response from one year ago, and only 9% are angry at the Taliban. Guess where their anger is directed: yep, the U.S./NATO occupiers. (By the way, you probably haven't read about this in the mainstream press, but there are reports that the Times Square bomber says his anger about Predator drone attacks in his native Pakistan, killing so many innocent civilians, is what led him to make his car-bomb. In other words: U.S. policy, not "hating our freedoms.")
Everyone, seemingly including President Obama, knows how this Afghanistan misadventure will turn out. Either the U.S. will leave voluntarily soon, on its own staged-withdrawal schedule, or America will be forced to retreat from Afghanistan later, like the Brits and Soviets did (and as the U.S. did from 'Nam), as yet another major world power forced to admit it could not tame the poor, downtrodden fighters in this destitute South Asian country .
CUT LOSSES, GET OUT A.S.A.P.
Let's do the tallying: This is an unwinnable war. There is no vital U.S. national interest there. America continues to alienate Muslims all over the world by our occupation of, and brutal behavior in, yet another Islamic country. The U.S. is proving to be a top recruiter for the Taliban and Al Qaida by our policy. The U.S. is propping up provincial regimes in Afghanistan that are dependent on drug-trafficking. America time and time again winds up slaughtering innocent men and women and children in Afghanistan -- how many slaughtered wedding parties does the U.S. need to have on its resume? -- thus losing the battle for "hearts and minds" on the ground. We need the billions this war is costing us at home.
And, perhaps most important domestically, the U.S. is losing its sense of itself as a moral country. Much as we would like to believe so, we are not seen as, and we are not in fact, the good guys here. It's well past time for President Obama to realize that he made a bad mistake, and exit as quickly as practicable.
Would the U.S. look bad? Yeah, for a few minutes. Unless the policy changes, imagine what America will look like years from now after many thousands more U.S. troops and Afghan civilians are killed and maimed before our country comes to its senses and gets the hell out of there.
Just get out. Now.#
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