Good Morning, Vietnam

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

The "war" in Afghanistan is more and more shaping up to be a doppelganger of Vietnam as each month passes. It is indeed the case that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Here are the worrying similarities.

1. "Very Long Bow" Linkage. Vietnam was rationalised by the "domino theory". It was "sold" to the West by the argument that if the spread of communism was not halted in Vietnam it would spread all around the Third World, and eventually all free nations would fall (as a line of upright dominoes falls when the first tips over). In other words, we were told the US (and its allies, including New Zealand) needed to fight in Vietnam to save themselves.

Afghanistan is being "sold" by equally tendentious linkage. Al Qaeda needs to be defeated (hopefully wiped out) in Afghanistan otherwise terrorist attacks are coming to a backyard near you. Fight them there before they kill you here. The fact is, however, that Islamic terrorism is a phenomenon that would be far more effectively combated if it were left to run its course. Far better to beef up one's own security and defensive measures at home. The more Islamic extremists gain control over Islamic people, the more odious they become in the eyes of Islamic people. They succeed to failure.

The same has been true of Communism. The more it "succeeds" the more it collapses in upon itself. Better, far better, for governments to lay aside their internationalist pretensions and concentrate upon their only legitimate duty: protecting their own citizens within their own borders.

The "global" terrorist threat is as specious a justification for going to war in Afghanistan as the domino theory was for Vietnam.

2. A Half-Hearted War. It is pretty clear that President Obama does not really believe in the Afghan War. He, along with the rest of the extreme left wing of the Democratic party, does not believe in war, period. They have a deep faith in the transforming power of reasoned discussion to banish all conflict, evils, and wrongs--at every level of human activity, including international relations.

Obama declared Afghanistan to be the war he really had to win as an electoral ploy. He was being type-cast by his opponents as naive and weak in combating perceived enemies of the US--largely because of his extremist dovish stance on Iraq. To prove his mettle, he did a classic bait and switch: he opposed Iraq because it was not a real threat. The real threat was Afghanistan. He was, he declared, fully committed to fighting real US enemies in the place where they really were--Afghanistan.

Now he is between a rock and a hard place. One of the first things he did was call for a new strategy of counter insurgency (aka, nation building) rather than counter-terrorism (trying to kill Osama bin Laden and wipe out Al Qaeda). This was mission creep of a stellar order. He made a high profile appointment of a general (McChrystal) who was a committed believer in counter insurgency, and had proven experience. But McChrystal is a realist: he can only win a counter insurgency war if he has more troops--thousands upon thousands more. Now Obama has demurred while he reviews strategy. What? His new strategy is only six months old, and he is reviewing it already.

Obama does not want to provide more troops. So now we have a classic Vietnam sucker punch developing. He has talked the war up for reasons of political posturing. He has declared that leaving Afghanistan is not an option. He has supported a counter insurgency war as the only kind of war that has any hope of victory, but is deeply reluctant to provide the men and material to carry out the strategy. So, the US will fall between two stools. It will vacillate on strategy, commitments, direction. But it will retain a "soft-commitment". It is too embarrassing politically to admit defeat and withdraw. "Quitting" is a cardinal sin in the United States. It is Vietnam all over again.

The US is being set up for another full-scale military defeat: withdrawal will come when the requisite number of people have been killed--and no-one knows what that number will be. Obama is sending in the US military for reasons of political correctness--trying to appease both the right and the left. Consequently, the US army will be directed to fight with one hand behind its back and one foot tethered to the ground.

When one considers what is unfolding one cannot help recalling the old movie line, "I've got a bad feeling about this." The portends are not good--not good at all.

The question inevitably becomes, given the mess, what is the right thing to do? Our view is that it would be to admit the mistake and conduct a staged withdrawal. But we know that it would be political suicide--so it will not happen. Maintaining the status quo for the foreseeable future is what, instead, we expect will actually occur. That is painful to contemplate. For those actually in the maw, however, the pain will be far greater.