The parallels are ominous-the Taliban is back, and US forces are doing most of the fighting. The corrupt government of Hamid Karzai hides out in the cites, the afghan army is falling apart. Meanwhile, guns and weapons pour in from our “ally” Pakistan. So, is the whole thing ready to collapse? Will we see a retreat from Kabul? What did this war accomplish, anyway?
As far as I can see, the Taliban has the initiative now-as they are deciding when and where to give battle-the NATO forces are responding to attacks. And Bin Laden is still at large. 
Really? I thought things are going pretty well in Afghanistan.
The local endless civil war has been reduced to intramural from international levels. Tribes are whacking each other, but now over development funds. Kids can go to school in most places. More hospitals and vaccination programs are in place. Mines are being lifted, roads are being built and repaired. More people are in the cash economy.
Sure it is a violent backwater, but it has always been a violent backwater. The Afghanis seem to like it that way.
One thing people tend to forget about Vietnam is that the Americans won almost every time they engaged the enemy. But in the long run it didn’t matter. No matter how many VC they killed, more volunteers were always eager to get into the fight, and the war dragged on.
The VC were more or less destroyed as a fighting force by 1968. The war after 1968 was against the PAVN, which was a conventional millitary force.
I think ultimately the war will move to Pakistan.
Actually, I don’t think there are very many parallels between the two…just like I never saw the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, except superficially. I think such parallels are drawn more for the effect than because there really is a lot of similarity.
Nearly every military action the US has been engaged in since WWII has seen us carrying the majority of the water. That’s simply the reality of the world we live in. Of the Western powers we are the only one with a military and logistic system strong enough to actually deploy significant forces outside our borders. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head would be Bosnia…and that’s pretty close to Europe’s stompin grounds (it was also THEIR problem in this case, not ours).
Well, the South Vietnamese army only ‘fell apart’ after it was essentially isolated. After all, they fought on against the North without real US assistance (and I don’t think anyone else’s assistance either) for nearly 2 more years after we cut and ran…and this despite the fact that the North enjoyed fairly substantial support (both economic and militarily) from both China and the Soviets.
I’m not really seeing the parallels. Even if I accept your premise.
It’s a trickle compared to what the Soviets and Chinese sent to North Vietnam. Pakistan itself isn’t sending this aid (officially)…it’s simply a conduit for it coming in from diverse other places.
I doubt it. While I’m unsure if our Euro buddies will stay the course, the Brits and Canadians and several other nations seem to be sticking it out. Even if it comes down to just the US I don’t think that it will fall apart unless the US loses it’s nerve to be there. AFAIK, Obama (who is most likely to become the next president) isn’t making any noises about pulling out of Afghanistan, only Iraq. Presumably that would mean that we’d either retain our current level of commitment or even expand on it with the change in administration.
I don’t think they have the initiative by any means. They have simply stiffened their resistance, but are still extremely vulnerable when they come out in the open.
As for Bin Laden…I doubt anyone thinks he’s going to be captured in Afghanistan, or even if he IS captured (assuming he’s still alive in a cave somewhere) it’s going to make any difference to the situation there.
-XT
Ann Coulter notwithstanding, this time the U.S. has Canada on its side. Victory is assured.
Wait. The enemy is fighting back, and therefore they will inevitably win and we should panic? I’ve heard of morale problems, but this seem ridiculous.
Oh, great. Then, on top of everything else, we’re inevitably involved in that interminable mess over India and Pakistan’s competing claims to Jammu and Kashmir . . .
Any counter-insurgency campaign conducted in an occupied state appears superficially similar to other such examples in history. It’s trivially easy to make comparisons between the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, France in Algeria, the USA in Iraq, the USA in the Philippines, etc. Pick your favorite colonial adventure, there are hundreds of them.
Here’s a major difference between Vietnam in '73 and Afghanistan in '08: Americans generally either thought that the occupation and bombing of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc. was morally indefensible or, if a good idea, wasn’t worth the material sacrifice. By contrast, nearly every “anti-war” protester today will rush in defense of the occupation of Afghanistan. Indeed, many Democrats who rail against our venture in Iraq will talk about sending more soldiers to Afghanistan or, in Obama’s case, even spreading it further, into Pakistan. That’s where the real no gooders are, don’t you see.
It is also a violent backwater producing something like 90% of the worlds heroin. If we are going to use the Vietnam analogy, why don’t we agent orange the poppy fields? It’s not like the locals are using them to grow food anyway.
Forget winning hearts and minds, lets just cut off the heroin flow. Which will reduce the funds available to the Taliban and Al Quaida and make a victory for the coalition forces more likely.
With my slightly less warmongering hat on, I wonder if this is all an extension of The Great Game . If so will we stay the course? it seems to me, from my limited knowledge of history, that no-one has managed to occupy afghanistan for long periods of time.
In the mid 19th Century we (Brits) failed and lost ~40,000 troops in the retreat from Kabul.
The Soviets had a disastrous occupation from 1979 to 1989.
Now it seems it’s the turn of the US and UK (again). It seems unlikely that we can hold the country indefinitely due to the terrain, intertribal rivalry and corruption. So why not do the most good we can i.e. disrupt the heroin supply and get out. We can even make it profitable for the farmers to grow alternatives and we can always keep a local force ready to disrupt any future heroin production.
Heck with that. Buy all the heroin and burn it. Put cash into people’s hands. Few if anybody wants to be a dirt farmer in a country made out of nothing but rocks. Give them money (better, let them earn money) and they will improve their lives and their country.
Good point, I’m sure given what we (collectively) are spending in Afghanistan that it would be a drop in the ocean to pay off the farmers. However, I seem to recall that the Brits tried this and it didn’t work. Maybe we didn’t offer enough cash.
From the media reports I’ve read and some documentaries I’ve been aware things are getting worse, not better in Afghanistan.
There is of course the ongoing problem of civilian casualties caused, or plausibly alleged to have been caused by allied action. The Afghan Govt itself supports some of these claims and is irate - particularly at the recent 90 odd women and children incident.
Each time one of these happens, or is believed to have happened, the Taleban win.
You will also have noticed the upsurge in suicide bombings and other actions in Kabul.
Accounts I’ve seen and read from the British fighting in the south say they are only just holding their own.
The comparison I heard argued was not Vietnam 1973 but Iraq 2004.
And we can’t treat Afghanistan as distinct from Pakistan. The situation across the border, the ‘sanctuary’ it provides, is worsening from our point of view.
I get the feeling American reporting on Afghanistan isn’t really doing a good job. Maybe British reporting is more questioning, given the high level of casualties relative to troops deployed we are getting.
The French lost a lot of men in a single ambush recently too.
We also fail to see things from the Afghan or Pashtun points of view.
We did not set up a ‘democracy’. We set up a facade that allows the same old murdering, raping, drug-dealing northern warlords back in control that the whole country we happy to be ‘saved’ from by the Taleban’s ‘Army of Scholars’ in the first place.
It doesn’t matter what our perception of it is - like with the issues of civilian casualties - the truth doesn’t matter - only what is believed and Afghanistan has never been that welcoming to an ‘invading’ army.
We should have never taken the eye off this ball in the first place.
The Russians could not keep their government in power despite many times they troops and a much more savage approach. I think we are deluding ourselves that we are any more welcome than they were.
The United States did well when it set out to topple the Taliban as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan. It’s having trouble keeping the replacement regime in power. Both of these are due to one simple fact: no central regime has ever kept a firm grip on Afghanistan for very long. The geography, economy and culture of Afghanistan simply doesn’t favor central control. The ideal a lot of people in the West hold was the reign of King Zahir Shah, when Afghanistan was peaceful and stable for nearly forty years- virtually unprecidented in Afghanistan’s modern history.
I’ve said before that probably the best the United States can hope for is to exercise a “veto” power in Afghanistan- knock down any extremely anti-Western regime.
I’m about as Imperialist as they come, and even I think that this is the best we can hope for in Afghanistan.
We could be pouring soldiers from every army in the Western World into Afghanistan and basically see to it that every town and village has it’s own detachment of UN Military Forces there to make sure the locals behaved, the place would still be an anarchic, war-torn, unstable third-world shit-hole.
I really don’t know what the solution is. We can’t leave them alone, we can’t control the place, and we can’t turn the place into even more of a facsimile of the moon’s surface than it already is.
I’d like to say the answer is “Education”, but it’s going to take a long time before that has any effect, IMHO…
In the long run, you may be right. At the moment, though, we are mostly less concerned about propping up one regime than stomping on the annual “This is the year we invade mainland China reconquer Afghanistan”. Plus, we’d like to fire a missile into Osama’s bedroom one night, assuming he is still alive.
Edit: stupid strikethrough never works.
[QUOTe
We could be pouring soldiers from every army in the Western World into Afghanistan and basically see to it that every town and village has it’s own detachment of UN Military Forces there to make sure the locals behaved, the place would still be an anarchic, war-torn, unstable third-world shit-hole.
I’d like to say the answer is “Education”, but it’s going to take a long time before that has any effect, IMHO…[/QUOTE]
My best friend worked for KBR at FOB Salerno for two years. That’s pretty much his assessment. It’s so poor and totally backwards it going to take a long, long, time to get them close to where were are today.
I have a firned who has been there. It is true, under the king, Afghanistan was fairly peaceful-but the central government never controlled anything more that the 100 or miles around Kabul
I disagree. The terrain allows for much easier monitoring at a time in history where such an ability is at a technological highpoint. And instead of interrupting the heroin trade we should be buying it for pharmaceutical use (to be advised at a later date). The alternative would be to introduce another competitive cash crop.
The Taliban is fighting against ideology and the human spirit. It’s worst defeat will not be due to any weapon of destruction, it will be due to weapons of knowledge. Education of Afghanis will do more in 20 years than all the fighting that has ever taken place in the country.