err i am a anti war leftist. and i think that Baathists extreem Islamist Stalinists are bad. The main trouble with American Imperialism is that its has never worked since ww2 (maybe in Korea..ish) The road to hell is paved with good intentions. As for “imperialism” lets face it there are many many worse systems to live under.
I think the President is well aware that this isn’t like Vietnam, where if the Taliban renege and take over it doesn’t really matter as far as our interests go. Going back to the Sep. 10, 2001 situation is unacceptable and would inevitably lead to us invading Afghanistan again.
This is also not like Vietnam in that if the Taliban looked like they were making gains, we’d be right back in kicking their asses out of Afghanistan again. The public has not been traumatized by this war the way the public was in Vietnam and the Taliban is so weak we aren’t talking about committing thousands of troops. Air power plus special ops forces were sufficient to drive them out the first time, that’s all it would take to do it again. And meanwhile, we’ll still be hunting Omar and his Al Qaeda allies with drones.
I probably was overly harsh but that was the impression I got from browsing through Counterpunch.
There have been quite a few other times American imperialism/interventionism worked: Greece, Bosnia, Kosovo, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, Libya, Mali etc. That said, there have been times where American intervention has been mistaken or downright immoral (Vietnam, Iran, Chile, the Second Gulf War etc.).
I don’t know what “lolwhat” is or means but you seem to be off on a flight all by yourself in this response.
My point was about the apparent non existence of parallels between the invasion and occupation of Vietnam vs. Afghanistan.
Why do you write imperialism in quotes - are you one of the ‘world policeman’ types?
The Taliban are “weak”?
What media are you looking at because pretty well all sources I see state the Taliban either control or contest the majority of provinces. Just put ‘taliban controlled areas’ or something in Google …
I wonder how this is going down among the troops? We are asking young men to risk their lives…and now they are being asked to fight while we negotiate with the people who are killing them. Pretty bad situation for morale, I would guess. Its like those poor WWI soldiers fighting in the hours before the Armistice.:mad:
I don’t think many of the people comparing this war to Vietnam actually know anything about either the Vietnam war or the war in Afghanistan.
The Vietnam war had a clear goal: prevent communism from spreading to South Vietnam. This was untenable for a few reasons:
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The whole of Vietnam had held an election, the communists won. While they were less popular in the South, the South was never an autonomous region of Vietnam and many, many South Vietnamese supported the communists.
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In addition to the supporters of the communists in South Vietnam, many South Vietnamese also were opposed to foreign involvement in their country, regardless of whether they supported communist party rule of Vietnam or not.
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Because of 1 & 2, the only government favorable to U.S. interests that could run South Vietnam was by necessity one that would never have popular support of its people.
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North Vietnam could not be directly invaded, so for the duration of our involvement in the war we basically had the operational mission of “keeping soldiers in South Vietnam to respond reactively to flare ups from NVA and VC forces.” That’s not a traditional strategic campaign with clear objectives and a charted path to victory, that’s an open-ended security operation in a hostile country. North Vietnam was able to continually be involved in operations to make our occupation difficult and to support unconventional forces in South Vietnam.
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North Vietnam was also materially supported by a superpower (USSR) during the war.
Compare to Afghanistan, about the only thing that is comparable at all is Afghanistan, after the initial invasion when by and large it stopped being a place where international terrorists could operate and train “in the open” (a “safe haven”) we had no real goals or objectives and were just in an open-ended occupation. That’s the only real comparison with Vietnam. We can’t even really “lose” the war in Afghanistan, because I don’t actually know what is defined as “losing.” We never even seriously started talking about Afghanistan being able to take care of itself until Obama’s term, before that it was basically a forgotten war where we just had troops on the ground with no clear mission or end in sight.
Afghanistan’s current government is in vastly better shape than South Vietnam’s was when we pulled out, for several reasons:
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We have made real and lasting infrastructure improvements in Afghanistan. As this Afghan writes in an opinion piece, there is a whole generation of Afghans who have grown up now in a school system–a totally new thing for that country. Additionally with more electric and medical infrastructure there is a whole generation of Afghans who might live to be 70+. Most of these people hate the Taliban, because they erode quality of life. Several areas where the Taliban was once the de facto government no longer have significant Taliban support.
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There is no superpower supporting another major country on Afghanistan’s borders that is gearing up to invade over night. There thus cannot be any repeat of the North’s invasion of the South after the American withdrawal in Vietnam.
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Karzai has been a poor friend and isn’t really a great positive force, but he’s in an extremely strong position. He also has much more legitimacy in Afghanistan than the South’s government had in South Vietnam.
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The Afghan military is far more powerful than most posters on this forum will understand or recognize. We’re building their military HQ such that it’ll be the second largest and most impressive in the world after the Pentagon. For a country of 30 million they’re going to have a quarter million trained soldiers, with professional trained officers. They will have 20,000 intelligence officers and over 115,000 police officers. Yes, the Taliban in very small numbers relative to the total, have infiltrated some of these groups for the purpose of carrying out spree killings in suicide missions. However all available evidence suggests that vast majority of all of these large, technologically advanced forces, are loyal to the central government in Kabul.
Afghanistan won’t be a perfect place, but it’s no Egypt or Libya where the regime is going to topple over night, I just think many of you here lack any understanding of the vast resource, technology, and manpower advantage the Afghan government will have. There is a reason the Taliban wants to negotiate–they know they absolutely will never beat Karzai’s forces or wheover succeeds Karzai.
- In addition to all of that, both other NATO countries and the United States have said they are willing to maintain some level of troop commitment in Afghanistan and will be willing to respond with further aid if the government gets in trouble. This is an ongoing commitment that was never made for South Vietnam, and also basically means there is no chance of the Taliban knocking the Kabul-based government out of power in a quick war ala the North invading South Vietnam.
None of this is intended to paint a rosy picture, the Karzai government is corrupt and most likely will follow the path of guys like Mubarak or Assad at some point, but he’s not really vulnerable. He may get assassinated, but even then he would just be replaced by someone else in government, the government wouldn’t fall to the Taliban.
Afghanistan still has lots of internecine conflicts, while the Taliban doesn’t have any broad national appeal, large portions of Afghanistan have no love for Karzai. But on the whole Afghanistan is more governable now than it has been at any point in probably its history.
So as I’ve explained, except for the fact it’s a conflict the U.S. stayed in far longer than I would have liked, and advanced no strategic U.S. interest, and in which we had no clear goals or strategy–it’s not at all similar to Vietnam.
I can see how those three things would make Western-centric observes believe the Afghan conflict is another Vietnam, but the strategic situation in Afghanistan is just materially different in every important way versus Vietnam. If I could go back in time and run the U.S. government, I wouldn’t involve us in a prolonged occupation of Afghanistan. I’m a big fan of Biden’s thoughts on it, which were to have pulled out immediately and just used air strikes to disrupt international terrorist bases. I think that would have achieved our goals without costing us so much in lives and treasure. I do however think, while it was overly costly and not to our interests, we have genuinely improved Afghanistan. They are more educated and have better infrastructure than ever before, I don’t know that we’ve successfully built a lasting nation, but we have left them with a better foundation to have a nation than they did before. We’ve also setup the ruler of Afghanistan in a very powerful position, and unlike South Vietnam there are no major external threats and no realistic internal threats that are just going to knock the Kabul government out of power over night.
That’s war. In WWII a lot of soldiers in the European theater prior to the German Army surrendering, when it was obvious they had lost, took a very “cautious” attitude. Prior to the last phases of the war many of them were depressed and demoralized, and assumed their deaths or serious injury was inevitable. When it became obvious the end was near, they started being much more cautious because they finally thought they had a chance to get through the war without dying.
Yes, the Taliban are weak. There is a major difference between “provinces with Taliban activity” and “provinces the Taliban control.” The Taliban have around 40,000 or fewer armed soldiers and control very small portions of the country directly. The map you’re talking about is almost certainly a 2009 map that showed 80% of the country had “significant Taliban activity.” That just means that 80% of the country had lots of Taliban attacks. Significant Taliban activity in a province does not equal Taliban control of a province. As evidence of how little control the Taliban has, note that they don’t have any in the open administrative buildings or structures anywhere in Afghanistan.
Only people with agendas even claim the Taliban exercise significant control of large portions of Afghanistan. Take Helmand province, for example, often said to be in “de facto” control of the Taliban. What does that mean? Do they have government office buildings? Do they have any form of open government? No, their leaders even in Helmand province are in hiding and run the things they do run basically clandestinely in a form similar to the mafia’s control of territory. There are two major NATO bases right in Helmand province. That runs very contrary to any traditional concepts of “control.” You don’t have major bases of your enemies smack dab in the middle of your territory when you have real control over the area.
There are regions of the worst provinces, Helmand, Ghazni, and Kandahar where neighborhoods and villages never see significant Afghan Security forces or Coalition troop presence. The Taliban do de facto “run” those regions, but in all three of those provinces the Taliban cannot operate in the open and function as a “hidden” force–that isn’t equivalent to “control.” The Taliban have waged a nationwide insurgency and have carried out attacks all over the country, maps reflect that. But just because they set off a bomb in some northern province does not mean they control that province.
The reason the U.S. wants to negotiate with the Taliban is because it is recognized we can’t eradicate them, not because there is a genuine fear that they can take over Kabul–that is considered basically an impossibility by most serious military observers.
Don’t mix up UN actions with American actions, Iraq part one was a success? humm. If your going to fight for oil at least make sure you get the dammed oil!
Your neglecting the view from the settee which is the view most people get of the war.
Bodys of young guys returning in boxes, check
Wopawopa helicopter footage on news, check
Kids and bystanders horribly mutilated, check
Odd “happy story” soldiers save a stray dog yaaa , check
embarrassingly hasty abandonment, check
Traumatized soldiers, check
Humph.. they don’t even have a flag…
‘Talks’ of this sort usually don’t result in anything substantial, but it’s part of the game. It won’t hurt, and possibly could be a factor in some other negotiation on a different front. And every once in a while the parties manage to work something out, so considering the lack of risk and low cost of talking we should be doing this.
Pretty much none of this is true. Nixon began the Vietnamization of the war - i.e. attempting to build up the ARVN so that it could take over the war by itself in 1969. It wasn’t a truce predicated upon a 2 year period of nonaggression by the NVA; the NVA was not going to withdrawal its troops from the South and nobody expected the ceasefire to last, much less to last 2 years, and even less for South Vietnam to survive. In their own words, what Nixon and Kissinger were looking for was a “decent interval” between the US leaving and South Vietnam falling to the North.
So a list of things that have little to do with the substance of the situation in Afghanistan and nothing to do with the strategic situation? I’m not sure I feel a need to really care or even discuss such a worthless list.
I’d be interested to know what the Taliban is up to with even wanting peace talks. This may shock some people, but signs point to the Taliban being realistic types and not crazed jihadists foaming at the mouth (that’s really not what they are, but that is how most Americans imagine them.) I don’t believe the Taliban wants to genuinely be part of a national government they do not run. But I think they also know all the things I outlined, that the West has massively beefed up the military and security apparatus under Karzai’s control and that in an immediate, direct confrontation the Taliban has no chance of defeating them.
I’m at a loss as to what their best move is and what they are hoping to achieve. I guess something that might make sense would be some sort of agreement where there is some level of power sharing for them, or where they get to participate in the national government.
Right now their biggest problem is outside of their core area they really have no broad based national support. In fact 80% of all civilian casualties in Afghanistan in the past ten years have been attributed to them, so they are downright despised in much of the country. That’s not the sort of situation they faced when they “won” (incompletely) the 1990s civil war and took control, and they probably recognize it’s not a good situation for taking control again.
Perhaps their long term plan is if they can come to some sort of peace where they get to participate in power sharing, they can use that as a time to “build their base” and a few years down the road topple the national government and then take things over. Or maybe they are hoping once things are a little settled down they can appeal for significant support from other countries to help overthrow the Kabul-based government.
Maybe they fear when the West is gone things end for them like they did for the Tamil Tigers, too, I don’t know.
I think this is a straight-up trade. The Taliban want their fighters back that we’ve captured, we want our POW.
This is a pretty good analysis. They are probably wondering what we hope to achieve as well.
All they have to do is read our media. We want out, this gives us an excuse to get out, at least temporarily. What they are hoping is that with us out, they can regain control and we won’t intervene. Which is delusional if that’s what they believe. The Taliban will never rule Afghanistan again.
I sure you don’t either.