WHY WE SHOULD GET OUT OF AFGHANISTON


The conventional wisdom among most Republicans is that while the United States had serious difficulty in Vietnam during the early years, by the early 1970s things were turning around and victory was close at hand. Unfortunately, the Republicans continue, the cowardly Democrats in Congress bowed to if not widespread then at least loud anti-war sentiment and forced the Ford administration to terminate almost all support to South Vietnam, allowing the North Vietnamese to win the war in 1975. In the GOP version of this story, this decision was a horrible mistake.

There has been a lot of talk lately about what the Vietnam War tells us about Afghanistan. According to the Republicans, the United States is once again at the crossroads of losing another critical war because of feckless Democrats, only this time in Afghanistan. They contend that while, yes, the United States has mismanaged the war over the past eight years, Washington has now identified a formidable military leader in General Stanley McChrystal. He knows how to defeat the Taliban and keep al Queda out of Afghanistan. However, the major obstacle he faces isn’t in Afghanistan, it is here at home: the war weary American people and the Democrats who control Congress and the White House and that they have no enthusiasm for the greater and ongoing sacrifices that General McChrystal has called for.

This narrative is unconvincing for at least two reasons. First, the United States was not anywhere near close to victory in Vietnam by the early 1970s because the South Vietnamese Army could not fight on its own. When I left Vietnam in August of 1969, it was apparent to even me, a lowly squad leader, that the war was lost. Then in 1971 when the South Vietnamese Army boldly invaded Laos, it was badly chewed up by North Vietnamese regular ground forces, a manifestation of just how bad the South Vietnamese Army was. To have any chance at beating the North Vietnamese and their allies, the Viet Cong, South Vietnam needed massive amounts of American air power, which meant that the U.S. military would have to continue fighting in Vietnam indefinitely, just to maintain a stalemate. That hardly qualifies as being “on the brink” of victory.

In Afghanistan, there is little reason to believe that Americans can decisively defeat the Taliban, mainly because just as the Viet Cong melted into the jungles of South Vietnam, they can melt into the countryside or go to Pakistan whenever they are outgunned, returning to fight another day, which is exactly what they have done since the initial U.S. victory in 2001.

Furthermore, the Karzai regime, corrupt, incompetent, and yet recently “re-elected” stands little chance of ever being able to govern effectively in Afghanistan while keeping the Taliban at bay, which means of course that the American military would have to remain there to attempt to do that job for many years to come.

The sad but truthful reality however, is that even if success was at hand in Vietnam and the United States could win in Afghanistan, there is a second and more important flaw in the Republican narrative: Victory is inconsequential.

The United States suffered a clear defeat when South Vietnam collapsed in 1975, but it hardly affected America’s overall position in the global balance of power. The domino theory, promoted so much by people like Dean Rusk, was finally proved unfounded after all. Instead, communist Vietnam invaded communist Cambodia in 1976 and one year later, Hanoi was at war with communist China! More importantly, losing in Vietnam had no adverse effects on America’s competition with the Soviet Union. Indeed, fourteen years after Saigon fell, the Cold War ended and the United States emerged as the most powerful country on the planet. What was tragic however, was the loss of so many of my friends and comrades in arms, to say nothing of the total butcher’s bill of more than 50,000 American dead and almost four times that many wounded.

The real tragedy of Vietnam is not that the United States lost, but that it became involved in the first place. It pains me to say this as someone who served in the American military from 1966 to 1969 and in Vietnam from December 1967 until August 1969, but the American anti-war movement was right: It did not matter to American security whether North Vietnam conquered the South and unified the country under communist rule. More than 58,000 American soldiers and more than two million Vietnamese died in an unnecessary and foolish war.

A similar logic applies today with regard to Afghanistan. The Republicans and General McChrystal claim that it is absolutely necessary to win the war in Afghanistan for the simple reason that a Taliban victory will allow al Queda to re-establish a sanctuary in Afghanistan. And we all know what happened the last time Osama bin Laden was free to scheme and plot against the United States from Afghanistan, September 11th. The fatal flaw in this argument however is that al Queda has a sanctuary next door in Pakistan from which it has been operating since it was driven out of Afghanistan in 2001 by America’s military. It does not need a sanctuary in Afghanistan.

Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who helped General McChrystal formulate his strategy for Afghanistan, recently told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Pakistan is “superior in important ways to Afghanistan” because it is “richer and far better connected to the outside world that is primitive, land-locked Afghanistan with its minimal communications and transportation systems.”

So then, what if the Pakistani army eliminates al Queda’s sanctuary in western Pakistan? Isn’t its current offensive in South Waziristan a major step toward that end? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Pakistan has no intention of rolling up al Queda, in good part because it does not possess the capability to police those areas where the terrorists are hiding. The offensive in Waziristan is not even aimed at the Afghan Taliban, much less at al Queda. This means that al Queda will have sanctuary in Pakistan no matter what happens in Afghanistan, which means that the American military cannot win a meaningful victory there.

In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, it simply does not matter whether the United States wins or loses. It makes no sense for the Obama administration to expend more blood and treasure to defeat the Taliban. The United States should accept defeat and immediately begin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.

As much as I admire President Obama and as tirelessly as I worked for his election, I fear that President Obama will never admit to the horrible mistake that has been made before him and perpetuated since his inauguration. Instead, he will more than likely increase the American commitment to Afghanistan, just as Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam in 1965. The driving force in both cases is domestic politics. President Johnson felt that he had to escalate the fight in Vietnam because otherwise the Republicans would accuse him for “losing Vietnam” the same way they accused President Truman of “losing China” in the late 1940s.

President Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress know full well that if the United States walks away from Afghanistan now, the Republicans will accuse them of capitulating to terrorism and undermining our security. And this charge will be leveled at them for decades to come, following and haunting the Democratic Party into every subsequent election. The Democrats have no intention of letting that happen—even though ending the war would go a long ways toward resuscitating our sick economy, thereby taking a big chunk out of the American jobless rate.

I fear America is in Afghanistan for the long haul and as was the case in Vietnam, more American soldiers and many more civilians are going to die in Afghanistan, and for no good or sensible reason.