First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now – and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance – would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.

The Vietnam war remains a politically important, if increasingly mythologized, part of our national conscience. I find it interesting how Obama defined a narrow set of points that he (correctly) refuted, but that ignores the larger issue of the comparisons.

Afghanistan is, in my opinion, intractable for a different reasons than Vietnam was. We aren't facing a widely popular counter-government, we are instead facing a region that does not think of itself as a nation at all in which numerous regional and religious factions are all out for themselves and both crafty and ruthless about how they go about politics. A more apt comparison would have been trying to nation-build the entire Indochine peninsula as a single political entity. Despite our blinders with regard to Vietnam, the various military planners never seriously entertained the idea of large scale invasions of Laos and Cambodia. In fact, the problems of Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge can be directly compared to the problems of Afghanistan -- after years of a brutal dictatorship we supported for our immediate political ends, war-ravaged Vietnam had to invade them in 1978 to stop mass murders on the scale of the Holocaust.

Our myopia to local reality and long-term consequences in pursuit of our own goals has now led to the deaths of about 4% of the population of Iraq and the exodus of another 6% (picture one in ten of everyone you know being dead or having fled the country), on top of who even knows how many killed by the warlords we backed in Afghanistan in the 1980s-2001, nearly 35% of the population of Cambodia in the 1970s, and ten of thousands in Nicaragua along with the creation of massive drug-trafficking empires.

Nation-building and political change aren't just hard problems, we're absolutely terrible at implementing them too. And from evidence, even the smart people in our political culture simply can not learn this.

I'd be curious to hear what Byl in particular thinks about the Vietnam rhetoric going around the issue. Very few of our elected officials now have much real experience with it and the last administration was a bunch of chickenhawks, which certainly didn't help the discourse.

I caught this on the news and thought it was interesting, but inaccurate. It's a broad comparison, and more of a slam than anything. The previous administration put us here, for better or worse, and Obama is backed into a no-win situation. I also think that, unfortunately, most people today have little understanding of the real complexities of Vietnam, or even the concept that the conflict spanned more than just Vietnam as a country.

Malse, no two wars are the same. That for one makes the comparison to Vietnam taboo IMHO. At least from a tactical stand point. The source of the parity being suggested is based souly on the consensus of the people at home. That and Afghanistan is a guerilla war where gains and losses are difficult to define. Its not like in WWII where a whole Army rolls in, kills the enemy forces, pacifies/enslaves the civilians and then occupies the ground because it was clear as to who owned it before and now after the occupation...who is in charge. Plus in WWII if you took territory there was usually something strategically good that went with it. Factories. Resources. Transportation nodes. Important cultural centers. Tangible gains in other words that could be tallied in the formula of being able to say that victory is being achieved.

Vietnam did not have that much in the way of tangible gain, but in that case we were figting against Nationalism. Ultimately the Vietnamese wanted a WHOLE NATION free of Western interference and that is what they got while doing whatever it took along the way. The Vietnamese wanted that much more than we wanted to try and stop it so ultimately that is why we had to cut our losses and pull out, leaving it a failure.

Afghanistan...well there is NOTHING really tangible to gain to quantify a victory nor is there any real aim for Afghanistan to see itself as a nation either. Its a patch of cold isolated dirt and loyality goes as far as whatever the authority in a tribe dictates or whatever foundation Islam offers. I don't see us there really to do more than try to contain the more radical fringes. Otherwise what are we going to offer? We don't have a plan to offer the population of Afghanistan a better life. Not one that they can agree on anyway. Radical Islam goes against placing a modern factory or anything that might bring prosperity and with it the influence of more affluent cultures. The Afghans don't have any idea either. With Vietnam, well the Vietnamese knew what they wanted and that was a united Vietnam. Afghanistan really is a no win other than the containment. It gives us a spot on the map to keep an eye on but that is about it.

Obama is probably correct on this last big mop up push to try and tame the more lawless areas and then getting out. There is not much else we can do there militarily. To make Afghanistan peaceful requires that they have a viable, peaceful and law abiding industry but that requires action from the civilian/business sector. For now, that viable indutry is opium and a vast empy space to harbor Islamist militant groups just as Somolia's main industry is piracy around the Horn of Africa. Yet another place where its best to keep the dirtbags local so we know where they are as opposed to trying to drive them out to places we don't want them.

As a last note...since it took a visit with India's premier to finally gell an Afghanistan solution, has anyone considered that fact that Afghanistan being stable has much to benifit India? Perhaps a deal was brokered for us to get the area stable enough for India to pick up the rest on the civilian end. China, just as a key note, contributes much and invests much in Pakistan. Afghanistan is being turned into a political no mans land on the issue of who holds Asia in hegemony or if India and China can adopt a shared role which will certainly allow the US some clout. Many speculate that the "Asian Century" is really nothing more than the "Chinese" century and the US does not see that is being benificial. It allows Beijing to lock US business and security interests out of the Eastern Hemisphere at a whim if Delhi becomes an economic sattelite of Beijing.

We are in a much better shape here than we in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese actually pretty much had us surrounded, running in from Cambodia and Laos with impunity. But they also had their core bases in North Vietnam, being resupplied indefinitely and easily from China.

We have the Taliban in a pretty bad way. Pakistan is pushing hard from the east, working with CIA operations to flush and pick off on that side of the border, while this surge will flood the southern stronghold and cut off the Taliban movement.

In reality.. holding the north of Afghanistan has a lot less consequence than holding the south. The South is bread basket, or the Poppy basket.

9,000 Marines are going to descend on Kandahar in Janurary. 20000 more troops are close behind.

I imagine the plan will be to take Kandahar City, Lashkah Gar, and Zaranj (just to piss off the Iranians) but maybe Delaram. That will cut the south of the country in half. 2,000 troops in each of these major population centers would be more than enough. Consider that UK forces have "Held" Lashkar Gar with 60 troops, and achieved total control and peace with 600.

After that, they will most likely wall off the Pakistani border and Hammer and Anvil with a slow sweeping movement from west to east. Taking and holding and rebuilding before moving on.

I watched the speech in its entirety, and it's fair to say that Obama looked the most uncomfortable that I have ever seen him whilst giving the first half or so of that speech. He was sober to the point of being grim, grey and possibly queasy looking, and it was obviously with a heavy heart and perhaps his own conscience/better judgement that he spoke of increasing the troop numbers in Afghanistan.

He was at his worst in the early going when speaking about Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and his initial rationale for the decision; I felt that either he himself internally balked at the implicit lie in conflating them or he was fully cognizant of the quagmire he was taking another step into via the rationale of extricating us. He became much smoother as he moved on to talk about the economy, 'that he was most interested in nation-building at home', and as he went through his three-fold defense of his plan in organized and lawyerly fashion.

I felt that he was most honest and effective when he talked about the real problem being Pakistan; but I don't know, sadly, if our proxy war to 'stabilize' Afghanistan will yield us any net gains there or only provoke more activity inside Pakistan, in which case we will have forced a call of Pakistan's bluff with regard to its own deeply divided house.

I felt Obama did a good job of limiting expectations, and narrowing the scope of the immediate mission; we can't afford to 'nation-build' in Afghanistan, even if it were possible. The Iraqis are an order of magnitude up from Afghanistan on the civilization scale, having at least *had* near-universal education and literacy and a populace that has some conception of what living in a civilized society and with a functioning government might look like, and they're headed for their own civil war. The best we can hope for in Afghanistan is an exit that allows the non-nation to go back to fighting amongst its own factions without too much disruption to the rest of the world (and more specifically, any oil pipelines that might be scheduled to pass through that area) and if we can do that 'handoff' with as little blowback as possible we should consider it a success.

I personally think that's a pipe dream, however, and the 'timetable' to begin the drawdown a bedtime tale Obama is telling himself and his base so that he can sleep at night with his decision; my fear/expectation is that as things (fail to) progress or additional crises emerge, Obama will 'seek the counsel of his advisors' and be convinced to extend and expand the mission again and again. My prediction is that at best, Afghanistan is going to be a staging ground for other operations to protect 'our vital interests' in the region and at worst we will see a variant of the domino theory invoked with China once again the boogieman, only this time with regard to its economic/resource hegemony.

While his proposal was well presented and justified, it was weak in the details, of course (how will those troops make a real impact with only a year on the ground, and in the 'city-based' deployment planned?) and in his pre-emptive comparisons with Vietnam, especially the bit about the 'misreading of history'. The Vietnamese, granted, *wanted* a government; they just didn't want the puppet we chose to support. Here we are supporting Karzai (and I was glad to see Obama acknowledge the problems with his legitimacy, to fail to do so would have been disingenuous), which is making us a target for local rage even in the face of our 'good works' in the country, and stuck between a rock and a hard place with neither withdrawal nor expansion of our presence presenting measurably better potential outcomes on the hearts and minds rubric.

Overall, I was fairly impressed with the gravity and maturity of the speech and feel that he is playing perhaps the only hand he has at this point and hoping for the best. For the most part he showed great prudence and care with his words and demanded a level of maturity of his listeners that should inspire confidence that this president, at least, has thought most of it through. The only place that level of insight/maturity really failed was in his use of rehashed GWB rhetoric and insisting on framing this issue as one of 'us vs the terrorists', and worse, repeated invoking of the phrase 'tools of mass destruction'. Even if this framing is somewhat justified, it both invokes a bad taste in the mouths of those who have sacrificed for a pointless war in Iraq sold on lies using those words, and demeans and oversimplifies a situation that Americans deserve to have a fuller accounting of, considering our commitment.

I, and the world, will be very interested to see what happens come 2011, but I won't be holding my breath over the troops coming home then.

Regards,
Nydia

I was watching a new special the other night. This special was about, if Obama sends troops now, it will take 1 year to simply get those troops there and all the support gear to make it happen. They have to airlift every single thing, there is no way to come in by sea and motor across the country...all tanks, troop carriers, hummers, all need to be dropped by plane. Its a huge undertaking, we shall see how fast this gets going.

Looking like my Marine brother in law after three tours in Iraq will soon be starting a tour in Afghanistan. /sigh

I watched the speech, and I thought it did as good of job as possible at conveying the reasons for the troop surge. I like that we have an endgame planned, but it sure does seem to soon given the undertaking of getting another 30,000 troops and supplies on the ground there.

I was watching a new special the other night. This special was about, if Obama sends troops now, it will take 1 year to simply get those troops there and all the support gear to make it happen. They have to airlift every single thing, there is no way to come in by sea and motor across the country...all tanks, troop carriers, hummers, all need to be dropped by plane. Its a huge undertaking, we shall see how fast this gets going.


That's interesting, when I was a solider with the 3rdID and we got the alerts for various crap happening in the world especially the embassy bombings in Africa....we were packed and ready and sitting on the tarmac within 24hrs...to include our gear, equipment, and vans. In fact 95% of the time we were packing and unloading and checking gear to be ready for the call...the rest of the time was spent training in the field. I wouldn't believe everything I saw on the news. Sure some things can take time but some things do not. I can't imagine 10yrs later it's much different for the 3rd ID.

Not sure but a small blip, but maybe others can confirm.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2009/12/01/sending-30000-more-troops-to-afghanistan-a-logistical-challenge.html

Heh if only you guys knew...

All I can say is it's about time. Let us do the damn job and then GTFO.