TOPICS
TOPICS
Forward Observer: Lessons Not Learned
As your forward observer on things military, I see President Obama being confronted in Afghanistan with the same hard choice that confronted President Richard Nixon in Vietnam: Send in more U. S. troops to pacify the country or hand that tough job over to the natives as you leave the country waving glittering promises.
Nixon opted to leave it to the South Vietnamese government and its army to clean up the mess we made in their country at the same time they had to defend themselves against the widely feared invasion by North Vietnam. Among the glittering promises Nixon waved as he backed out of South Vietnam was the peace treaty Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated in Paris and got signed in 1973.
Congress, thoroughly sick of the Vietnam War and its protesters, heaved a sigh of relief at Nixon's Vietnamization of the war. The lawmakers went on to deny the South Vietnamese the money they were counting on to buy ammunition and other war gear to combat the North Vietnamese. The North invaded and conquered the South despite the peace treaty, creating a unified Vietnam in 1975.
Before the Vietnam War escalated to where the United States had a half-million troops on the ground in South Vietnam, Secretary of State Dean Rusk told us editors and reporters at The Washington Post that if the United States lost the Vietnam War, "You can kiss Thailand goodbye." This was the Kennedy administration's dead-wrong Domino Theory: Either stop communist North Vietnam or watch other countries in the region fall to the communists.
We were "wrong, terribly wrong" in the way he and other American leaders ran the Vietnam War, the late Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrote in his 1995 memoir, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." That war killed about 58,000 American service men and women and, by some estimates, as many as 1 million Vietnamese combatants and 5 million Vietnamese civilians.
U.S. Census Bureau figures testify to the fact that the United States and the still-communist-but-unified Vietnam have developed a healthy trading relationship since the war ended in 1975. In May 2009, the latest month of trading figures on record, Census reports that the United States sold $248.7 million worth of goods to the new Vietnam and bought $984.1 million from its former enemy. So what was that Vietnam War about anyway?
In Afghanistan today, as in Vietnam yesterday, American military leaders are stressing the need to win the hearts and minds of the people. But as I saw for myself as a combat correspondent in Vietnam in 1968 and 1972, the job of keeping the bad guys out of remote villages day and night -- especially at night when it is easy for guerillas to hit and run under the cover of darkness -- is a constant, uphill struggle requiring thousands more troops than combat commanders think they can spare for pacification.
This is why the front page, off-lead story in The Washington Post of July 11 rang so true to me. It said Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new field commander in Afghanistan, "has concluded that the Afghan security forces will have to be far larger than currently planned if President Obama's strategy for winning the war is to succeed ... Obama has been cautious about making any additional military resources available beyond the 17,000 [American] combat troops and 4,000 military trainers he agreed to in February. That will bring the total U. S. force to 68,000 [in Afghanistan] by fall."
The reliability of native forces in Afghanistan is as big a question mark -- and probably bigger, given their fractured loyalty to Afghanistan's central government, tribal and religious leaders and the Taliban -- as the one that hung over South Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War.
President Lyndon Johnson opted to fill the yawning troop gap with U.S. forces, increasing their presence in South Vietnam from 16,300 at the end of 1963, the year he took over from the assassinated President Kennedy, to 536,100 at the end of 1968. In the same period, 1963 through 1968, the South Vietnamese armed forces grew from 243,000 to 820,000 combatants. The figures come from the authoritative "Vietnam War Almanac" by Harry G. Summers Jr.
So even with a combined armed force of 1.3 million U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, we could not pacify South Vietnam nor win the war against the North. Afghanistan for centuries has been defeating would-be pacifiers and occupiers. Now Afghanistan is Obama's war. His plan is to increase the Afghan army from 85,000 to 134,000 by 2011. But McChrystal believes the Afghan army must be much bigger to assure Obama's success in Afghanistan. But who would an even doubled Afghan army and police force be loyal to? Probably not the Afghan central government.
This sets the stage for McChrystal to ask for more U.S. troops as a quicker, surer fix for pacifying Afghanistan.
Obama knows full well that escalating the American presence in Vietnam ruined Johnson's presidency. He does not want to take "Johnson Avenue" in Afghanistan. He doesn't want to lose his first war, either. The struggle for the president's mind on Afghanistan is under way.
COMMENTS
- Talk about your lessons not learned… I guess a number of chicken hawks have yet to learn that we, as the self-proclaimed prophets and true believers of democracy and national SELF DETERMINATION, are still not the world’s conscience nor policeman. And, yet, even as I say that I remember the Holocaust. Okay, our national conscience has wavered in the past; as exhibited by the hesitation with which we finally stood against the Jewish slaughter. Even after millions died, we entered that conflict ONLY after being attacked ourselves. Okay, some say there was a conspiracy to motivate the peaceniks but who is to say for sure these some 60+ years later? Perhaps we should better define what the qualifications should be. I can only speak of my own convictions. So, what makes for a righteous conflict? Perhaps a request for assistance might qualify? Did we receive one of those before entering Iraq for the 2nd time? I do believe mutual defense of international laws, treaties, national sovereignty, a cry for help, AND a stand against genocide should qualify; which the invasion of Kuwait, like Vietnam, all resulted in. If not on the basis of those criteria, how do we choose which conflicts to start? Should we be positioning our troops to move into North Korea? Preparing to enter Somalia for the again? Setting up another new puppet regime for Iran perhaps? There’s at least a good half dozen African conflicts we could choose such as Darfur. There are many slaughters going on at this time; is it any coincidence that we chose the biggest threat to our oil supply and therefore our economy? None of those others seem to fit this particular characteristic, and here we still stand just wagging our fingers and righteously clucking our tongues. So you tell me why we chose Iraq the 2nd time around, "mac". Was it for selfless or selfish reasons? If we are to hold our standards higher than those around us, should we not reserve the sacrifice of our Soldiers’ blood for righteous rather than selfish reasons? I tend to think so. Tip off Posted August 5, 2009 2:10 PM
- It always amazes me how the view of the Viet Nam war remains skewed. It was right to try to stop the advance of an always godless communism. Congress pulling the funding was the morally wrong part. And working to deny Al Queda a sanctuary in Afghanistan is also still the right thing to do. Those that still harp on why they think the Iraq war is wrong continue to ignore the fact that Hussein killed a half million of his own people. Oh by the way, Iraqis are people too, they want freedom just like the Iranians do. mac Posted August 5, 2009 8:53 AM
- Skeeter, the timeline may have moved a tad but… at least its moving in the right direction! At least they’re now contemplating an exit strategy for a conflict we should never have been involved in. Daddy’s War should never have ground to a halt the first time when we HAD justification for ousting that tin pot despot; but for Junior to … Never mind. All that’s old hash you’ve never shown a taste for anyway. You’ve just WAY too much ear wax to listen to reason. Go ahead and cast your stones from that crystalline palace you call home; and pray there’s no blowback. If we must expend that most precious of commodities, our Soldiers’ blood, I only pray that the fights are righteous. Tip off Posted August 4, 2009 9:50 AM
