Vietnam and Afghanistan
As President Obama contemplates and studies his options in Afghanistan, there are many commentators who have suggested there are parallels to the Vietnam War, but in so doing, they appear to miss the obvious comparisons, perhaps due to either their lack of historical knowledge or their faulty understanding of Vietnam. There are the following three points of comparison, and they need to be critically understood.
1. Ideological War: Vietnam was alternatively presented as first a war against the Communists and we were advised, under the domino theory that if Vietnam fell to the Communists, all of Southeast Asia would be lost. This was then coupled with making this a war about bringing democracy to Vietnam. In much the same way, Afghanistan is being presented as a war against Islamic terrorism. In the case of both Vietnam and Afghanistan, neither of these suppositions is operable or true. In Vietnam, it was a Vietnamese struggle to unify their own country – in essence a civil war. In the case of Afghanistan, our presence is also turning this into a war against an outside invader – the United States and our European allies. In both cases, we are woefully ignorant in understanding the force of nationalism. Nationalism develops and is rooted in a we vs. they mentality. It is the presence of an outside force that unites the people. In China, it was the Japanese invasion that led to the rise of the Communist Party as they were the only one capable of leading the resistance against the Japanese. In Vietnam, it was the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Viet Cong that led the resistance against the French and then against America’s refusal to adhere to the Geneva Convention and allow the elections in Vietnam that would have led to the electoral success of Ho Chi Minh.
In Afghanistan, to the extent that we have fight over there, it is only against Al Qaeda and a small section of the country where they might be hiding. Our actions in invading Afghanistan have forced, to a considerable degree, the Taliban and Al Qaeda to join forces against the foreign invader. The Taliban were not affiliated with Al Qaeda. And, the continued presence of U.S. and European forces and the support for the corrupt and minority government of Karzai are compelling Afghans to choose support for those fighting against the newest wave of foreign invaders. Just as the Vietnamese had a history of resisting attempts of foreign forces to conquer them, so have the Afghans. In recent times, witness the problems of the British during the 19th century and the Russian in the late 20th century.
If we were serious about fighting Islamic terrorism, our efforts might better be directed to Saudi Arabia through whose banks flowed the money to finance 9/11 and from where most of the terrorists came. In addition, it is the support of the Saudi monarchy for teaching the highly fundamentalist and terrorist oriented interpretation of Islam in their mosques and schools which is the greater threat.
2. Civil War: Vietnam was more of a Civil War between a group of Southern Vietnamese who opposed North Vietnam. They were in the minority. It was a fight between North and South and into this civil war we intervened. In much the same way, there is currently a civil war in Afghanistan between the Karzai led puppet government allied with numerous drug lords versus the Pashtun led majority of the population. The Pashtun comprise fifty percent of the Afghan population and they are the ones we are fighting as they do not support Karzai. This might seem to be an anomaly, as Karzai is Pashtun, but he has little if any support amongst the Pashtun.
3. Corrupt and Minority Leaders: In Vietnam we made the extremely critical mistake of supporting and installing Diem as the leader of South Vietnam. He had no nationalist credentials and he was a Catholic in a Buddhist country. When we installed him, he had no base of power and support in Vietnam except for the U.S. We liked him and installed him because he had become friends with several prominent politicians in the U.S. when he had studied here, he was Christian, and he spoke English. When we finally realized that he was the problem and not the solution, we acquiesced in the coup that overthrew him, if not agreeing to his assassination. We were stuck with a group of generals who were totally out of touch with the population. We called in a democracy, but it was an oligarchy of corrupt generals.
We committed the same error in Cambodia where we helped with the overthrow of Nordhom Sihanouk, a popularly elected leader, and replaced him with the army generals who proceeded to do our bidding and in the process alienate the entire population who gave their support to the Khmer Rouge. If we continue our support of Karzai and his corrupt coterie of warlords, we are marching down the same path.
Supporting Karzai with increased military support is not the answer. It was not the answer in Vietnam where our forces eventually numbered 500,000 men and woman, and where we dropped more bombs, measured in tonnage, than we did in the entire World War II. Increased military power and force is not the answer. This is a Civil War in Afghanistan and our continued presence, and an increased presence is not the answer, and will only exacerbate the situation and drive an increasing number of neutral Afghans to support the resistance in the name of Nationalism. Afghans of all political and ideological persuasions might disagree about the future of Afghanistan, but on one point they all agree – resistance to an occupying force.
Lastly, one additional parallel is worth considering. Just as we stated our concern that unless we intervened in Vietnam all of Southeast Asia would collapse, we are stating the same rationale for our involvement in Afghanistan. In Vietnam we created the environment for political instability and that which we feared came to pass. Cambodia and Laos both fell to nationalistic resistance movements led by the Communists. We are now doing the same thing in Afghanistan and our concerns about Pakistan. I fear that we are creating the very environment that will lead to the instability of Pakistan. More and more Pakistanis are looking at us as an outside, intervening and occupying force. In the name of Nationalism, the Pakistani people are more likely to unite against us than to join us in a fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda with whom they have no quarrel.
I prepared this essay almost one month ago, and hesitated to post it as I was waiting to see the long awaited decision of the Obama administration. It now appears that President Obama is going to commit additional forces to Afghanistan, just as requested by the U.S. military. If the numbers being proposed are correct, it will bring the total number of U.S. forces to over 100,000 men and women on the ground. I fail to see how an increase in our armed forces, with the attendant increase in our spending, will have a positive influence on the outcome of the war. Equally important, the increased spending for our military presence, at a time in our nation’s history when we are already deeply in debt, faced with mounting debt problems, and an economy that is still suffering from the Great Recession, will help solve our own domestic problems.
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