More US Folly in Afghanistan

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http://www.nationofchange.org/more-us-folly-afghanistan-1341753214

Two New York Times stories this week capture the persistence of U.S. folly in Afghanistan. The first highlights the persistence of corruption in Afghanistan and our country's key role in funding it. The second showcases the enormous expense of providing U.S. air power as a "force multiplier" to prevent the Taliban and other anti-coalition forces from prevailing. The subtext of both articles is that without massive funding and aid from the United States, and without profligate expenditure of money and munitions by American air assets, the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai would almost certainly collapse.

Haven't we seen this before? Think Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The United States spent enormous sums of money, and used air power in even more profligate ways, to prop up the corrupt and ultimately illegitimate government of South Vietnam. Prodigious expenditures of money fed the corruption of Vietnamese officials while profligate expenditure of munitions kept the North Vietnamese enemy from prevailing (as in our ability to thwart the North Vietnamese Army's Spring Offensive of 1972), even as a suspect South Vietnamese army (ARVN) became dependent on that same U.S. air power.

When the United States finally tired of the corruption and waste of Vietnam, we pulled out our props, only to witness the unviability of our client state without massive U.S. aid.

What happens when we finally tire of Afghanistan? Though we won't witness a massive conventional military assault that ended in the chaos of Saigon in 1975, it is likely that the corrupt government of Karzai and the suspect Afghan National Army will also collapse, sooner rather than later.

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1. I do wish Ms Tuchman were still around.

This is just classic stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/March-Folly-Troy-Vietnam/dp/1433295075

"Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip."
-- Barbara Tuchman "Guns of August"

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2. +1

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3. and we just signed off on a 14 billion dollar aid package

to assure afghanistan of our good intentions for after we 'withdraw'.

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4. Yeah, we are right around 1972 or 1973.

Except I don't think the current "government" will survive even a year past the departure of all the foreign grunts.