Afghanistan looking more like Vietnam

[steven johnson]

Unfortunately, I see the same hubris is afghanistan that I saw in Vietnam.

Has anyone else seen 'The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003), directed by Errol Morris?'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/07/jonathon-narvey-rovbert-mcnamara-s-11-lessons.aspx

Robert McNamara's 11 lessons from Vietnam

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine.
6. We failed, as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgement of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.


Jonathon Narvey: Robert McNamara's 11 lessons from Vietnam

Or written another way,
McNamara's Eleven Lessons

1. Empathize with your enemy
2. Rationality will not save us
3. There's something beyond one's self
4. Maximize efficiency
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
6. Get the data
7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
10. Never say never
11. You can't change human nature

The Fog of War

True, he doesn't seem a bit like Lyndon Johnson, but the way he's headed on Afghanistan, Barack Obama is threatened with a quagmire that could bog down his presidency. LBJ also had a progressive agenda in mind, beginning with his war on poverty, but it was soon overwhelmed by the cost and divisiveness engendered by a meaningless, and seemingly endless, war in Vietnam.

Meaningless is the right term for the Afghanistan war, too, because our bloody attempt to conquer this foreign land has nothing to do with its stated purpose of enhancing our national security. Just as the government of Vietnam was never a puppet of communist China or the Soviet Union, the Taliban is not a surrogate for al Qaeda. Involved in both instances was an American intrusion into a civil war whose passions and parameters we never fully have grasped and will always fail to control militarily.

The Vietnamese communists were not an extension of an inevitably hostile, unified international communist enemy, as evidenced by the fact that communist Vietnam and communist China are both our close trading partners today. Nor should the Taliban be considered simply an extension of a Mideast-based al Qaeda movement, whose operatives the United States recruited in the first place to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.

Those who favor an escalation of the Afghanistan war ought to own up to its likely costs. If 110,000 troops have failed, will we need the half million committed at one point to Vietnam, which had a far less intractable terrain? And can you have that increase in forces without reinstituting the draft?

Afghanistan looking more like Vietnam

[elleng]

1. Obama must learn from Vietnam: Gen. Wesley Clark gives the President advice for Afghanistan.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/08/17/2009-08-17_obama_must_learn_from_vietnam_gen_wesley_clark_gives_the_president_advice_for_af.html?page=0

[Igel]

2. Afghanistan is looking like Afghanistan.

That's what it looked like in 2007 and that's what it'll look like in 2011.

Let's leave pithy and enlightening analogies to when they actually mean something--the future. Why do I say this?

Because the present does not predict the future. Now, I think Afghanistan, as it's going, is not going to be pretty. Then again, I thought Iraq was not going to turn out well fairly quickly, then I thought it was going to not turn out well at all. I've learned to replace future tenses with present perfects.

In fact, there was a long litany of posts saying how Iraq was looking like Vietnam. It might still go that way, to be honest, but right not that's not the obvious future for Iraq.

Here are a couple, not to criticise the posters but just to point out that such posts actually did exist:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4413787

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3649534