Nice to see books have impact, but it's the wrong historical analogy

FRONT PAGE: "Behind Afghan War Debate, A Battle of Two Books Rages," by Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, Wall Street Journal, 7 October 2009.

Obviously, I'm more with Lewis Sorley's A Better War than the other book (Lessons in Disaster, because Sorley points out, like he did in a recent WSJ op-ed, how America did re-learn counterinsurgency by the end of the war, and was succeeding at it, only to have the plug pulled by an exhausted public.

Comments

[stuart abrams]

While I agree that there are major differences between Afghanistan and Vietnam, and that refrains about "quagmires" and "disaster" are not useful, there is one important parallel. The government of South Vietnam was essentially an American creation having little organic legitimacy for the Vietnamese; I think the same is true of the Karzai government. I think it is a mistake to think that you can go into a place like Vietnam or Afghanistan and create a government, and then use counterinsurgency tactics to prevent an "insurgency" from overthrowing the government that exists only because we created it in the first place. It was always naive to think that the ultimate government of Vietnam (which was always really one country) would not be dominated by Ho Chi Minh and his followers - the anti-colonial heroes who had defeated the Japanese and the French. Similarly, I think it is foolish to think that we can "defeat" the Taliban, which continues to be the dominant force among the Pashtun - best organized and least corrupt - and it seems to me inevitable that they will have to be represented in any Afghan government. Barnett Rubin (who knows more about Afghanistan than pretty much any American) is basically right - to a large extent, the Taliban is a Pashtun nationalist movement (at least many elements of it are), not an ideological Islamist movement. The key is to get them to a point where they will be hospitable to globalization, which will inevitably mean opening the doors to regional powers and the corresponding defeat of al Qaeda. Again, I think there is a relevant parallel to Vietnam; I always believed that Ho and his followers were more Vietnamese nationalists than ideological communists, and that the "domino theory" was complete nonsense. This was borne out by the Sino-Vietnamese War that took place a few years after we left, and the speed with which the Vietnamese "communists" embraced capitalism. No doubt, the Vietnamese "communists" are not democrats, and I don't see much likelihood of establishing "democracy" in Afghanistan either, but as you always say, economics comes before politics.

[Louis Heberlein]

Ike saw Vietnam as an issue to be dealt with in a limited advisory/assistance fashion to avoid stirring pot with China and give France the chance to leave without defeat. That would give French enough pride to deal with other colonial issues, and to grudgingly accept German entry into NATO. That was a key to Cold War success as far as Ike and Marshall were concerned. Then JFK tried to use Vietnam as a proving ground for his COIN / conventional military Cold War concepts after the Laos fiasco. There was some success. Then LBJ decided to deploy more fighting troops and bash North Vietnam so he could not be accused of failing to follow JFK mission ... and he would lose re-election. The increased chaos and civilian casualties turned more South Vietnamese against America and their willingness to support large North Vietnamese operations in the South. Many in American military saw the situation and advised against the big bang approach. But the top political folks and the brass they appointed did not want to hear the worker bears concerns. The main lesson to me is that many Gap crises cannot be coped with if Washington wheels insist on winning on their watch and getting media adulation.