Foreign Policy: Saigon 2009(Afghan Comparisons to Vietnam Are Valid)

[tekisui]

Source: NPR

For those who say that comparing the current war in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War is taking things too far, here's a reality check: It's not taking things far enough. From the origins of these North-South conflicts to the role of insurgents and the pointlessness of this week's Afghan presidential elections, it's impossible to ignore the similarities between these wars. The places and faces may have changed but the enemy is old and familiar. The sooner the United States recognizes this, the sooner it can stop making the same mistakes in Afghanistan.

Even at first glance the structural parallels alone are sobering. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan (prior to the U.S. engagement there) had surprisingly defeated a European power in a guerrilla war that lasted a decade, followed by a largely north-south civil war which lasted another decade. Insurgents in both countries enjoyed the advantage of a long, trackless, and uncloseable border and sanctuary beyond it, where they maintained absolute political control. Both were land wars in Asia with logistics lines more than 9,000 miles long and extremely harsh terrain with few roads, which nullified U.S. advantages in ground mobility and artillery. Other key contributing factors bear a striking resemblance: Almost exactly 80 percent of the population of both countries was rural, and literacy hovered around 10 percent.

In both countries, the United States sought to create an indigenous army modeled in its own image, based on U.S. army organization charts. With the ARVN in South Vietnam and the ANA in today's Afghanistan, assignment of personnel as combat advisors and mentors was the absolute lowest priority. And in both wars, the U.S. military grossly misled the American people about the size of the indigenous force over a protracted period. In Afghanistan, for example, the U.S. military touts 91,000 ANA soldiers as "trained and equipped," knowing full well that barely 39,000 are still in the ranks and present for duty.

The United States consistently and profoundly misunderstood the nature of the enemy it was fighting in each circumstance. In Vietnam, the United States insisted on fighting a war against communism, while the enemy was fighting a war of national reunification. In Afghanistan, the United States still insists on fighting a secular counterinsurgency, while the enemy is fighting a jihad. The intersection of how insurgencies end and how jihads end is nil. It's hard to defeat an enemy you don't understand, and in Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, this fight is being played out in a different war.

more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112167736

[FarCenter]

1. Except the position is more precarious, since there is no evacuation route by sea

To extend the Vietnam analogy:

- Pakistan is playing the role of North Vietnam, since the arms are flowing into Afghanistan through "Pashtunistan", the Pashtun homeland that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

- Saudi Arabia is playing the role of Russia as the funder and supporter of the radical Islamists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It is harder to extract forces from Afghanistan. The Soviets could leave by road to the north, across the Amu Darya river into Uzbekistan and Turkistan, which they controlled at the time. The NATO allied forces in the north, e.g. German Wehrmacht forces, could leave the same way. However, the US and UK forces in the south would have to evacuate by road and rail through Pakistan or be airlifted out, probably leaving lots of their equipment behind.

The logistics do not favor a further buildup of forces in Afghanistan, both because of the expense and vulnerability of supply lines to maintain them and because of the difficulty in extracting them if things get worse.

[Winterblues]

2. Except during Vietnam we were engaged against the third largest army in the world at the time.

It was a Conventional war engaged against uniformed conventional forces.