Dejavu. Change a few words and this could be a letter from President Obama to Mr. Karzai on the 6th anniversary of the Republic of Afghanistan...Originally Posted by Bill Moore
In both cases, it was US action by the previous US President that both created the republic in question and elevated that partner President into power. This then left to the successor US president the difficult task of sustaining a system so illegitimate in its roots against a growing opposition by those disposed of a power they had earned through warfare.
We intervene for our interests, then confuse the picture when we attempt to justify our actions in the context of the interests of the systems we create. But for Ike's intervention there would most likely have been a fairly stable, unified Vietnam by 1961, albeit with a communist system of governance, under a president with local legitimacy. This independent country would most likely have turned to the US to help protect it from unwanted controlling influence out of the Soviet Union or China. But our opposition to that served to push them into those very camps to generate sufficient capacity to stand up to what the US brought to the fight.
Inevitably the best interests of the people caught in the middle of such internal and external power plays are the ones who suffer most.
Are we similarly pushing Afghans deeper into the arms of those we intervened to block the influence of in the first place? I doubt many Pashtuns would have been willing to support an AQ operation against a foreign target prior to 9/11. After the past 11 years of US intervention in Afghanistan I suspect that is no longer the case.
Tactically, the conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan are/were two very different places (though very similar programs have been tried in both). Strategically, however, they are/were very similar and we have made many of the same strategic decisions for very similar rationale that led framed an unwindable situation in Vietnam to frame an equally unwindable situation in Afghanistan. This the problem of focusing on tactics (programs, actions, lessons learned, metrics, etc). It detracts from the larger issues that frame from the outset the conditions those tactics will take place within.
Vietnam was lost in the 50s, not the 70s. Everything in between was in many ways as unnecessary as it was ineffective. Similarly Afghanistan was lost in '02-'04 in how we framed both the problem and the solution strategically. We need to get better at strategy, and studying paper such as these shared by Bill with an open mind are a critical step in that process.
I am finding a wealth of strategic products organized by administration here:
https://www.hsdl.org/?collection/stratpol&id=pd&pid=rr
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