Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam?

Less New Thinking and More Old Mistakes

By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

On October 2, 2002, Barack Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, gave a speech opposing
going to war in Iraq. That speech, at that time, would prove crucial to his election, first as a US
Senator two years later, and then as President, four years after that. Democrats who equivocated
were a dime a dozen. Obama stood out, because he stood up when others did not, and said,
"This is wrong."
He did not oppose all wars. He cited the Civil War and World War II as specific examples of
necessary ones. But, he said, "I'm opposed to dumb wars." Yet, on January 23, his third full day
as President, Obama ordered two separate air strikes in Pakistan, killing 14 civilians, along with
four suspected terrorists. One strike killed six civilians along with four suspected terrorists
staying in their home, the other simply hit the wrong target, the home of a pro-government tribal
elder, Malik Deen Faraz in the Gangikhel area of South Waziristan, killing him, his three sons
and a grandson, along with three others.
Now President Obama has made it official. In addition to another 17,000 troops promised early,
he made an additional pledge of 4,000 more on Friday, March 27. It was reportedly a 'carefully
calibrated' decision, these would be trainers not combat troops, we were told. But Ray
McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran, whose career included long stretches preparing security
briefs for Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr., was not impressed with such fine distinctions.
Paul Rosenberg :: Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam?
"I was wrong," McGovern wrote about his belief that Obama's campaign rhetoric regarding
escalation in Afghanistan would not be followed through. "I kept thinking to myself that when
he got briefed on the history of Afghanistan and the oft-proven ability of Afghan 'militants' to
drive out foreign invaders - from Alexander the Great, to the Persians, the Mongolians, Indians,
British, Russians - he would be sure to understand why they call mountainous Afghanistan the
'graveyard of empires.'"
Perhaps Obama got that briefing, perhaps he didn't. But one thing is certain, McGovern went on
to explain: he did not get the kind of intelligence briefing that used to be standard before the
Bush regime consigned them to irrelevancy. Traditionally, the national intelligence estimate
(NIE) had been the core intelligence product used to summarize the collective advice of the
intelligence community, but as USA Today reported on September 11, 2002 ("Iraq Course Set
From Tight White House Circle"), no NIE had been prepared on the topic of invading Iraq.
"An intelligence official says that's because the White House doesn't want to detail the
uncertainties that persist about Iraq's arsenal and Saddam's intentions. A senior administration
official says such an assessment simply wasn't seen as helpful," USA Today reported, adding,
"Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, calls that 'stunning.'
'If we are about to make a decision that could risk American lives, we need full and accurate
information on which to base that decision,' he says in a letter sent Tuesday to leaders of the
committee and CIA Director George Tenet."
The pressure forced an NIE to be created, but it was highly politicized, and remains a subject of
controversy to this day. Now Obama has chosen a renewed commitment to an open-ended
military involvement in Afghanistan with no NIE at all.
But McGovern also reminds us of an April 2006 NIE on global terrorism-ignored by Bush at the
time, and now being ignored by Obama as well: "The authors of that estimate had few cognitive
problems and simply declared their judgment that invasions and occupations (in 2006 the target
then was Iraq) do not make us safer but lead instead to an upsurge in terrorism."
Echoing the 2006 NIE, in January, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace issued a
policy brief, "Focus and Exit: An Alternative Strategy for the Afghan War" written by Gilles
Dorronsoro. It's top-line recommendations were directly contrary to the path Obama has chosen:

• Objectives in Afghanistan must be reconciled with the resources available to pursue

them.

• The mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the
single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban.

• The best way to weaken, and perhaps divide, the armed opposition is to reduce military
confrontations.

• The main policy objective should be to leave an Afghan government that is able to
survive a U.S. withdrawal.

• Strategy should differentiate three areas and allocate resources accordingly: strategic
cities and transportation routes that must be under total Afghan/alliance control; buffers
around strategic areas, where NATO and the Afghan army would focus their struggle
against insurgents; and opposition territory, where NATO and Afghan forces would not
expend effort or resources.

• Withdrawal will allow the United States to focus on the central security problem in the
region: al-Qaeda and the instability in Pakistan.
It's important to note that with limited resources, Carnegie says we cannot and should not focus
on disrupting insurgents where they are strongest, we should focus on building something
positive instead. Obama's fanatasy of doing both is just that: a fantasy.
Of course, in the background of all of this is the strong sense of a moral obligation to combat
Taliban-style fundamentalism, with its extreme subjugation of women. But Obama's current
course is detrimental to that struggle as well, according to Sameer Dossani, who in 1999 became
the first staff person of the International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence
in Pakistan, a group that was combating "honor crimes" --domestic violence up to and including
murder against female family members accused of inappropriate conduct--along the Pakistan-
Afghanistan border. Such crimes were greatly on the rise due to the spread of Taliban-style
Wahabi Islam. The weapon of choice in fighting honor crimes? Education.
"We taught women their rights under Pakistani and Afghani law, we taught about the passages
in the Quran that mentioned women's rights, and we also tried to educate people about other
traditions," he wrote in an article last November titled "The Case for U.S. Withdrawal from
Afghanistan."
Dossani's recommendations strongly paralleled those from Carnegie, but with an added
component aimed at long-term cultural education in order to combat fundamentalism.
These are but a few of the voices from a wide range of perspectives urging us to turn away from
a military approach in Afghanistan. What's more, a February CNN poll found the American
people slightly opposed to the war there-51-47%, but with 64% of Democrats opposed. While
Bush never listened to those who disagreed with him politically, Obama seems to have made a
fetish of the opposite: he has listened almost exclusively to Bush holdovers in the military, from
Defense Secretary Gates on down, while tuning out those whose diverse alternative approaches
have much more support in his political base. In doing so, he risks splitting the Democratic base
that elected him-not right away, but over the course of years, as happened with Kennedy and
Johnson in Vietnam, who also felt a need not to break too sharply with Republican hawkishness.
Indeed, it is difficult to escape the feeling that if Barack Obama were still an Illinois State
Senator, he would look at this latest push to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and conclude that it
too, had to be opposed, because it is a "dumb war."

Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam?

by Helena Cobban
There's a rapidly growing discussion here in the US about "what to do in Afghanistan."
Some of it is thoughtful, well-informed, and serious. Like this piece by Rajiv
Chandrasekaran in today's WaPo, which argues that the two best options look to be "Go
all-in, or fold."
(Actually, that's only one choice, since the US citizenry and budget are quite incapable of
doing what would be needed to "go all-in" in that very distant and logistically
intimidating country.)
I note that one aspect of the way path forward that just about nobody in the US discourse
has yet started talking/writing about is the idea, that I consider crucial, that it does not
have to be, indeed should not be, the US that dominates all decisionmaking and
international action regarding Afghanistan, going forward.
Members of the US commentatoriat are so US-centric! It still boggles my mind. I
suppose that right now, this is still part of the legacy of the 1990s, when the US was the
sole and uncontested Uber-power in the world...
Anyway, that caveat notwithstanding, Frank Rich had a fascinating piece in last Sunday's
NYT in which he noted a new aspect of the strong relevance the Vietnam precedent has
for the decisions Obama currently faces over Afghanistan.
Rich noted that George Stephanopoulos recently blogged that the latest "must-read book"
for members of Obama's "war team" is Lessons in Disaster, a book published last year
about a guy called McGeorge Bundy and "the path to war in Vietnam." Bundy was John
Kennedy's national security adviser.
Underscoring the book's relevance, Rich notes that when it came out last year, no less a
person than Richard Holbrooke, now Obama's chief emissary for Afghanistan and
Pakistan, reviewed it (in late November) in the NYT.
Holbrooke's review is well worth reading. He gives some helpful info about the
background to the writing of the book. He also refers to a much earlier essay he himself
had written about Bundy that he had titled, ""The Smartest Man in the Room Is Not
Always Right", noting that, having known Bundy a little bit, he had had him in mind
when he wrote it.
Holbrooke concluded the review with this:
Bundy never believed in negotiations with the Vietcong or the North Vietnamese.
This, coupled with his enduring faith in the value of military force in almost any
terrain or circumstance, were his greatest errors. They contributed to a tragic failure.
With the nation now about to inaugurate a new president committed to withdraw
combat troops from Iraq and succeed in Afghanistan, the lessons of Vietnam are still
relevant.
These two little insights into the mind of Richard Holbrooke belie an awareness of the
limitations of being "the smartest man" and of the value of military force that I, for one,
find a little reassuring.
Much of the current analogizing between the US in Vietnam and the US in Afghanistan
focuses on the decisions Kennedy faced in 1961. Other commentaors have focused on
decisions faced by his successor, Lyndon Johnson, in 1964.
Last week, I had a couple of good conversations with Dr Jeffrey Record, a very
thoughtful guy who teaches at the US Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama, who
has written a lot of good studies of the big mistakes the Bush administration made in Iraq.
Record has also studied the US performance in Vietnam very closely. As we talked last
week, he explored the 1964-2009 analogy a bit. He noted that in 1964, Johnson faced
much the same kind of "big" decision Obama now faces-- whether to increase the US
force commitment substantially, or find a way to ramp it down...
And like Obama today, Record said, Johnson was concerned both about trying to win
some serious, big-picture reforms in domestic social policy and about the possibility of a
political backlash inside the US if he should be seen as "backing down" from the
confrontation in Vietnam.
In 1964, Johnson made the fateful decision to escalate. Rather than investing his domestic
political capital in defending a decision to de-escalate in Vietnam, he invested it in
pushing through a number of important "Great Society" social reforms at home, instead.
Later, the Vietnam part of that decision would come back to haunt him badly...
On balance, then, it seems good that Obama and his people are all reading what sounds to
be an excellent study of the decisionmaking of those earlier years.

•
Written by Paul R .Gupta. Mr. Gupta is a lawyer in New York City. He is a graduate of
Yale College and Harvard Law School. Further information about him can be found in
Who's Who in the World.
It seems fitting that I read the Rolling Stone McChrystal article on July 4th.
Doesn't anyone read history anymore? How can we not see the parallels between JFK and
Obama as young, untested war presidents? July 4th is a day to reflect on lessons that we
as a nation have painfully learned, but seem to have forgotten.
Maybe JFK's decision to go forward with the Bay of Pigs will be seen like Obama's
decision a few months ago to approve the Afghanistan "surge." And maybe, just as JFK
learned to be more skeptical of military advice after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Obama will
learn to better trust the judgment of his civilian advisers as we are now mired in a
seemingly hopeless post-surge war and looking for a way out.
Let us remember that, after the Bay of Pigs, JFK was confronted with the Cuban Missile
Crisis -- which was resolved by diplomacy, not by troops on the ground. So, too, let us
hope that Obama learns to trust the diplomats rather than the generals to guide us out of
Afghanistan in a way that protects American lives and interests.
Petraeus has shown himself to have a much better sense of the bigger picture than
McChrystal. But all may get sucked into the military vortex and the military logic that
would recommend that we commit even more brave men and women to the Afghan
struggle. Military logic may be like the old logic of all-too-many institutions, which
favored growth at all costs. Of course, today's successful institutions favor rightsizing.
It is to save the lives of our troops -- our sons and our daughters -- that we should realize
that American superiority lies in technology, not in more boots on the ground. Our valiant
troops deserve better than being subjected to daily ambushes and IEDs by Afghan
fighters who know every inch of their terrain and who observe no codes of conduct.
(Petraeus to his credit has moved quickly to improve our troops' ability to confront the
enemy.)
No solution here will be perfect, or perhaps even palatable, but we must do the best we
can. History teaches that Afghanistan has successfully resisted all ground armies since
Ghengis Khan's. However, technological solutions, such as our drone attacks, have had
notable successes, and can achieve further success without imperiling large numbers of
our troops. It is fair to assume that, if just a fraction of our war billions were spent on
further improving our military technology and training, our air strikes could be even
better targeted.
History also teaches that a foreign war cannot be won where the foreign government is as
corrupt as Afghanistan's. As an example, it has been well documented that literally
billions of dollars are being flown out of Kabul in plain sight, to say nothing of the
clandestine theft of money meant to properly equip our troops.
JFK's attempt at violent regime change in Vietnam ended in disaster, when he chose a
secretive option that was contrary to American values and his own rhetoric. The lesson to
be learned is that our focus in Afghanistan should be to require our military leaders and
the diplomats to work together properly, to improve the Afghan government by
consensus rather than force. There is evidence that Petraeus would welcome this focus on
consensus, even though McChrystal rejected it.
You say that there can't be a consensus because there are too many different views and
agendas? How about this: let's do whatever it takes to save the lives and limbs of our sons
and daughters who are today -- and could be tomorrow -- in battle.

Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam?

Lee Cary
President Obama is embarking on a very dangerous path in Afghanistan that could
become his Vietnam.

It’s risky to draw parallels between wars, since each in unique. The Left was, and some
still are, determined to liken the Iraq War to Vietnam. But much of that talk has subsided.

Now we’re dialing up our efforts in Afghanistan where some aspects of the war against
the Taliban along the Pakistan-Afghan border do compare to Vietnam. Here’s how:

Sanctuary for the Enemy: Cambodia and Laos offered a safe haven for the North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Not until Nixon ordered an invasion of Cambodia in May
1970, did we attempt to deny the NVA/VC that sanctuary in Cambodia. It worked for a
while. I then lived about four kilometers from the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Things
went quiet in May after we invaded.

Small groups of brave U.S. gun-fighters slinked through the brush in Cambodia, Laos and
North Vietnam to startle and disrupt those sanctuaries, as well as gain intelligence. Many
never returned and the sanctuaries remained.

Training for Self-Defense: Preparing the Afghan military to defend itself is

Vietnamization redux, except hopefully done smarter. Vietnamization didn’t work so
well. We tried to build the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) in the image of the
U.S. military. Their tactics were ours. Their equipment was our equipment. In some
cases, it was newer. I drove a Korean-era jeep. In the towns, the ARVNs drove brand new
jeeps, sometimes tricked out with accessories like tire rims painted white. Although we
gave them every tool to fight, many lacked one essential thing: Motivation.
Vietnamization was never going to work because many (certainly not all) South
Vietnamese soldiers didn’t know what they were fighting for, or fighting against. Neither
did their leaders.

Albeit from a distance, forming up the Afghan military looks like an even more difficult
challenge. Again, from a distance, motivation looks to be on the side of the Taliban.

Questionable Allies: Some of our NATO allies have engaged in Afghanistan, particularly
the Brits and Canadians. But it gets thin quick after that. Those two mirror the support the
S. Koreans (ROK) and Australians gave us in Vietnam. The ROK (“rock”) troops were
especially feared by the Vietnamese. They were not simpatico with political correctness.

The weak engagement of NATO in Afghanistan has been a major disappointment that
makes some question the role of the alliance going forward.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is an on-again off-again ally. Mostly off-again. Expecting their

sustained, positive engagement against the Taliban who take sanctuary in Pakistan’s
version of the Wild West-squared has been a multi-year exercise in diplomatic wishful
thinking. There was a lot of that in Vietnam, too.

More Boots-on-the-Ground Doesn’t Guarantee Success: Obama is sending more troops to

Afghanistan. More boots will mean more U.S.-driven offensive operations. And, more
Taliban casualties. That’ll likely drive more Taliban into Pakistan where, while waiting
for the heat to be turned down back home, they’ll aggravate the Pakistanis. Just like the
VC/NVA did in Cambodia in 1970, the Taliban can out-last us.

Of course, more aggravation for the Pakistanis may be the objective of more U.S. troops
on the ground. The thought being that that aggravation may motivate the Pakistanis to
finally deal with the insurgency inside their country. If you accept the premise that the
best gauge of future behavior is past behavior, that expectation is, at best, a “Maybe.”

More boots-on-the-ground will almost surely mean more U.S. casualties in Afghanistan,
because more boots equals more targets. At the peak of the Vietnam War, we had a half-
million U.S. military personnel there. Would adding a half-million more have brought
victory? Or just more casualties? We still debate this question.

Political Correctness in War Gets More People Killed: This last week our President and
Secretary of State apologized for something we appear not to have done – killed Afghan
civilians in an air attack. Our leaders were quick to apologize – too quick. The President
who said recently that he doesn’t like to talk about something until he knows what he’s
talking about, broke his own rule.

Our political leaders may not be smart enough to out-maneuver the Taliban. Lyndon
Johnson was not as smart of Ho Chi Minh. Lyndon was awarded the Silver Star for being
the observer on one combat flight in the Pacific. A political medal. Ho, on the other hand,
survived wars against the Japanese, the French, and the Americans. In Ho v. Johnson,
Lyndon never had a chance.

Now it’s Obama v Mullah Omar, or if Omar’s with 72 virgins, someone like him. It’s a
scary match-up.

Does that mean we’re headed in the wrong direction by pumping-up our military
headcount in Afghanistan? I don’t suggest that. I do suggest that President Obama is
embarking on a very dangerous path in Afghanistan that could become his Vietnam.