The Vietestan debacle
By Saul Landau
Last month’s Obama-McChrystal debacle dramatized how military thinking dominates U.S. policy. Obama axed one surging general and replaced him with General David “Surge” Petraeus. Shocking? The Pentagon commands in Afghanistan despite the fact that no officer or civilian has explained what positive outcome could result from continued war there.
The Vietnam War should have taught us, as Yogi Berra said, it’s “déjà vu all over again.” President Obama promises withdrawal next year. After U.S. forces left South Vietnam in early 1974, the far larger and better-equipped South Vietnamese army didn’t fight. On April 30, 1975, “the last Marine boarded a CH-46 helicopter atop the American Embassy in Saigon and took off eastward… 21 years after the first advisors arrived in country…” (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vietnam.htm) The nearly decade-long massive military endeavor could not overcome massive political corruption.
As in Vietnam, Washington picked its president of Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, after serving one term, and beloved by few fellow citizens, has publicly proclaimed a lack of confidence in the U.S. ability to prevail against the enigmatic Taliban. He told the media he no longer trusted his benefactor’s commitment — its ability to win the war and its staying power. Indeed, he has begun to talk — perhaps even negotiate — with the very entity the U.S. military has engaged for a decade, suffering more than 1,000 dead; many more wounded. Simultaneously, to cover his bets, Karzai displays gratitude for Washington’s generosity.
Our Vietnamese Karzai!
After the 1950s Geneva Accords, Dwight Eisenhower, in his memoirs, conceded that Communist leader Ho Chi Minh would have won 80 percent in a scheduled presidential vote. To avoid this result, the United States created the Republic of South Vietnam and chose Ngo Din Diem as president. Diem’s promoters included Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman and the Kennedy family.
Diem, a Catholic president of a newly created Buddhist country, watched his generals — mainly non-Catholics — carefully. As U.S. military advisers pushed for aggressive campaigns against the Viet Cong’s communist guerrillas in the South, Diem urged the generals to limit aggressive campaigns.
In early November 1963, Vietnamese generals staged a coup — with tacit U.S. approval — and assassinated Diem. Madame Nhu, Diem’s sister-in-law, blamed Washington for the assassination: “Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies.”
Did Karzai read Madame Nhu’s statement? In his first term he gave corruption a bad name. In 2009, to insure a second term, Karzai relied on fraud. Like Diem, whose family received key power posts, Karzai supported his brother, Ahmed Wali, a narco-trafficker. The New York Times reported Ahmed also receives “regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials,” and the report continued, “The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.” (March 30, 2010)
Karzai praises his U.S. patron ($6.3 billion monthly keeps the war going) and then provokes Washington by embracing Washington’s supreme object, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
During the Vietnam War, U.S. corporations scored by supplying the armed forces. In Afghanistan, BP and Halliburton empires have made billions providing for NATO’s needs. Some Talibani also understand war: they collect bribes for not assaulting NATO convoys carrying material from Pakistan.
Meanwhile, McChrystal’s much-trumpeted surge sagged in the battles for Marja. NATO allies have grown weary and left; even Canada’s toady government announced that it would depart in 13 months. Obama said U.S. forces will also begin to withdraw in mid 2011 — well, maybe. A NY Times story (February 20, 2010) reported that Afghan forces displayed attitudes similar to the South Vietnamese forces before U.S. withdrawal. (Hey, fight or smoke hash?)
In 1975, Congress cut off funds for the Vietnam War. Achievements? Fifty-eight thousand U.S. dead, hundreds of thousands wounded, four million Vietnamese casualties, and a land destroyed. Ask the same question about Afghanistan and U.S. public war-weariness makes sense. Unlike Vietnam, relatively few Americans have had their lives involved with Afghanistan. And many have grown weary of hearing and reading about it.
The elusive Taliban — in bed with Pakistani intelligence and on the couch with Karzai — have learned, like the Viet Cong, to vanish as American troops approach. They elude the heralded “decisive battle.” The old Afghan and Vietnamese saying rings loud: “Foreign invaders may have the clock but we have time.”
The United States had little success exporting its order to Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. But long-term scars remain; some as walking wounded (homeless) or missing limbs or brains; others refuse to forgive or forget.
The Vietnamese won and now do business with us. But here the analogy with Vietnam breaks down. Iraqis and Afghans (and many Pakistanis) will not likely claim victory. But those with family members killed by U.S. troops and drones — might cultivate hatred for the United States for decades to come.
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow.