http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/07-6
by Slobodan Lekic
Published on Friday, August 7, 2009 by Associated Press
BRUSSELS Top U.S. officials have reached out to a leading Vietnam
war scholar to discuss the similarities of that conflict 40 years ago
with American involvement in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is seeking
ways to isolate an elusive guerrilla force and win over a skeptical
local population.
The overture to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stanley Karnow, who
opposes the Afghan war, comes as the U.S. is evaluating its strategy there.
President Barack Obama has doubled the size of the U.S. force to curb
a burgeoning Taliban insurgency and bolster the Afghan government. He
has tasked Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander, to
conduct a strategic review of the fight against Taliban guerrillas
and draft a detailed proposal for victory.
McChrystal and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to the
country, telephoned Karnow on July 27 in an apparent effort to apply
the lessons of Vietnam to the Afghan war, which started in 2001 when
U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Among the concerns voiced by historians is the credibility of
President Hamid Karzai's government, which is widely perceived as
being plagued by graft and corruption. They draw a parallel between
Afghanistan's presidential election on Aug. 20 and the failed effort
in Vietnam to legitimize a military regime lacking broad popular
support through an imposed presidential election in 1967.
"Holbrooke rang me from Kabul and passed the phone to the general,"
said Karnow, who authored the seminal 1983 book, "Vietnam: A History."
Holbrooke confirmed to The Associated Press that the three men
discussed similarities between the two wars. "We discussed the two
situations and what to do," he said during a visit last week to NATO
headquarters in Brussels.
In an interview Thursday with the AP, Karnow said it was the first
time he had ever been consulted by U.S. commanders to discuss the
war. He did not elaborate on the specifics of the conversation.
When asked what could be drawn from the Vietnam experience, Karnow
replied: "What did we learn from Vietnam? We learned that we
shouldn't have been there in the first place. Obama and everybody
else seem to want to be in Afghanistan, but not I."
"It now seems unthinkable that the U.S. could lose (in Afghanistan),
but that's what experts ... thought in Vietnam in 1967," he said at
his Maryland home. "It could be that there will be no real conclusion
and that it will go on for a long time until the American public
grows tired of it."
An administration official said academics and outside experts have
been consulted frequently during the Obama presidency, especially
around high-profile events or decisions. The official spoke on
condition of anonymity to speak more freely about the
administration's behind-the-scenes thinking.
Holbrooke and Karnow have known each other since they were both in
Vietnam in the early 1960s. At the time, Holbrooke was a junior U.S.
diplomat and Karnow a Time-Life correspondent.
Holbrooke briefly commented on contrasts between the two conflicts,
noting that the military regime in Saigon was corrupt and unpopular,
while the international community seeks to build a democracy in Afghanistan.
The Vietnam war also was a much bigger conflict. Nearly 550,000 U.S.
troops were deployed at the height of the war, whereas 102,000
international troops are currently in Afghanistan of which 63,000
are American.
James McAllister, a professor of political science at Williams
College in Massachusetts who has written extensively about Vietnam,
said the administration could learn a lot from Vietnam.
"American policy makers clearly see parallels between the two wars,"
he said. "They know that the mistakes we made in Vietnam must be
avoided in Afghanistan."
McAllister cited analogies between the two wars:
_ In both wars, security forces had an overwhelming advantage in
firepower over lightly armed but highly mobile guerrillas.
_ Insurgents in both cases were able to use safe havens in
neighboring countries to regroup and re-equip.
_He pointed to McChrystal's order to limit airstrikes and prevent
civilian casualties, linking it to the overuse of air power in
Vietnam which resulted in massive civilian deaths.
McAllister drew a parallel to another failed political strategy from
Vietnam the presidential election.
"That ('67 ballot) helped ensure that U.S. efforts would continue to
be compromised by its support for a corrupt, unpopular regime in
Saigon," McAllister said.
Rufus Phillips, Holbrooke's boss in Vietnam and author of the book
"Why Vietnam Matters," echoed that warning.
"The rigged election in South Vietnam proved (to be) the most
destructive and destabilizing factor of all," said Phillips, now in
Kabul helping to monitor the upcoming election.
David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency specialist who will soon assume
a role as a senior adviser to McChrystal, compared Karzai to South
Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.
"He has a reasonably clean personal reputation but he's seen as
ineffective; his family are corrupt; he's alienated a very
substantial portion of the population," Kilcullen said Thursday at
the U.S. Institute of Peace.
"He seems paranoid and delusional and out of touch with reality," he
said. "That's all the sort of things that were said about President
Diem in 1963."
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