Afghanistan is Vietnam. 
Spoke Sunday 9 with two strong voices inside Afghanistan, both in Kabul: Daoud Sultanzoy, MP from Ghanzi Province, and Ann Marlowe, Forbes.com, re the present deteriorating
circumstances in Afghanistan and the despair of the Afghan people after seven years of American firepower and occupation. Daoud Sultanzoy is Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in the country, and he speaks for no small faction. His frustration with President Hamid Karzai (right, with then-candidate Barack Obama July 24, 2008) and his brothers and their allies and cronies is now constant and blunt. I asked him what the Afghan parliament -- he was speaking from the Parliament building at 10 am on a cool Afghan fall morning, the leaves just turning color -- expect now from the Americans with the new administration taking control in two months. Daoud Sultanzoy said the expectation is for no change unless the US and NATO stop dealing with the Karzais. Afghanistan is run by narco lords, and after seven years the opium farmers and their distribution chain are stronger and richer than at any time under the Taliban. Daoud Sultanzoy also said that the Karzai Brothers Incorporated are making money not only with the opium trade but also by reselling direct US and NATO aid, such as food and weapons. Ann Marlowe from Kabul, where she is embedded with the Afghan police, said that Afghan morale
is much more cynicial and frustrated than her last visit six months ago. The people no longer believe that the Americans will let them solve their own problems. The Karzai brothers have sophisticated control of the money and food chain in Kabul, and the US State Department, and DoD, go along passively. Ann Marlowe has long argued that there is no military solution to Afghanistan. In face of the promise by the Obama administration to commit additional troops and money to Afghansitan in the new year, the prospects increase sharply that what we now witness, after seven years of war-fighting against a guerilla force backed by Pakistan, is a 21st century visit to South Vietnam, 1961-1963, with a twist. (Right, South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem, May 1961)
The Diem Brothers were Murdered.
Spoke to Rufus Phillips Sunday 9, author, "Why Vietnam Matters," re the Kenendy administration launched coup that removed the greedy, inept, unhinged Diem brothers from power and then murdered them on November 1, 1963. Rufus, now 78, arrived in Vietnam in the summer of 1954, as a CIA aide to the famous Colonel Ed Lansdale of counter-insurgency warfare fighting. Rufus saw the building up of the Diem regime under the Eisenhower administration (left, Ike, John Foster Dulles, President Ngo Dinh Diem, on a visit to Washington, 1957) as well as the celebration of the Diems as the stablizing force against Ho Chi Minh and the communist goons from China and Russia. Rufus retured to Vietnam working for AID in the Kennedy administration, and he toured the Delta region in the late summer of 1963. At the White House, on September 10, 1963, Rufus was invited to a critical Cabinet meeting to debate the fate of South Vietnam, the war with the North and the Viet Cong, and the Diem brothers then ruling by fiat and theft. The hot political issue that day was the worldwide bad media the Kennedy administration was suffering because of the Buddhist self-immolation protests against the stupid, vaguely Roman Catholic Diems in Saigon. However since August JFK had been presented with the option of removing one or both Diem brothers and replacing them with gung-ho, obedient Vietnamese generals. Present and huffing in self-serving authoring around the table was a chorus of American political celebrites. JFK, Robert McNamara, Dean Rush, John McCone, McGeorge Bundy, Edward R. Murrow,
Maxwell Taylor. Not present was South Vietnam ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, from Saigon,(the man JFK had defeated for the Senate in 1952) who had cabled repeatedly he wanted the Diems gone. Rufus watched two briefings from the DoD and State to JFK which painted two different Vietnams. JFK even jested, "Are you gentlemen sure this is the same country?" Enraged, caged laughter around the room. The DoD and CIA insisted the war could be won and suggested, perhaps, someday, US troops. State and the NSC said the war was lost unless we get rid of the Diems. JFK called on Rufus, who was just back from touring the AID assisted hamlets in the Delta where the VC were very active. Rufus, at 33, junior to everyone and no longer at the CIA or in uniform, now an earnest, French and Vietnamese speaking AID super op, gave the facts. JFK took notes. Sixty hamlets overrun. The war in the Delta in confusion. And then Rufus Phillips recommended sending back Ed Lansdale as a special adviser to counter-insurgency. John McCone, DCI, objected to Landsale, because of Landsdales's (and everyone's)
failures in MONGOOSE against Fidel Castro; McCone was was not going to let Lansdale go back tonight. The meeting ended with a storm cloud. Seven weeks later, the CIA concocted, DoD and McNamara approved coup against the Diem brothers on November 1 was a disaster. The Ambassador Lodge pleasing plan (left, Lodge with Diem October 1963) called for the Diems to be abducted and transported to exile in France. Instead General Doung Vanh "Big" Minh ordered the Diems shot in the back of the personnel carrier sent to take them to the airport. Rufus Phillips was in Saigon that day, playing an auxiliary role in what was to be a smooth transition to a new government; and he remembers today, 45 years later, that he was sickened by the news of the murders and he knew right then that Vietnam was in trouble so deep that it was plunging to a catastrophe. November 1, 1963, the day America lost.
The Afghanistan Twist
Twelve years of war, mass murder, at least one million deaths, the burning down of a culture (right, Vietnam 1967) and the destruction of several South Vietnam and American regimes followed. All this is prelude to asking the question, which Rufus Phillips asks in the concluding chapter of his book, is this the future of Afghanistan and America? How long until a Washington imposed solution to remove the clearly deracinated and ludicrously greedy Karzai brothers? How long until an Afghan warlord from the army or police force claims to be the new PM? How long until our enemies focus on using the Taliban as a surrogate to drawing the US into Afghanistan and the region in a much deeper fashion -- not just Kabul, but Islamabad, Kashmir, Baluchistan, the Punjab and South Asia? How long until the Obama administration is the Kennedy administration with a sinister twist. The twist is that we know the end of the story.
Corruption and war both are lawless. War is simply hyper-corruption. For the U.S. to become involved in any conflict, it must expect to get its hands dirty no matter which side it chooses to favor. In war there are no saints; there are only losers. The losers who spin the truth in such a way as to appear as winners are the ones about whom history is written. The rest remain forgotten in shallow, unmarked graves.
Clearly, the U.S. has enough firepower to win any war it chooses to support. The question of whom to support, then, becomes paramount in any decision to become involved. In Iraq, the decision by America to become involved rested on any number of credible assumptions. Unforeseen was the fact that the American left, comprised of Democrats and the media, would actively campaign against a successful conclusion largely for parochial political advantage. This would divide the country and cause the policy to fail. Had America succeeded, the rewards to it would have been considerable.
The primary consideration before sending one’s troops into battle must always hinge on whether or not a nation’s self-interests is served. It cannot be to liberate others or feed them. In Iraq, oil would have been a sufficient pay-off. To establish a military presence right next to a belligerent Iran would have been another. Having the Iraqis love us for having liberated them from a brutal dictator would merely have been icing on the cake. By emphasizing the latter, Bush proved that his resolve was scattered. It also exposed the flank on which he was most vulnerable. Every suicide attack on innocents would therefore become his own personal failing. This was the signal for every fringe group in the Middle East to unite and cause as much bedlam as they could muster.
It is likely that “Bush’s war” (as opposed to “America’s war”) will not be continued in an Obama administration. The country has had enough. Bush can yet be blamed for the fall-out from a sudden and full withdrawal. Obama will receive credit for stemming the bloodshed (at least on the American side). Similarly, he will receive accolades for abandoning Israel. The world will at first appear safer without American interests in play. But it will be a false peace that will yet spawn many victims – American credibility for one. Who jumps into the breach remains to be seen. Whoever it may be will now be in the position to dictate terms. It is likely that the logic of such terms will not be acceptable to the American public who will have to wait four more humiliating years for a chance to change course.
Maybe if we didn't blow up quite so many of their wedding parties the Afghans might like us better. Have the Pentagon or the State Department conducted any feasibility studies regarding this?
John,
The Governor was excellent tonight on Greta, that is the "Change we Need", not Carter '44. John Fund reported on the 5th Nov. that McCain will retire from the senate and take a media job.
Distressing is the Cabinet. Looks like the second string Clinton team. Jamie Gorelick (of "The Wall" and Fannie and Freddie fame) is not a good choice for AG, very bad judgement. Closing Gitmo is and letting the monsters loose is not good judgement. Ghostbusters comes to mind. Looks like '77 all over again.
Excellent interview, JB. Phillips' story is fascinating and I plan to purchase his book.
Comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam are cogent, but what's missing from the dialog about both are the other outside power-players in the game.
I believe you've also interviewed Jian Chen on past shows. Chen and others have in recent years brought to light the full extent of Mao's commitment to Hanoi--something even the Pentagon Papers were completely ignorant of.
Subtract Mao from the Vietnam equation, and you might have managed a viable settlement with Hanoi soon after she broke her back with the Tet Offensive. DRV's thin propaganda victory in 1968 might not have been enough to sustain it, had they not also enjoyed nearly limitless and free military supplies from Beijing.
Nixon understood this very well, and within two weeks of taking office in 1969, he began secret negotiations to bring Mao into the UN. Once these negotiations reached fruition, the shape of the table no longer mattered to Hanoi and they signed the peace accords--Mao had all but withdrawn his generous support for the DRV by that point.
So too in Afghanistan, it is well to keep our eyes not only focused on the inner machinations between the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Baluchs and the different factions within the country and the government.
There is more in play there than just drug/warlords, Pakistani supported Taliban, and other rowdies within the country. Sustained insurgencies invariably require organized outside assistance. From what we see, more is required to viably sustain them than they could be receiving from ad hoc and isolated Pashtun clans in Western Pakistan.
State sponsorship in varying extents is afoot.
Just as was the case in Vietnam.
You can drive nails with the handle of a screw driver, but it is not the right tool. In the same way, a conventional war was not the right tool to deal with Islamic extremism.
I suspect Obama will use a broader tool kit to salvage what he can. At this point, in Iraq, SoF and US AID are better suited to the mission than a MEF.