Echoes of Vietnam reverberate in Afghanistan

By Georgie Anne Geyer

You will be forgiven for confessing that you are confused about where we are going in Afghanistan. You might also add that you still are not sure why we are there.

On top of that, you could admit to not knowing who - from the White House to the Pentagon to the denizens of that mysterious country so far away - to believe.

The Afghan War will be 16 years old in the fall. That is a special age when teenagers begin to approach their majority and even (God save us!) start acting a little like adults. Yet we see precious little evidence that our most recent disastrous war is approaching adulthood at all.

Rather, we see such a mixed bag of conflicting "answers" to the problem and confusing messages to the American people that I wonder if it is not time to ask: Is Afghanistan becoming our newest Vietnam?

Before he became president, Donald J. Trump was almost unrelievedly critical of American interventions. But since then, the administration's "strategies" for military action in both Iraq and Afghanistan have changed by the hour.

One day, a plan worked out by the commanding general in Kabul and the Afghan president called for doubling the size of the U.S./Afghan commitment. The next day, an impatient President Trump wanted to fire the American commander.

A new Afghan policy was to have been hammered out by May, then July, then ... when? Talks to supposedly compel the Afghan Taliban to negotiate with the U.S. went nowhere; instead, articles now reveal in disturbing detail not only Pakistan's support for the medieval-minded Taliban, but also Russia's and Iran's support, which is in large part revenge against the U.S. for previous supposed or real slights.

Perhaps the most amazing element to suddenly insert itself into the Afghan mix is Erik Prince, the famous, controversial and often reviled military contractor, who has now formally put forth a two-year plan to hire about 5,000 "global guns-for-hire." He has officially proposed putting the Afghan war through a restructuring "similar to a bankruptcy reorganization" and appointing a "trustee" to oversee it.

Yes, you are right. Our "Hessians"!

The kindest analysis of the Afghan situation I have been able to find comes from a high-level Brookings Institution panel that concluded, "The U.S.-Afghan partnership should be recognized as generational in duration."

The most unkind analysis in my search came from a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, who is quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying we have to deal with Afghanistan "like a chronic illness."

Meanwhile, in excess of 8,000 American soldiers remain in Afghanistan, almost as hostages to our lack of strategy for the region. Additionally, 2,300 Americans have died in the conflict, and 17,000 have been wounded in this land of warlords and opium fields that no foreign invader in history has mastered.

Is there anything left to say? Yes, this: It is far past time to go back to First Principles and define what is crucially important to America and what is mere destructive gamesmanship in war and peace. Let us look again at American thinking and action in both Vietnam and Afghanistan.

First, there is a dangerous comparable overreaching of power. Neither in Vietnam nor in Afghanistan was America endangered. They were/are wars of choice, what I call "hypothetical wars" (If this happens, then this will happen).

They were/are both wars pushed in Washington by (mostly) men with outsized ambitions to be great political figures on the world stage.

Second, in both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the interests of the local people are infinite, while ours are finite; theirs are eternal, while ours are seasonal. A prolonged war in their country will strengthen them against foreign invaders, and disarm and destroy us unless we destroy them completely, which we will not do.

Third, the U.S., for all its brilliance in so many areas, has shown a repeated incapacity for governing in Third World countries. Any concerned American who wants to know the why of this should read a brilliant recent book, "War and the Art of Governance," by Nadia Schadlow, now with the National Security Advisor's office.

In effect, Schadlow argues that several deeply ingrained principles in American thinking - concerns about appearing to be colonialist, the idea that civilians must govern and traditional views about the military profession - have caused American military governance to fail time after time.

There may be no immediate answers to the Afghan quandary, but there is nothing to stop us from analyzing where we are - and why - and what can be done about it on a deeper level.

Chronic illness has never been something I went out of my way to seek, and neither should we as a country.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

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