Yes yes I know there are differences. Afghanistan is not Vietnam. The Pashtuns at the heart of the conflict are mostly feudal tribalists supported by their co-religionists in Pakistan and the Arabian peninsula, not politically advanced highly organized nationalists supported by China and Russia. Afghanistan is a sprawling geography of vast arid mountains, valleys and plains, not at all like the subtropical central highlands, jungles, valleys and intricate river deltas of southeast Asia. Afghanistan has 11 letters and begins with an "A" while Vietnam has only 7 and begins with a "V".
So why do I have the eerie sense that we are proceeding down a familiar road that some would call a slippery slope?
The following table lists the American troop presence over the course of the war in Vietnam ...
1959 760
1960 900
1961 3,025
1962 11,300
1963 16,300
1964 23,300
1965 184,300
1966 385,300
1967 485,600
1968 536,100
1969 475,200
1970 334,600
1971 156,800
1972 24,200
1973 50
Notice the total number of troops and pace of escalation. See that is spiked in 1965 and 1966. Recognize that this massive escalation came 6 years after American troops were first deployed to Vietnam by President Eisenhower in 1959 as "advisers". In the course of the first 6 years of war JFK, LBJ and their advisors (aka the best and brightest) saw that the US supported South Vietnamese government and its army (ARVN) had not been able to overcome the growing strength of the internal resistance (Viet Cong) to the central government and the US intervention.
The history is extremely complicated and the parallels are inexact but the road this administration is traveling down in Afghanistan has the potential to derail its (mostly) progressive domestic agenda. For several years now Obama has stated (I am paraphrasing) that Afghanistan was the war we needed to fight because that is where the 911 attacks were planned and organized.
And while the second half of this sentence is factually correct, it does not necessarily follow that a large scale long term war in Afghanistan will provide the outcome we desire.
I support the administration in much of what it has set out to do to right the wrongs of the Bush years and move the nation towards universal health care, a green economy, a reliance on science and a reformed education approach. However, without a vigorous debate TODAY about how the war could play out over the course of the next few years, there is a real chance that we will find ourselves bogged down in a hellish quagmire that derails these critical domestic goals.