Aptly corresponding to Veteran's Day, Newsweek's latest issue presents a cover story and two articles on Vietnam and its' tenuous, yet unavoidable connection to Afghanistan. The first article penned by Evan Thomas and John Barry discusses the more complex lessons learned from Vietnam and pushes Lewis Sorley's 1999 book A Better War, in which Sorley became Vietnam Revisionism's most successful advocate. John Kerry wrote the counterpoint, "Beware the Revisionists."
In the study of history, "Revisionism" is generally any position on an issue that challenges the more largely accepted consensus. The term became widespread during the 1960s when a group of US Historians challenged the conventional wisdom of the Cold War which generally posited all blame for the conflict on the communist block led by the Soviet Union. Cold War Revisionism ran the gamut, from historians who portrayed the US as the main offender in the Cold War to more moderate positions that outlined US duplicity and militarism while still displaying Soviet/Communist culpability.
In the case of the Vietnam War, "Revisionism" challenges the many facets of the conventional wisdom of "Wrong war, wrong strategy, wrong time..." In the case of Lewis Sorley's book, however, his theory is that had it not been for Congress' withdrawal of support for South Vietnam etc. we could have won in '74. With Sorley's book as prologue, Thomas and Barry re-examine the "Lessons of Vietnam" and attempt to extrapolate into Afghanistan. Here are some snippets from Thomas and Barry:
"What ifs" are always a risky exercise, but some good historians have suggested that there were two moments when victory--or at least a semblance of victory--was possible in America's long war in Southeast Asia. The first came early in 1965. Had Johnson moved more aggressively into Vietnam then--the North Vietnamese might have backed off. The second came five years later, when the military was finally having success with a new counterinsurgency strategy. Would more serious resources and more fighting later in the war have resulted in South Vietnam remaining of the independent communist North, leaving Vietnam divided in the manner of Korea? Some historians say yes; many others say no.
The most surprising guidance Vietnam may have to offer is not that wars of this kind are unwinnable--which is clearly the common wisdom in America--but that they can produce victories if presidents resist the temptation to fight wars halfway or on the cheap.
Obama's pronounced tendency is to try to find a middle ground, a compromise. He may find a way to send, say, 20,000 troops and ask McChrystal to make do. If so, he runs the real risk of repeating Johnson's mistake of incrementalism...
The tone and direction of the Thomas/Barry article is deceptively equivocal. They give that good old journalistic appearance of showing both sides. Here are three red flags that the above snippets should raise:
- "the North Vietnamese might have backed off" Really? Any evidence for that in the article? Nope, not a bit. Just a casual assertion. As an even more pointed rejoinder, there is absolutely no mention of Nixon's "Christmas Bombing" or the fact that more ordinance (6.2 Million tons) was dropped on North Vietnam and Cambodia than in all of WW II. Do people seriously think that North Vietnam was going to give up? Apparently they do.
- "resist the temptation to fight wars halfway or on the cheap" This type of thinking sets up a "Heads I win, tails, you lose" scenario. As the Republicans in Congress carp about profligacy and our inability to afford Health Care, can we really afford anything other than "on the cheap" in Iraq and Afghanistan? When later in the article even Thomas and Barry hint that the real needs in Afghanistan are more than McChrystal has asked--bringing up that 500,000 troop number--do we really need to ask whether "winning" in Afghanistan is a real option? Instead, assertions like this form the nucleus of the soon to be coming "Obama lost the Afghan War" crowd. They will be lead by armchair generals and militant chickenhawks who will conjure up more images of Washington stabbing the military in the back.
- The last statement further cements the underlying subtext of the article to pin failure on Obama. Alas, Obama's desire for compromise will be his undoing... The real clear statement needs to be--this is not Obama's war to lose. Eight years of killing for a failed narco-state is enough, and no amount of navel gazing and re-writing the past will change the essential options going forward. The question is not whether the Taliban is bad, we know they are. The question is do we have the resources, resolve and moral authority to impose order on the chaos that is Afghanistan? A side question would be--is Karzai and rampant corruption really that much better than the Taliban? When answering those questions, think of the dollars the US will spend to support him, and the deaths, American, European, Pakistani and Afghani that we will cause to keep him there.
On the the Kerry piece:
Kerry's article, which immediately follows Thomas and Barry, is shorter. It is also more clear. Most gratifyingly, he actually mentions Vietnamese suffering in the context of the Vietnam War. I find it mind boggling that this part of the equation is missing from Thomas and Barry and almost all US analysis of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. John Kerry, however, goes there:
Speaking in rejoinder to the Revisionist view of Vietnam:
History has definitely branded the Vietnam War for the for the mistake that it was--no one should believe that the deaths of nearly 60,000 Americans and at least 1.5 million Vietnamese were somehow not quite enough.
I find it very sad that in the aftermath of Vietnam, very few Americans care to grapple with the suffering the US caused there. Kerry mentions 1.5 million--there are much higher estimates out there as well. How many non-Americans have died in Iraq? Afghanistan? Are these numbers that anyone in the US has attempted to get a serious handle on? Not that I have seen, and certainly not from any responsible member of our government. Credible numbers I have seen on Iraq put the Iraqi dead anywhere from 250,000 to 1 Million, while we clearly have created at least a couple million refugees. We can talk about practical solutions to political/military realities, but there should be a serious moral component to this as well.
While I would agree with Kerry's general assertion that "In this war, [Afghanistan] the enemy can be defeated by better government and effective economic assistance," this is not 2001 or 2002. The opportunity for such a strategy is gone, and little doubt remains that Karzai could ever provide "better government."
In the end, the saddest part of these two articles is that they display the absolute lack of freedom that Obama's government has in dealing with this issue. We need to get out now, and politically this is close to impossible. In combining the articles, Thomas and Barry's all or nothing challenge is correct, and when combined with Kerry's moral sensibilities about the casualties on both sides the answer is clear--Nothing--Get Out--NOW!!
I would strongly recommend that you read both articles. These arguments are just getting started, and I fear they will be a serious component of the mid-term elections next year.