President Barack Obama announced Wednesday night that all the 33,000 additional U.S. troops he ordered to Afghanistan in December 2009 will be home within 15 months. Ten thousand will be withdrawn by the end of this year, and the other 23,000 would leave Afghanistan by September of next year. I’m sorry, that’s not enough troops and it’s not soon enough.
There are some scarily precise parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam, and I hope President Obama recognizes the dangers in repeating mistakes made decades earlier. There will always be a threat, of some sort, from outside the borders of the U.S. But the strategy of occupying every country that offers a potential threat is outdated and lame. On my way to Vietnam, a general told us that the hippies would tell us to pull out of Vietnam. He advised that we should ask them if they would rather fight the war in Saigon or San Francisco. He actually said that! And right now the generals are still using the same scare tactics, substituting the names of the cities – Kabul and Kansas City.
We have killed Osama bin Laden, the architect of 9/11. How many more lives will be lost as we ease out of Afghanistan. The more troops we keep in harm’s way, the more we will send home in steel coffins full of body parts. If we learned nothing else from Vietnam, we should know the futility of half-cocked engagement in someone else’s country, over someone else’s ideology, where the cost of peace can be as high as the cost of war.
On May 13, 1968, after three years of heavy combat, the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Viet Cong started meeting to discuss a negotiated settlement of the war. Through those early meetings, it was decided that the Paris Peace Talks would begin in October 1968, one month after I had shipped out on my way home. Of course, my thoughts and prayers remained focused on my friends who were still over there. The process of peace seemed to be bogged down in diplomacy An arrogant South Vietnam first refused to take part in any peace talks that included all stakeholders – particularly the Viet Cong - as equal participants.
On November 26, 1968 - after heavy pressure from Washington - South Vietnam finally decided to send a delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. But through the month of December the talks were stalled due South Vietnam raising a series of lengthy, nonsensical delays - procedural issues such as the use of flags and nameplates, the speaking order of participants and the physical arrangement of the conference, particularly the size and shape of the conference table. The North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front wanted a four-sided rectangular table to indicate equality between all sides represented. The United States, North Vietnamese, and South Vietnamese leaders couldn't decide who should sit at the ends of a rectangular table.
On January 2, 1969, the North Vietnamese relented on their requirement that made flags and nameplates contingent upon the acceptance by the South Vietnamese of a round table.
On January 13th 1969 the Soviet Ambassador in Paris directed his subordinate to propose a resolution: a round conference table with two rectangular tables at opposite ends, no nameplates or flags, and the speaking order to be determined by the drawing of lots. On January 15th both the North Vietnamese and American delegations agreed to the proposal. And the next day so did the South Vietnam and NLF delegations. On January 18th the first meeting between the four parties was held to lay ground rule for substantive talks.
Between November 1968, when the Paris Peace Talks began in earnest, and January 13, 1969, when all parties began substantive discussion, many American lives were lost. According to the records of the National Archives, we lost 16,592 American soldiers in 1968 and 11,153 in 1969 – averaging 1,156 per month during that 2-year stretch of the Vietnam War. And it was estimated that we lost approximately 2,300 Americans lives while those bastards - those Bastards - debated the size and shape of the conference table.
So the question is how many American lives will we lose as the President executes an expensive exit strategy in Afghanistan? This is foolishness and it’s time to leave that country and bring the $100 BILLION per year price tag home where we need it.