Hollow Victory
Muslims Always Victorious
According to the Republicans, the United States is once again at the
crossroads of losing another critical war because of feckless Democrats.
Only this time it's Afghanistan.
By John Mearsheimer
November 06, 2009 "FP" - November 04, 2009 -- The conventional wisdom among
most Republicans is that while the United States had serious difficulty in
Vietnam during the early years, by the early 1970s things were turning
around, and victory was on the verge. Unfortunately, the craven Democrats in
Congress bowed to widespread anti-war sentiment and forced the Ford
administration to end almost all support to South Vietnam, allowing the
North Vietnamese to win the war in 1975. In the GOP version of the story,
this decision was a disastrous mistake.
There has been a lot of talk lately about what the Vietnam War tells us
about Afghanistan. According to the Republicans, the United States is once
again at the crossroads of losing another critical war because of feckless
Democrats, only this time in Afghanistan. They contend that while, yes, the
United States has mismanaged the war over the past eight years, Washington
has now found a formidable military leader in General Stanley McChrystal. He
knows how to defeat the Taliban and keep al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.
However, the major obstacle he faces isn't in Afghanistan, it's here at
home: the American public is war-weary and the Democrats -- who control both
Congress and the White House -- have no enthusiasm for the greater
sacrifices that General McChrystal recommends.
This narrative is unconvincing for at least two reasons. First, the United
States was not close to victory in Vietnam by the early 1970s, because the
South Vietnamese army could not stand on its own. This was manifestly
apparent in 1971 when that army invaded Laos and was badly chewed up by
North Vietnamese ground forces. To stand any chance of holding off Hanoi's
offensives, the South Vietnamese army needed massive amounts of American
airpower, which effectively meant that the U.S. military would have to
continue fighting in Vietnam indefinitely just to maintain a stalemate. That
hardly qualifies as being on "the brink" of victory.
In Afghanistan, there is little reason to think that the United States can
decisively defeat the Taliban, mainly because they can melt into the
countryside or go to Pakistan whenever they are outgunned, returning to
fight another day (just as they did after the initial U.S. victory in 2001).
Furthermore, the Karzai regime, corrupt and incompetent, stands little
chance of ever truly being able to rule the country and keep the Taliban at
bay, which means that the American military will have to stay there to do
the job for many years to come.
But even if success was at hand in Vietnam and the United States could in
the near future win quickly in Afghanistan, there is a second and more
important flaw in the Republican narrative: Victory is inconsequential.
The United States suffered a clear defeat when South Vietnam collapsed in
1975, but it hardly affected America's position in the global balance of
power. The domino theory proved unfounded; instead, communist Vietnam
invaded communist Cambodia in 1978 and one year later Hanoi was at war with
communist China. More importantly, losing in Vietnam had no adverse effects
on America's competition with the Soviet Union. Indeed, 14 years after
Saigon fell, the Cold War ended and the United States emerged as the most
powerful state on the planet.
The real tragedy of Vietnam is not that the United States lost, but that it
became involved in the first place. It pains me to say this as someone who
served in the American military from 1965 to 1975, but the anti-war movement
was right: It did not matter to U.S. security whether North Vietnam
conquered the south and unified that country under communist rule. More than
58,000 American soldiers and more than 2 million Vietnamese died in an
unnecessary and foolish war.
A similar logic applies today with regard to Afghanistan. The Republicans
and General McChrystal claim that it is absolutely necessary to win the war
in Afghanistan for the simple reason that a Taliban victory will allow al
Qaeda to re-establish a sanctuary in Afghanistan. And we all know what
happened the last time Osama bin Laden was free to scheme and plot against
the United States from Afghanistan: September 11. The fatal flaw in this
argument is that al Qaeda has a sanctuary next door in Pakistan from which
it has been operating since it was driven out of Afghanistan in Dec. 2001.
It does not need a sanctuary in Afghanistan. Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations who helped General McChrystal formulate
his strategy for Afghanistan, recently told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee that Pakistan is "superior in important ways to Afghanistan"
because it is "richer and far better connected to the outside world than is
primitive, land-locked Afghanistan with its minimal communications and
transportation systems."
But what if the Pakistani army eliminates al Qaeda's sanctuary in western
Pakistan? Isn't its current offensive in South Waziristan a major step
toward that end? Unfortunately, no. Pakistan has no intention of rolling up
al Qaeda, in good part because it does not have the capability to police
those areas where the terrorists are hiding. The offensive in South
Waziristan is not even aimed at the Afghan Taliban, much less at al Qaeda.
This means that al Qaeda will have a sanctuary in Pakistan no matter what
happens in Afghanistan, which means that the American military cannot win a
meaningful victory there.
In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, it simply does not matter whether the United
States wins or loses. It makes no sense for the Obama administration to
expend more blood and treasure to vanquish the Taliban. The United States
should accept defeat and immediately begin to withdraw its forces from
Afghanistan.
Of course, President Obama will never do such a thing. Instead, he will
increase the American commitment to Afghanistan, just as Lyndon Johnson did
in Vietnam in 1965. The driving force in both cases is domestic politics.
Johnson felt that he had to escalate the fight in Vietnam because otherwise
the Republicans would lambaste him for "losing Vietnam," the same way they
accused President Harry Truman of "losing China" in the late 1940s.
Obama and his fellow Democrats know full well that if the United States
walks away from Afghanistan now, the Republicans will accuse them of
capitulating to terrorism and undermining our security. And this charge will
be leveled at them for decades to come, harming Democrats at the polls come
election time. The Democrats have no intention of letting that happen.
The United States is in Afghanistan for the long haul. As was the case in
Vietnam, more American soldiers and many more civilians are going to die in
Afghanistan. And for no good reason.
John Mearsheimer, a West Point graduate, is a political science professor at
the University of Chicago.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23910.htm