Hollow Victory
Kayid Al-Kuffar
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.