Afghanistan Is Starting to Look an Awful Lot Like Vietnam

Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films at 6:11 AM on January 15, 2009.

If I told you our country was fighting an insurgency in a small, Asian, war-torn nation that has a feeble government riddled with corruption and a dangerous border serving as a safe haven for terrorists, would you say we were fighting in Afghanistan or Vietnam?  And if I said we were fighting something of an invisible enemy under the guise of preserving U.S. security, all the while thinking we will prevail (however long it takes) based on nothing more than hubris and a false confidence in our military superiority, which war would you say this was?

The parallels between the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam are staggering and growing stronger by the news cycle.  Take Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing for secretary of state, in which John Kerry put his reservations to escalation in the cotext of Vietnam.  Or take the announcement earlier this week in the Washington Post that President-elect Obama will send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, a plan meant to buy the incoming administration time to figure out what the hell to do in the region. 

NY Times reporter Bob Herbert, who initially dubbed the war in Afghanistan a quagmire, told Rachel Maddow this week that Obama's eagerness to escalate reminded him of when John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, ready to heighten U.S. involvement in Vietnam.  While Herbert's comparison is certainly apt, I think what's going on now actually bears a striking resemblance to Lyndon Johnson's time in the White House. 

Check out this excerpt from Fire in the Lake, Frances Fitzgerald's seminal account of the Vietnam War:

Politically, Johnson faced a dilemma.  On the one hand he, like his predecessors, judged the "loss" of Vietnam to be irreconcilable with US security interests and unacceptable to the American public.  On the other hand he had no certainty of immediate success for his policy and felt that the American public would be reluctant to support another ground war in Asia.  His political strategy was therefore to conceal his doubts about the outcome of the policy while attempting to convince the US public of the necessity for war.  

Sound familiar?

The American public is already war-weary (bordering on fed up) after seven years of Bush's wars, just as it was when Johnson sunk us further into Vietnam.  Perhaps that's why Maddow also plugged Get Afghanistan Right during her show.  We need a forum for war-weary voices to be heard if we have any chance of countering the dominant narrative that Afghanistan represents the right war for maintaining US security.  And we need it now, before history repeats itself.  

Tagged as: vietnam, afghanistan, barack obama, rachel maddow, bob herbert, get afghanistan right

ZP Heller is the editorial director of Brave New Films. He has written for The American Prospect, AlterNet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Huffington Post, covering everything from politics to pop culture.