Ken Burns and Lyn Novick’s Vietnam documentary recently broadcast
on PBS reveals how US leaders, elected, appointed, or serving in the military, from
Kennedy and his administration through to Nixon and his administration deceived
the American public. In private, these leaders recognized that the Vietnam war was
unwinnable. In public, these same leaders continued to justify their policies by
claiming that victory was soon in sight.
Watching the series prompted me to wonder how many US leaders in the
administrations of George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump privately recognize that
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unwinnable while publicly continuing to
voice support for the wars.
The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war
in US history. The war in Iraq is a close second. The US has spent well over
one trillion dollars on those wars, all of which was deficit funded directly increasing
the US debt. Future generations of Americans will have to pay for wars that have
arguably made the world a less safe place. Assertions that a few thousand more
troops or a new training program will enable the Afghans or Iraqis to defend
themselves against internal insurrections and terrorists ring hollow and are
eerily reminiscent of what US leaders said about pacification and
Vietnamization efforts in the Vietnam war.
When the US withdrew from Vietnam, the
collapse of South Vietnam was imminent and inevitable.
Postponing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan or Iraq will not alter
the ultimate fate of either country. Afghanistan warlords increasingly ignore
the central government with impunity; a resurgent Taliban is concurrently
defeating Afghan forces and ruling areas. Now that the Kurds have voted for
independence, Iraq appears poised on the brink of dissolution; Iran heavily influences
Iraq’s Shiite government.
Squandering lives (thousands of US military personnel, hundreds of
thousands of others) and treasure (more than $1 trillion) is indefensible and
immoral when those sacrifices fail to make the world more just, more peaceful.
2 comments:
YES!! Government central-planning is a miserable and expensive failure at nation-building (Viet Nam, Iraq, et alia). It is no less of a failure at running government planned health care, education, welfare, land use & etc.
I strongly disagree on the cause of the failure in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The main issue is not centralized government control (with respect to military operations, unity of command is a fundamental principle of successful operations), but a lack of desire on the part of the peoples of those three states to implement a governmental structure that parallels the one in the US. Furthermore, Hanoi's centralized government effectively united Vietnam when the allegedly democratic South Vietnamese government failed to unify its people in the war against North Vietnamese aggression and communism. Assistance in nation building only works when the people want to build a nation.
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