Posted on 09/17/2009 3:30:28 PM PDT by jazusamo
The United States is stuck in a 1960s flashback. In an interview on Monday, President Obama rejected comparisons between the war in Afghanistan and the Vietnam conflict, saying "you never step into the same river twice." The Amu Darya is not the Mekong.
There are superficial parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan, especially at the tactical level. The new joint counterinsurgency doctrine addresses many of these aspects, and it is noteworthy that Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversaw its development, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Vietnam. The Pentagon is well aware of the battlefield lessons of our country's only military defeat.
At the strategic level, the situation is decidedly different. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban, is not a head of state like North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh was. There is no conventional armed force in Afghanistan analogous to the North Vietnamese Army. The Taliban does not have a support structure anything like the scale of what the communist world provided to Hanoi. Those who think the Vietnam War was won by pajama-clad guerillas in the jungle should take another look at images of communist tanks crashing through the gates of the South Vietnamese presidential palace in 1975.
Unfortunately, the most important strategic factor is the same: a liberal Congress working to undermine the U.S. war effort. The U.S. military had won the Vietnam conflict by 1970, but when Democrats in Congress cut aid to South Vietnam in 1974, our trusting allies in Saigon were left helpless before the communist onslaught. Mr. Obama might want to consult with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on the spirit of those times. Mr. Biden was a freshman senator and one of the cosponsors of the Case-Church Amendment, which stopped aid to Cambodia and opened the way for the Khmer Rouge...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Ping!
It is now.
Quagmire. Quagmire. Quagmire. Why isn’t that incompetent Obama fixing the situation?
It’s your fault now Berry.
I’d say that graphic probably isn’t too far off the mark. :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.