A U.S. Marine talks on his radio while a Chinook helicopter carrying British soldiers from B Company, 2 Mercian, prepares to take off in Malgir, Helmand Province, July 27, 2009. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

Opinion: 'The best and the brightest' all over again

Obama's team on Afghanistan carries the same hubris as the Kennedy-Johnson team on Vietnam.

By C.M. Sennott - GlobalPost
Published: September 1, 2009 06:02 ET
Updated: September 2, 2009 16:13 ET

BOSTON — President Barack Obama has returned from the sunsets of summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard and the sad Arlington Cemetery glow from the flame of the Kennedy torch. Now he faces the hard work required on what has become a looming foreign policy disaster: Afghanistan.

Much of the coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennnedy’s funeral seemed bathed in the Cape Cod light that it is Obama to whom the torch of the highest ideals of President John F. Kennedy and his brothers has been passed.

But there’s another ghost of presidents past that must haunt Obama these days, and that is Lyndon B. Johnson and his war in Vietnam.

There have been too many tired, cliched references to Vietnam in the post-9/11 America. I never really gave them much stock. Not in Iraq, for sure. And not in Afghanistan. At least not when President George W. Bush gave it such scant attention.

But these days, U.S. involvement in Afghanistan does indeed seem to be headed down the road toward becoming America’s next Vietnam.

The comparison seems to hold more weight particularly because the architects of the policy are so damn smart. They carry the arrogance and hubris of “the best and the brightest,” as David Halberstam put it in his legendary book on the origins of the Vietnam war. They are cut from the same Brooks Brothers cloth as those who drew America so deeply into Southeast Asia with disastrous results.

Obama's best and brightest — Gen. David Petraeus, Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — are just as brilliant and well-intentioned as their Kennedy and Johnson administration counterparts. And that’s what would make them so tragic if the situation does indeed go the way so many analysts and even military leaders themselves fear it could.

These architects of our involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is actually a more perilous place than even Afghanistan and begs comparison to Cambodia, are gifted thinkers and strong leaders with great records of success and a deep concern about the safety of the country. But they are still leading the U.S. into a conflict where the goals are ill-defined and the insurgency is winning. As in Vietnam, the U.S. troops are not being outfought, but they are being outsmarted and they are being out-governed, a point that David Kilcullen, a great counterinsurgency thinker from Australia and a senior adviser to Petraeus, made convincingly in a recent speech to Australia’s National Press Club.

Just as Kennedy handed the war in Vietnam to Johnson, President George W. Bush handed the war in Afghanistan to Obama.

And Afghanistan became Obama’s war — just as Vietnam became Johnson’s — the moment he laid out his policy plans for an increase of troops and a shift in strategy that made the argument that the conflict was a “war of necessity,” as Obama said in August at a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and that it was winnable.

And now U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, whom Obama’s Pentagon appointed as commander on the ground in Afghanistan overseeing more than 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops, is throwing up a red flag of warning, that the Obama strategy may not be working.
McChrystal has just delivered his long-awaited review to CENTCOM and it is expected to then be delivered on to the White House.

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Posted by James Gundun on September 1, 2009 16:37 ET

"All along was Osama bin Laden’s great hope in orchestrating the attacks of Sept. 11, to draw us into a war in Afghanistan because he knew it was not winnable for the United States. Just as it was not winnable for the British or the Soviets."

This fact isn't nearly reported enough. Pushing deeper into Afghanistan is exactly what America's enemies want. We're being controlled and we don't even know it.

Posted by gabba-yada-booyeah on September 3, 2009 12:05 ET

Wrong. We and everyone who has recently read the article kind of gets the point now. Perhaps, though, we can send in a rough and tumble bring it on ex-president along with some black op Hessians with Texas oil money and give it one huge more mission accomplished attempt. Why not. If nothing else we could maybe make gravel out of mountain rock and export it.

Posted by Rapier on September 3, 2009 16:07 ET

We should be out. Read "Afghanistan - What next?"

http://ofthisandthat.org/Commentary.html

Posted by skyblu5555 on September 4, 2009 20:17 ET

1. Viet Nam didn't have the Atomic Bomb, Pakistan does.

2. LBJ drafted 500,000 American men (a few women; mostly nurses, etc non-combat, were conscripted and thrown into the slaughter in the jungles of Viet Nam. In the case of the 'war of necessity?' in Afghanistan, the USA is 'fighting' against the ephemeral Taliban (many from the CIA-trained mujahidin under Carter and then NSA head Zbigniew Brezinski (who now also advises Obama)using our 'volunteer army; (of course, much of the US National Guard and Army Reserves)with a preponderence of private mercenary corporations whose lives are more greatly valued(ie pay) by Congress than the Guard, Reserve, or volunteer enlisted military.

************************
Does Karzai have the support of the Afghani people through a legitimate election?

Is their such an entity as the 'Afghani people' or is the population an array of desparate groups? President Diem in Viet Nam who the USA supported for quite some time (until the CIA got rid of him as he was no longer useful) was a dictator and was hated by the people of So. Viet Nam.

As the author correctly state,the DOD and State Department (and CIA) believed they had 'control over the situation' in Viet Nam then as they do now in Afghanistan. This couldn't be further from the truth on the ground. What is the 'measure' of success? In a country with a factional population and deep, historic hatred of outsiders, can we really know who is friend or foe?

Afghanistan = Delusion. The truth about the current US engagement in Afghanistan is opaque.

The complexities and cross motivations of various groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan objectively suggest there is no possibility of achieving 'success'.

Let us never forget: the terror attack at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was carried out, according to the FBI, by nationals from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Easterns, funded by wealthy Sunni Saudis including members of the "Royal" family, sent through the halwal system of untraceable funding around the globe.

Terrorist acts against the U.S. should be responded to powerfully and with overwhelming force; but covertly and with great cunning.

This 'war of necessity'(as the war in Afghanistan is referred to by the current President), could too easily flare up leaving nuclear fallout.

There are better approaches to protecting America from radical Islamic terrorism including the conduct of stealth, targeted, lethal and covert operations against actual terrorists, minimizing the killing of innocent Afghani men, women, and children.

The United States must pull all its troops out of Afghanistan. It is past time to bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Posted by Chris Highland on September 7, 2009 13:31 ET

Yes, the Bush War lives on. . .and we all suffer. Now, soldiers die, Afghan citizens die, another country fractured and fanaticized by the "armies of democracy" (similar to the fanatic flames dividing America itself). Those who say there are no funds for healthcare or education or green energy conversion conveniently ignore the total cost of senseless war. "Bring it on" said arrogant George the First, and so he brought it on us all. I'm with Pete Seeger: I'll defend my homeland if invaded, but "if you love old uncle sam, bring 'em home from Viet Nam (Afghanistan/Iraq)." Veterans know best--war is hell and should be avoided at all costs.

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