MILITANTS IN AFGHANISAN ARE LEARNING THE VIETNAM MODEL
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
I remember reading about "hearts and minds" and how it was the key to a victory in Vietnam. I also remember walking thru villages in Vietnam on my way out into the hills. Seeing people raising children during a vicious war was a reminder of what war is about. We are always meaning well, we love saying that, but left broken lives, poisoned soil and decades of bitterness behind us.
Afghanistan is now Vietnam. America is fighting a war it got into without 5 minutes of intelligent thought. Our goal of securing a country that has lived with 2000 years of war, a country we have no legitimate interests of any kind in, is insanity. Military leaders, rightly asking for the endless needed resources to accomplish the impossible task they have been assigned are asking for resources that simply don’t exist. We are "killing for peace" all over again. We never learn.
We don’t have anything in our arsenal of spy satellites and thermonuclear weapons to make people love us. America is in Afghanistan searching for love and are, instead, sending our children to their deaths.
People all over Afghanistan are looking into the faces of our children, some of whom have been soldiers for years. I don’t believe, for a minute, that any real number of our troops are still engaged in the Bush era crusade against Islam, the ill conceived attempt to rally political support at home thru radicalizing Islam. Turning a war against a few terrorist camps into a broad conflict to secure oil, gas and, as reports of the FBI investigation become public, drugs, into a decade long fiasco has been the result.
For years, the "war on terror" has been a front for the fleecing of the American economy, the enrichment of oil companies and the endless government contractors living on "no bid" contracts, not just "no bid" but also "cost plus." If you want to see money to lobby for war, reward theft and pay even more for incompetent theft.
The deluge of money flowing into Washington to fund war and "nation building" using hundreds of thousands of kitchen workers and "security guards" pushed more important issues to the side.
Our troops were having their parents buy body armor on Ebay. Who, exactly, at the Pentagon, thought canvas doors were bullet and IED proof? Did they learn that while golfing with lobbyists?
A political agenda we were told was going to restore small government, fiscal conservatism, family values and individual rights quickly turned into the largest growth of government in our history with the greatest assault on individual freedoms since American patriots starved to death in rotting hulks, prisoners of our British rulers.
A barrage of "terrorist alerts" and war rhetoric was meant to distract us while the boot came down on our necks. The rhetoric took on a life of its own, creating an expectation of victories in the style of ancient Rome, with captors being led behind chariots thru our streets. In the end, we hanged one deluded sociopath in Iraq while hundreds more, as crazy as that one, ran free through Washington DC.
Our generals and those of our allies are asking for help. We don’t train our folks at West Point in magic, perhaps we should start. What help is needed? Only magic will make Afghanistan go away. Only magic will help millions of people, not "radical Islamics" but people very much like us, love America and want the type of life they believe we are willing to kill every last one of them to make sure they have.
What were our strategic goals in Afghanistan? Now that any goal seems implausible, no benchmarks to be reached, should we negotiate a withdrawal as in Iraq? We could load the country with troops for a few months, blow the hell out of everything and then agree to stay inside our bases and leave, letting them figure it all out for themselves as though we were never there.
Sounds like a plan to me.
This is what we had told them for years. Every time Bush or Cheney opened their mouths, especially to audiences of political contributors, this was what came out. Believing that every word was not heard around the world, heard and remembered, is irrational. How do we win over people we have been insulting and threatening for years?
We don’t have to worry about that. Our children are going to do it for us, if we don’t kill every last one of them in the process.
Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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