Ted Sorensen: America's Next Unwinnable War
[Ted Sorensen, former special counsel and adviser to President John F. Kennedy, is the author most recently of Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.]
America’s unwise, unwarranted, and sadly unwinnable war in Afghanistan—hastily initiated and then abandoned for Iraq by President Barack Obama’s ideologically blinded predecessor and dumped into Obama’s lap in the worst possible way—is beginning increasingly to smell like the 1964-68 war in South Vietnam that swallowed up the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
It all sounds familiar. A powerless leader (whether Vietnam’s Diem or Afghanistan’s Karzai) with a corrupt family and little support in the countryside, who refuses to undertake the reforms (land, tax, electoral, and administrative) that the U.S. president tries to press upon him, therefore endangering the regime’s stability against the guerrilla extremists (once communists, now Taliban). Repeatedly changing U.S. commanders and initiating open-ended increases in U.S. forces, without a clearly definable goal, does not help. A military strategy of “clear and hold” usually lasts about a day.
The Kennedy-Johnson team, like the Obama team, was called “the best and the brightest”—but nobody’s perfect. Indeed, Richard Holbrooke, a Vietnam veteran now charged with finding a solution for Afghanistan, once wrote about Kennedy-Johnson National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy: “The smartest man in the room is not always right.” If Holbrooke permits the current dead-end strategy to go forward, the same sentiment may someday be written about him. But it’s up to Obama, not Holbrooke or the generals, to make the final decision.
John F. Kennedy, a World War II hero in the South Pacific, did not need to prove himself “tough” to either the generals or the Republicans, and he refused to send combat troop divisions to Vietnam as urged by his own hawkish advisers. I hope Obama does not feel he needs to prove himself tough.
John F. Kennedy knew that “regime change” and related problems are political problems not solved by superior U.S. military force and technology. He had successfully weathered crises in Berlin, Laos, the Congo and even the Cuban Missile Crisis through negotiations and political solutions, not superior force as urged upon him in each case by his own “hawks.” One colorful hawk scornfully dismissed talk of seeking to “capture the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people: “Grab them by the short hairs and drag them across our line,” he said, “and their hearts and minds will follow!”
But the Vietnamese people, who had long resisted complete occupation and domination by the French, Japanese, and others, were not so easily grabbed, and were determined to drive any would-be occupying power from their land, just as Afghans, who resisted complete occupation and domination by Alexander the Great, the British, and the Russians, are equally determined to drive out the Americans today. Nor was rule by the Taliban and their al Qaeda friends popular among the Afghan people.
Even the rhetoric today is familiar—the dire warnings that an American loss would embolden our enemies and lead to a “domino effect” chain of setbacks across the region; that we must keep on sending fresh troops to kill or be killed, thereby expanding both America’s mission and stakes, even though Obama had no more initiated America’s role in Afghanistan than Kennedy initiated America’s role in South Vietnam. There was little the U.S. could do to stop the flow of arms and enemy combatants into South Vietnam across its porous border with North Vietnam, just as there is little the U.S. can do now to stem the flow of arms and enemy combatants pouring across Afghanistan’s porous border with Pakistan...
Read entire article at The Daily Beast
America’s unwise, unwarranted, and sadly unwinnable war in Afghanistan—hastily initiated and then abandoned for Iraq by President Barack Obama’s ideologically blinded predecessor and dumped into Obama’s lap in the worst possible way—is beginning increasingly to smell like the 1964-68 war in South Vietnam that swallowed up the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.
It all sounds familiar. A powerless leader (whether Vietnam’s Diem or Afghanistan’s Karzai) with a corrupt family and little support in the countryside, who refuses to undertake the reforms (land, tax, electoral, and administrative) that the U.S. president tries to press upon him, therefore endangering the regime’s stability against the guerrilla extremists (once communists, now Taliban). Repeatedly changing U.S. commanders and initiating open-ended increases in U.S. forces, without a clearly definable goal, does not help. A military strategy of “clear and hold” usually lasts about a day.
The Kennedy-Johnson team, like the Obama team, was called “the best and the brightest”—but nobody’s perfect. Indeed, Richard Holbrooke, a Vietnam veteran now charged with finding a solution for Afghanistan, once wrote about Kennedy-Johnson National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy: “The smartest man in the room is not always right.” If Holbrooke permits the current dead-end strategy to go forward, the same sentiment may someday be written about him. But it’s up to Obama, not Holbrooke or the generals, to make the final decision.
John F. Kennedy, a World War II hero in the South Pacific, did not need to prove himself “tough” to either the generals or the Republicans, and he refused to send combat troop divisions to Vietnam as urged by his own hawkish advisers. I hope Obama does not feel he needs to prove himself tough.
John F. Kennedy knew that “regime change” and related problems are political problems not solved by superior U.S. military force and technology. He had successfully weathered crises in Berlin, Laos, the Congo and even the Cuban Missile Crisis through negotiations and political solutions, not superior force as urged upon him in each case by his own “hawks.” One colorful hawk scornfully dismissed talk of seeking to “capture the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people: “Grab them by the short hairs and drag them across our line,” he said, “and their hearts and minds will follow!”
But the Vietnamese people, who had long resisted complete occupation and domination by the French, Japanese, and others, were not so easily grabbed, and were determined to drive any would-be occupying power from their land, just as Afghans, who resisted complete occupation and domination by Alexander the Great, the British, and the Russians, are equally determined to drive out the Americans today. Nor was rule by the Taliban and their al Qaeda friends popular among the Afghan people.
Even the rhetoric today is familiar—the dire warnings that an American loss would embolden our enemies and lead to a “domino effect” chain of setbacks across the region; that we must keep on sending fresh troops to kill or be killed, thereby expanding both America’s mission and stakes, even though Obama had no more initiated America’s role in Afghanistan than Kennedy initiated America’s role in South Vietnam. There was little the U.S. could do to stop the flow of arms and enemy combatants into South Vietnam across its porous border with North Vietnam, just as there is little the U.S. can do now to stem the flow of arms and enemy combatants pouring across Afghanistan’s porous border with Pakistan...