Those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it.
Pundits, politicians, and members of the U.S. populace generally support the continued occupation of Iraq even if they didn’t support launching the war. Many who disagreed with invading argue that the U.S.-led coalition cannot just pull out, but rather must stay until Iraq is made “stable” under the new U.S.-installed Iraqi government. I call these people “optimists”.
A few lonely pessimists argue that Iraq will never be stable under Western occupation, and that to remain there is to ensnare ourselves in an immensely-costly, endless, Vietnam-like quagmire. The optimists reject the analogy with Vietnam.
OK, let’s not go back to Vietnam – let’s just go back to Afghanistan… in 1979. The Soviet Union invaded that country for strategic reasons and installed a sympathetic government. U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, in briefing President Jimmy Carter on the invasion, wrote that Afghanistan could become a “Soviet Vietnam”.
The Soviets assumed that with their vastly larger and better-equipped military, they could quickly squash the Islamic resistance. Shortly after invading, the Soviets declared victory. Instead of admitting defeat, the resistance melted into the countryside and began a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Soviet military and their Afghan collaborators.
Militant Muslims — including Osama bin Laden — came from elsewhere to help their local peers defeat the “infidel” invaders. They were aided by the U.S. CIA, which provided training, funding, and weapons as part of its strategy of containing Soviet expansion. President Ronald Reagan called the resistors “freedom fighters”, remember?
The resistors inflicted continuous casualties and damage, keeping Afghanistan terrorized, destabilized, and demoralized. The Soviets responded with heavy bombs and heavy-handed repression. Forces on both sides committed atrocities. Countless civilians were killed. What little infrastructure Afghanistan had was wrecked. The demoralization and destabilization spread to the Soviet Union as soldiers returned dead or maimed, resulting in anti-war demonstrations and refusals to serve in the military. And the death-toll showed no signs of abating.
By then, officials of the Reagan administration apparently decided that Brzezinski’s prediction had come true, because the U.S. State Department office for Afghan affairs had a sign posted above its entrance that read “Soviet Vietnam”. Sometimes, they answered their phone that way. That’s right: officials of the U.S. government recognized then that Afghanistan had become the Soviet version of our Vietnam-quagmire, and even called it that.
Fast-forward: We invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq to depose despotic regimes and install sympathetic governments. With our vastly superior military, we expected to defeat the resistance quickly and easily. Shortly after each invasion, President Bush declared victory.
In both countries, the enemy seemed soundly defeated, but in fact mainly melted away (into the mountains in Afghanistan; into the towns in Iraq) and began waging guerrilla warfare against our forces. Militant Muslims came from elsewhere to help their local peers defeat the “infidel” invaders, aided by Al Qaeda, which provides training, funding, and weapons. Furthermore, they still have some of the weapons we gave them to fight the Soviets. Of course, now the resistors are fighting the infidel capitalists instead of the infidel communists, so we call them “terrorists” instead of “freedom fighters”.
The resistors inflict continuous casualties and damage, keeping Afghanistan and Iraq terrorized, destabilized, and demoralized. The U.S. responds with heavy bombs and heavy-handed repression. Forces on both sides commit atrocities. Countless civilians have been killed (see Civilian Casualties category in PeacePundit). What little infrastructure each country had is wrecked. The demoralization and destabilization are spreading to the U.S. as soldiers return dead or maimed, resulting in anti-war demonstrations and refusals to serve in the military. And the death-toll shows no signs of abating.
Is anyone else feeling deja vu? If Afghanistan in the 1980s was the “Soviet Vietnam”, what does that make Afghanistan and Iraq now? I wonder how the Iraq and Afghanistan desks at the Russian Foreign Ministry answer their phones these days.
