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Sat, Feb 28th 2009, 22:18

Patrick Edwin Moran, Wake Forest University, Platinum Contributor (207)

The Vietnam War is not the model we should choose to guide our thinking about Afghanistan. It is not a laudable model for the conduct of affairs at the White House level, nor (which some exceptions such as William Corson) does it provide a fit model for operating in a nation at war with itself and under pressure from external sources of influence (in that case, not only the U.S. but also the Soviet Union and China). If responsible people in the mid 1960s had listened to people like Fletcher Trenchant, author of The Wobble, they would have gotten a much more accurate picture -- one from the pungent ground level rather than the kind of anoxic view McNamara and company got from somewhere in the stratosphere. If they disdained the expatriates and foreigners gone native, they might at least have listened to their own colonels.

A more profitable place to search for guidance would be the success stories -- the British handling of the twelve-year Emergency in Malaysia, and the proactive steps taken by the government of Thailand (upon the advice of the USOM -- the local variant of AID), etc.

A third relevant example from that era would be Cambodia. Does anyone really want to see Afghanistan become a failed state?

To me one of the saddest things is the cynical views taken by politicians around the world. They poise the welfare of the people of Afghanistan against their smug satisfaction in seeing the results of Bush’s hubris. There may be some justice in blaming the U.S. as a polity for going along heedlessly for so long, but such a view has no compassion for the ordinary people in Afghanistan who will pay the price in real suffering.

“Here’s your pottery back. Sorry we broke it,” says the arrogant tourist. The bystanders in the shop titter.

Sun, Mar 1st 2009, 09:11

Patrick Edwin Moran, Wake Forest University, Platinum Contributor (207)

Sorry, "(which some exceptions..." should be "(with some exceptions

Sun, Mar 1st 2009, 23:40

Donald Stadler, Self-employed, Diamond Contributor (1052)

"they would have gotten a much more accurate picture -- one from the pungent ground level rather than the kind of anoxic view McNamara and company got from somewhere in the stratosphere. If they disdained the expatriates and foreigners gone native, they might at least have listened to their own colonels."

I read a piece recently which made the point that the surge strategy used in Iraq didn't spring full-grown from the brain of General Petraeus, but rather began with the observations of a colonel on the ground in Iraq during 2004-2005. Petraeus grabbed the idea and pushed it; over Rumsfeld's head. The colonel was promoted to Brigadier and returned to Iraq qith Petraeus, where he helped carry out the apparently successful strategy. Petraeus took the idea, refined it, and above all sold it to the President, but he wasn't the originator.

"A more profitable place to search for guidance would be the success stories -- the British handling of the twelve-year Emergency in Malaysia, and the proactive steps taken by the government of Thailand (upon the advice of the USOM -- the local variant of AID), etc. "

Bravo. There are the germs of ideas in those successes, though every success is a unique thing adapted to the conditions on the ground. Afghanistan won't respond to an Iraqi surge strategy tailored to Bagdhad and the Sunni Triangle - it has it's own unique set of circumstances.

A strategy using some of the basic principals of the surge might work, particularly a strategy based on listening to to the Pashtuns and actually tailored to what they say they want, not what we *think* they should want. As for 'Talking with the Taliban' being somehow immoral or wrong - that is just nonsense. People change their minds about things over time. Sometimes joining a political party is little more than protective coloring. So by all means talk with them - the ones who will talk. Even give them money for mutual goals - it's cheaper and easier than shooting at them.