US Looks to Vietnam for Afghan Tips
US Looks to Vietnam for Afghan Tips – Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press via Mercury News
Top US officials have reached out to a leading Vietnam war scholar to discuss the similarities of that conflict 40 years ago with American involvement in Afghanistan, where the US is seeking ways to isolate an elusive guerrilla force and win over a skeptical local population. The overture to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stanley Karnow, who opposes the Afghan war, comes as the US is evaluating its strategy there.
President Barack Obama has doubled the size of the US force to curb a burgeoning Taliban insurgency and bolster the Afghan government. He has tasked Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander, to conduct a strategic review of the fight against Taliban guerrillas and draft a detailed proposal for victory.
McChrystal and Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the country, telephoned Karnow on July 27 in an apparent effort to apply the lessons of Vietnam to the Afghan war, which started in 2001 when US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Among the concerns voiced by historians is the credibility of President Hamid Karzai’s government, which is widely perceived as being plagued by graft and corruption. They draw a parallel between Afghanistan’s presidential election on Aug. 20 and the failed effort in Vietnam to legitimize a military regime lacking broad popular support through an imposed presidential election in 1967…
More at Mercury News.
Also see:
SWJ’s Vietnam Section in our Reference Library.
Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow
