DON'T LET THE FACT IT'S A BAD ANALOGY STOP YOU:

Obama’s Vietnam: The analogy isn't exact. But the war in Afghanistan is starting to look disturbingly familiar. (John Barry and Evan Thomas, 1/31/09, NEWSWEEK)

Vietnam analogies can be tiresome. To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires." But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways. The parallels are disturbing: the president, eager to show his toughness, vows to do what it takes to "win." The nation that we are supposedly rescuing is no nation at all but rather a deeply divided, semi-failed state with an incompetent, corrupt government held to be illegitimate by a large portion of its population. The enemy is well accustomed to resisting foreign invaders and can escape into convenient refuges across the border. There are constraints on America striking those sanctuaries. Meanwhile, neighboring countries may see a chance to bog America down in a costly war. Last, there is no easy way out.

True, there are important differences between Afghanistan and Vietnam. The Taliban is not as powerful or unified a foe as the Viet Cong.

Except that even the "similarities" are differences. South Vietnam was so coherent a polity and its armed forces so competent that even after we withdrew they successfully fought off the North, until Congressional Democrats pulled the rug out from under them. And whereas there was some argument--though a profoundly mistaken one--for not striking outside of South Vietnam, there is no one like China and the Soviet Union to threaten retaliation when we pursue the Taliban across state borders and the domino theory now supports our doing so, as destabilizing the rotten regimes of the region. Creating chaos in our enemies' backyards is sensible policy. Best of all, there's a really easy way out. Let the Taliban take over and then Predator them any time they appear in public and cruise missile any building, hut or yurt they use. Afghanistan remains, as it always has been, a war we may not be able to win--if we define that as turning a tribal backwater that has never been successfully centrally-governed into a modern liberal democracy--but one that it isn't possible for us to lose--because we can so easily prevent the foe from ever governing it either.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 3, 2009 6:35 PM