";s:4:"text";s:20591:"In his testimony, however, Nicholson foreshadowed what was in store under the new president, Donald Trump. The. Even President Joe Biden invoked Vietnam in defense of his decision to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. The parallels between the final hours of two wars that dragged on for years at huge cost and great loss of life struck many observers, including James Willbanks, a military adviser to the South Vietnamese in 1972 who wrote a key U.S. Army textbook on the Vietnam War. I will not do it in Afghanistan.". Army personnel at Fort Campbell, Ky., board a plane for a deployment to Afghanistan in November 2014. The response ranged from horror to anger to disbelief. During a return visit to Afghanistan in December, Carter damned the Afghan security forces with faint praise. Parallels between Vietnam & Afghanistan… Muhammad Karim The Dialogue Volume317 XIII Number 3 Similarities between Vietnam and Afghan Wars Vietnam War was the longest conflict of the United States, spread over 12 years from 1961 to 1973, till its engagement in Afghanistan … Staff Sgt. How We Fight explores the extraordinary double-mindedness with which Americans approach war and articulates the opposing perspectives that have governed our responses throughout history: the “crusade” tradition, or our love of grand ... Bickford spent three months recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. , Published June 9, 2021Updated Aug. 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/us/pentagon-papers-vietnam-. The next month, Army Gen. John Nicholson Jr., Campbell’s successor as commanding general, appeared before the Senate, Armed Services Committee. Do you see any similarities between the Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? "We did not do that in Vietnam. Instead, the United States continued the fight, giving full backing to Ngo Dinh Diem, the autocratic, anti-Communist leader of South Vietnam. There … They fell in a week.â. President Harry S. Truman subsidized their effort to take back their Indochina colonies. Senator Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) also saw similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, concluding, “The gnawing and growing feeling that the goal of achieving U.S.-style democracy in Iraq is unattainable is reminiscent of the feeling that gripped America during Vietnam.” 9 His colleague, Robert Byrd (D–W.Va. (A federal audit, as based on spurious data; life expectancy for Afghans had actually increased by about seven years, not 21.). The military objective in Southeast Asia was to insure … The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press. In an about-face, he suggested that the United States declare victory and slowly withdraw. Found insideSince the first days of the Iraqi invasion, supporters of the war have cautioned the public not to view this conflict as another Vietnam. Hanoi's War renders transparent the internal workings of America's most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and much more wide ranging than it had been previously. Three days later, on Dec. 21, a suicide bomber carrying explosives on a motorcycle killed six U.S. Air Force security personnel on foot patrol near Bagram. In an about-face, he suggested that the United States declare victory and slowly withdraw. The suicide bomber, he added, saw a convoy of vehicles coming out of the front gate and blew himself up because he mistakenly thought Cheney was a passenger. “You times that by about 35 million Afghans represented here in the country, that gives you 741 million years of life,” he added, crediting U.S., NATO and Afghan forces for what sounded like a remarkable improvement. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in February 2016, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) pushed Campbell to explain. "Our leaders did that in Vietnam when I got here as a young man. The president increased U.S. military advisers tenfold and introduced helicopter missions. As the flag came down during the December 2014 ceremony in Kabul, Obama’s commanders emphasized that the Afghan army and police would take full responsibility for their country’s security from that point forward, with U.S. and NATO forces restricted to “noncombat” roles as trainers and advisers. However, it is not the last condition. “We should be proud of what we are doing out there for the people of South Vietnam,” he told the committee. Cheney finally left Afghanistan that afternoon on a C- 17 military aircraft without further incident. . This book seeks to explore what lessons the US military took from that conflict as to how and when it was appropriate for the United States to use the enormous military force at its disposal and how these lessons have come to influence and ... The only question is when. “These are very smart people, and they’re the enemy but they deserve tons of respect and they should never, never, never be underestimated,” he said. Found inside – Page 182Johnson and Mason argue that there are many similarities between the Vietnam War and the War in Afghanistan and encompass not only commonalities between the ... Here is a very good paper from the US Army Combat Studies Institute on the effect of sanctuaries in counter-insurgency warfare. Breaking his promise to end the war, he said at least 5,500 troops would remain in Afghanistan after he left office in January 2017. Their 7,000 pages chronicled, in cold, bureaucratic language, how the United States got itself mired in a long, costly war in a small Southeast Asian country of questionable strategic importance. History demonstrates that … "We picked up our marbles and left.". Amid mud puddles and a jumble of pedestrians and vehicle traffic, he triggered his vest of explosives. That said, there are some significant differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan. In both cases, it is said to be asymmetric warfare when a weaker side can successfully exert leverage on a stronger military power. Perhaps the biggest difference between Vietnam and the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq is the American attitude toward death. In Vietnam, troops served one year tours. In some cases, soldiers were flown into battle and killed before anyone learned their names. This was accepted as a fact of war at the time. Support trusted, factual information with a tax deductible contribution to PolitiFact. How Afghanistan Is Like Vietnam. In August, 1st Sgt. Neumann, the ambassador, sent another dour classified cable to Washington on Aug. 29. “We are prevailing,” Army Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin, the commander in charge of training the Afghan security forces, told reporters on Jan. 9, 2007. Ho had worked with the United States against Japan in World War II, but, in the Cold War, Washington recast him as the stalking horse for Soviet expansionism. One of the ways Afghanistan and Vietnam Veterans come together is through Vet Centers. Lies like McNamara’s were the rule, not the exception, throughout America’s involvement in, . Found inside4 Veterans of wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan were in fact soul mates; ... me that there are many similarities between the Afghan and the Vietnamese wars. "This time, I think it’s clear that both parties supported the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Found inside – Page 3In both wars the enemy deeply infiltrated our bases , and forced ... The superficial parallels between the Afghanistan and Vietnam conflicts are eerie ... Between 1965 and 1972, the US fought a traditional war against the North Vietnamese army. The following June, when another such crew broke into the. Found inside – Page 3In both wars the enemy deeply infiltrated our bases , and forced ... The superficial parallels between the Afghanistan and Vietnam conflicts are eerie ... The guerrilla war both lasted a decade. Now, after having successfully completed a grey – not quite black – R&D effort, hidden from Congress, and becoming retired military, I’m a very strong advocate of DIVERTING THE DOD FUNDING TO MORE MEANINGFUL AND PEACEFUL PURSUITS!!! He has covered the Pentagon, served as the Berlin bureau chief and reported from more than 60 countries. The plan was to depart Bagram from a rarely used gate. There was little mention of the enemy, let alone an instrument of surrender. What are the Similarities Between Vietnam And Afghanistan Exit Of America? Credit…Henry Griffin/Associated Press. “With the Pentagon Papers revelations…?? A cowardly president fleeing the country. United States had just sent its first combat troops to South Vietnam, and the new push, he boasted, was further wearing down the beleaguered Vietcong. During the Vietnam War, there was a program to create so-called Strategic Hamlets in the Vietnamese countryside. To make it all work, Obama conjured up an illusion. In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, Americans signaled that they had reached the limit of their engagement. 801 3rd St. S With the Pentagon Papers revelations, the U.S. public’s trust in the government was forever diminished. Two guerilla forces, the Mujahideen proved to … When he returned 38 years later, Afghanistan had been continuously at war for a quarter century. Given the calamity in Iraq, the Bush administration badly wanted to avoid the perception it was losing in Afghanistan as well. By targeting the vice president at the heavily fortified base at Bagram, the Taliban demonstrated an ability to inflict high-profile, mass- casualty attacks far from the insurgents’ strongholds in southern and eastern Afghanistan. During the Vietnam War, there was a program to create so-called Strategic Hamlets in the Vietnamese countryside. Cheney had slipped into the war zone the day before on an unannounced trip to the region. It also conjured difficult memories for those who escaped Vietnam in 1975, such as Thuan Le Elston. “The insurgents knew this. “The VC have the initiative,” the information said. The secretary of defense wrote in one report, “The loss of South Vietnam would make pointless any further discussion about the importance of Southeast Asia to the Free World.”. In the absence of U.S. troops, the Islamic State — an al-Qaeda offshoot — swept through the country and seized several major cities as the U.S.-trained Iraqi army put up scant resistance. Despite that, said George Washington University military historian Shawn McHale, the army ultimately crumpled. New generation, new pentagon personnel, but the same lies from military brass. The same seems to hold true of many of the COPs talked about in the open source press. As the U.S. departs Afghanistan, will the old Taliban reemerge? Taliban Is Like Early Vietcong The New Republic's John Judis makes a strong case. With their families to God knows where massed as many as 200 fighters to again... In counter-insurgency warfare found inside – Page 308Afghanistan, of course, was not a safe place, home. 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