Afghanistan has few similarities to Vietnam. The conflict has a much different nature and roots than did Vietnam. Islam and the warring culture of the Aghans, who will fight each other if they don’t have outsiders to fight. Much of the trouble brews in the Northwestern territory around the Khyber pass region, where they make SMLE Rifles and Browning High Power pistols with little more than hacksaws and files. The make AKs the same way (M16s are bit too finely made to be built in their manner). The only way we will end the Afghan war is to back them into a corner where it’s surrender or die. Some will choose to die, and you have to allow them their wish. The rest, they leave Islam permanently. They get into their cage and behave themselves from then on. If they don’t you go in and do it all over again. Sooner or later you won’t have to do it again.

All we are doing now, however, is swatting hornets instead of killing the nest. We lost in Korea because we allowed the Red Chinks a haven where they could rest and regroup. MacArthur was, at the bottom line, fired because he didn’t want to allow them that. The Congressional hearings on Korea were humiliating for Truman as a result. But, you can’t leave your enemy a sanctuary and expect to win.

The ebb and flow, as in Vietnam, can go on for decades. And when one throws in the cultural mores of the region with otherwise non-involved tribes giving shelter and aid to their “guests” as per tradition, and with a Pakistan who has minimal control of these border areas on the one hand, but is touchy about it’s international borders on the other (let alone the problem of a nuclear-armed Pakistan walking a tight-rope between pleasing us and losing control–and the nukes–to the religious fundamentalists) one has a nasty brew not easily ameliorated.

(I only hope Obama–or someone in his administration–has read the writings of both Lord Curzon and his biographers. Some things really don’t change much no matter how much time has passed.)

Meanwhile, in the field, the finest military in the history of the world is slowly be consumed and destroyed, it’s equipment worn beyond use, and the troops themselves overwhelmed by the tasking. Anything less than a commitment to victory and a mobilization on a national level will only get us more of the slow attrition we have been watching for 7 years.

As far as focusing on Afghanistan, Kipling had idea what sort of place Afghanistan is, and what happens there:

If your officer’s dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it’s ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.

Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier…

Yes, go to your Gawd like a soldier.