Lessons Learned From Making of

¶ … lessons learned from Making of a Quagmire by David Halberstam and apply it to the defacto American raj in Afghanistan. First is not to become too closely associated with a present unpopular regime such as the Diem regime in Vietnam, as it is doing with the present administration in Afghanistan now (Halberstam and Singal 15).

Also, staying in a never ending guerrilla war is an obvious lesson (ibid 65) The best that can be done now is to declare victory since we have gotten Osama bin Laden and "train and transfer" the war to the Afghans. This was the original mission to go in, that is to decapitate and disrupt Al Qaeda. This has been done. It is impossible to do what every conqueror including Alexander the Great, Britain and Russia has tried and failed to do: totally pacify the country.

We certainly can also remember the disaster of mission creep from the failure in Vietnam. Our arrogance, like those in the past, is clouding our judgment and we deceive ourselves if we think we can do what they could not. What is disturbing about the war in Afghanistan (and in Iraq as well) is that comparisons to Vietnam end at the energy question. For all of its problems, one of those did not include oil and natural gas.

Truly, if one thinks about it, we must ask if we would ever have left if energy were an issue there. One does not have to be a Rhodes scholar to realize that it is the "e" word (energy) that really lies at the heart of the issue. After all, nation states (especially super powers) do not spend trillions of dollars defending nonessentials. The real reason Americans are dying in the Hindu-Kush is as far or as close as our car's gas tank, our home's furnace, or our jacuzzi.

Decades of Middle East wars, oil embargoes and lines at gas pumps have not taught us to get off of the black heroin coming from the region. Clearly, we are more hooked than ever before. An important author of much of Obama's policy's is his old academic mentor, former Carter administration National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, he posits a Trans-Eurasian Security system that looks incredibly like the Bush doctrine of the preemptive strike (Brzezinski 208).

Of course, energy features largely in the Brzezinski equation, as a more careful examination of the book would reveal (well beyond the scope of this essay. This policy has lead directly to the present recession (no one wants to use the "d" word depression any more). Much as America's economy was the proverbial basket case after the multiple conflicts of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, this present experience with multiple Asian wars has contributed to the coming bankruptcy of America and the death of our much daunted American dream.

The money spent in Afghanistan (as well as Iraq) is desperately needed at home in America to rebuild a civilian infrastructure badly in need of revamping. The war is spreading in involvement as oil rich and relatively prosperous Kazakhstan is sending troops. Kazakhstan and Russia are nervous over the war as it is spilling over the Afghan borders into Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Many disparate radical Islamic groups across the region aim to create a Muslim caliphate in the area (Ferris-Rotman). The continued U.S.

And NATO presence is like pouring gasoline on the fire.