I was thinking about our war in Viet Nam and the one in Afghanistan...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

I have to say that I haven't thought very much about these two together, but it seems to me that our war in Afghanistan is very much like the war with Viet Nam was back in the 60's and 70's.

The really similar part being that we came in after others had tried, and failed to win, or beat the enemy.

Armies went to both countries to die, and die they did. There were no victories for us or for the others who tried.

The reasons for both wars were different. We were (I guess seriously) worried about the spread of Communism in Viet Nam, but in Afghanistan, I think our reason might have more to do with oil.



What do you think?

[OakCliffDem]

1. Ideology was more than half the reason we were in Viet Nam

With Afghanistan, it is 90 + % about economics.


Afghanistan, as it happens, sits conveniently at the crossroads of any new Silk Road linking the Caucasus to western China, and four nuclear powers (China, Russia, Pakistan, and India) lurk in the vicinity. "Losing" Afghanistan and its key network of U.S. military bases would, from the Pentagon's point of view, be a disaster, and though it may be a secondary matter in the New Great Game of the moment, it's worth remembering that the country itself is a lot more than the towering mountains of the Hindu Kush and immense deserts: it's believed to be rich in unexplored deposits of natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chrome, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, and iron ore, as well as precious and semiprecious stones.

It is a long article, from 2009, but it has a lot of back story about why a piece of dirt in the mountains brings people to fight over it.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Thanks for the link--I will read it.

[99th_Monkey]

2. Well, another parallel is that, "if we don't fight them in ____, we'll be fighting them in the US"

we have to have war, so "the bad guys don't come murder us in our beds".

And then there IS the oil too, in the case of Afghanistan, which changes the equation somewhat.

other big differences is that the number of US casualties in Viet Nam were horrendous, not so with
Afghanistan, and yet another is that w/ Viet Nam we had universal conscription via the draft, but
not w/ Afghanistan or Iraq.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Your opening line is right on!

And I agree about the universal conscription.

Thanks for your input!

[lpbk2713]

5. And again, we're doing a terrible job of winning hearts and minds.

Most see our presence in Afghanistan as the better of two evils.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. Aren't we, though? But that was never the real goal.

I do not see our presence that way at all.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. My husband and brothers were in 'Nam.

My husband went in '64, when we were supposed to only be sending a few "advisors".
Thing is, he trained for a year knowing from day 1 he and all his fellows would be going to Nam.

"Containment" of Russia and China has always been a major part of US planning.
Creating teh red scare of Communism was one way of getting citizen support for "necessary wars".
Creating puppet leaders and keeping them propped up has been going on for a long time, to support financial interests in foreign countries.

When the Soviet Union broke up, we had to invent different reasons for military aggression.

The race for resources just got a bit more intense since the 80's, and energy is a major global issue, so is the need for export markets.
Ever since Bush lied our way into Iraq, any glance at a map told the story of oil, oil routes ( pipelines and harbors).
That plus keeping control of countries to block China and Russia has and continues to be a primary goal.
Tho we are not doing so well of late about that, and Russia is pushing back hard now.

There's a guy named Daniel Yergin, who some time ago got a Pulitzer for writing The Prize, a history of oil, which PBS made a documentary of, ( I recommend the documentary, the book is extremely long and detailed, I had trouble with getting thru it)
and more recently wrote another excellent book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.
and
The Commanding Heights which "describes the battle for the world economy and the struggle between governments and markets."

He also has a web site with commentaries, http://danielyergin.com/
I find it very educational.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. Thanks for your info and links! I will follow up.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. Just found that PBS did a doc on The Commanding Heights, also.

I am gonna check Netflix to see if I can get it.
Got wayyy too many books to read.

[Gregorian]

12. Thanks. Interesting info to go investigate,

All of what you wrote is the way I see it too. Lots of hype, like Donald Trump.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. I think we could have changed history more than we did back then

if we had the internet, thus a source of information not limited to MSM.
but ...then....MSM was not quite totally under the thumb of the 1%.

I DO recall a moment that told me we had lost, tho.
The day they fired Phil Donahue.
It was clear as a bell.

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. "communism". "oil".

It's war for the sake of war.... imo.

"Islamic Fundamentalism."


Riiiiiight. If you live long enough, you begin to see patterns.

We HAVE to be at war.

It may be psychological. It may be economic. It may be political.

Whatever: it's *tragic*.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. That may certainly be true.

Tragic indeed........except for those who profit from it.

And they are legion, and powerful.

[cwydro]

18. Spot on.

Sad, but very true.

[Downwinder]

13. There is no military solution to an insurgency.

But we keep trying and training. What insurgency are we training for?

What, according to the Military, will be the effects of global warming?

[rug]

14. Same shit, different century.

[HeiressofBickworth]

15. I think Smarmy got it right

We HAVE to be at war. It's an economic thing. War preparation got us out of the Great Depression, then we got into WW II. Still basing our economy on the MIC, we got Korea, and after that, many others. Iraq and Afghanistan are just the latest -- oh, perhaps it's Syria but we're not altogether in that one -- yet. I've read that if we stopped military armaments and supplies, the bottom would drop out of our economy as we don't have the manufacturing base to fill in the gap. That base has already been sent to Mexico, China, Bangladesh, etc. There is so much profit in raping countries for their natural resources and paying pennies a day for workers, the big corporations and the 1% will never give up raking in the dough. As I've said many a time before: it's always about the money. We can dress it up in lots of camouflage (red-scare, stopping creeping communism, pay-back for 9/11, "helping" regimes stay in power when their citizens want to change, unwanted regime changes, etc.) but it all boils down to money interests. The money interests don't give a flying fart in space about whatever excuse they've dreamed up -- they are always and forever looking to increase their profits.

Wish it were otherwise.

[cwydro]

17. I certainly think they have similarities.

Number one is the ridiculous waste of life.