Canada's quagmire

Canada's quagmire

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=6b37f966-8ef3-4e27-a291-601d82326875

The steady stream of maimed or killed soldiers is but one of many
increasingly disturbing parallels between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War

by Michael Byers, Citizen Special
Published: Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Four Canadian soldiers were wounded in Afghanistan on Monday, one
"very seriously" and two "seriously." Limbs or eyes have likely been
lost; perhaps even more. Then Capt. Richard (Steve) Leary lost
everything when he was shot and killed in a gun battle with Taliban
insurgents yesterday.

Hundreds of Canadian soldiers have already returned home with broken
bodies and minds. Their growing number, and the fact that they are so
often forgotten, are but two of many increasingly disturbing
parallels between Afghanistan and the Vietnam War.

Both conflicts were preceded by a long history of failed foreign
occupations. The Japanese and French had been forced out of Vietnam;
Alexander the Great, the British Empire and Soviet Union were all
expelled from Afghanistan.

In both countries, long periods of coerced subservience engendered
deep resentment toward foreign forces. Decades of armed resistance
turned amateur insurgents into seasoned fighters.

Cross-border support for the insurgents played a role in both
conflicts, and was impossible to shut down. Attacking China during
the Vietnam War would have risked a global cataclysm. Sending troops
into Pakistan today would destabilize an already fragile nuclear-armed state.

In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the occupying powers arrived without
much understanding of local cultures, languages and histories.
Assistant deputy minister of national defence Ken Calder admitted as
much in 2003, saying that "We don't know anything about this country."

On both occasions, the occupiers handpicked a local leader and ran an
election to legitimize him. Like Ngo Dinh Diem, Hamid Karzai's
tolerance for corruption and nepotism undermines local support and
hinders development efforts.

Both conflicts have been justified on the basis that it's better to
engage the enemy abroad than to wait for the threat to spread. In
Vietnam, it was called the "domino theory"; in Afghanistan, it's the
Bush doctrine of pre-emption.

Just as the domino theory failed to take into account historic
animosities between the Vietnamese and Chinese, the threat from
Afghanistan is inflated. Interviews with insurgents indicate that
many are motivated to fight by the loss of family or friends to U.S.
airstrikes, or the destruction of their livelihoods through policies
of poppy eradication, and not by any desire to destroy the West.

As Col. John Paul Vann observed after years of carpet-bombing in
North Vietnam, "This is a political war and it calls for
discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a
knife. ... The worst is an airplane." Canadian General Andrew Leslie
made the same point in August 2005: "Every time you kill an angry
young man overseas, you're creating 15 more who will come after you."

It seems the Pentagon wasn't listening.

Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle" became a major source of heroin
during the Vietnam War. Today, Afghanistan accounts for more than 90
per cent of global supply. Eradication efforts, by creating financial
insecurity, apparently promote poppy production.

In Vietnam, human rights abuses undermined support for Diem's
leadership, while war crimes at My Lai and elsewhere undermined U.S.
efforts to "win hearts and minds." Allegations of torture in
Afghanistan, and a willingness to transfer prisoners despite the risk
of torture, may be just as corrosive.

Both conflicts have seen sophisticated PR campaigns aimed, not at the
occupied populations, but at maintaining public support at home.
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky based their book Manufacturing Consent
on case studies of media manipulation during the Vietnam War.
According to CBC's The National, the Department of National Defence
employs 500 public relations officers and spends $23 million per year
spinning the Afghan war.

In both instances, charismatic military leaders assumed prominent
roles. In 1965, Gen. William Westmoreland was named Time's Man of the
Year. Described by the magazine as the "sinewy personification of the
American fighting man," he "directed the historic buildup, drew up
the battle plans, and infused the ... men under him with his own
idealistic view of U.S. aims and responsibilities."

In February 2008, just as MPs were considering whether to extend the
Kandahar mission, Gen. Rick Hillier publicly asked: "Is it too much
to ask that our Parliament ... show their support for the men and
women who will execute the mission by voting overwhelmingly to
support them in the danger and risks they will encounter?"

In Vietnam, early predictions of a quick victory morphed into a focus
on exit strategies. Washington became obsessed with benchmarks, which
were progressively lowered as "quagmire" set in.

When Paul Martin agreed to send a battle group to Kandahar in 2005,
he expected a two-year mission and minimal causalities. Since then,
the security situation has degenerated. According to NATO, insurgent
attacks in Afghanistan were up 64 per cent between 2006 and 2007.
More than 6,500 people, many of them civilians, were killed last year
compared to 4,000 in 2006 and 1,000 in 2005.

In 2007, 412 Canadians were killed or wounded in Afghanistan, up from
300 in 2006 and only 10 in 2005.

The Canadian government is now striving to lower expectations. In
April, Stephen Harper said: "It depends what you mean by 'success.'
If you took the definition of success which could be Afghan forces
able to ensure a western equivalent security environment, maybe
that's a 20-25-year task. If you're saying Afghan forces able to
manage the day-to-day security in most of the country, we think
that's an objective that, if we put our focus and determination
towards, is achievable in a much shorter timeframe."

The effort to build up Afghan government forces is reminiscent of the
Nixon Doctrine, whereby a strengthened Vietnamese army was supposed
to take over from U.S. soldiers. This policy of "Vietnamization"
failed spectacularly when the Viet Cong swept into Saigon.

The sight of panicked Afghan National Army soldiers fleeing an
assassination attempt on Mr. Karzai this April inspired no confidence
in our own training efforts.

While Canada is slowly realizing that there is no military solution,
Washington seems intent on escalating the counterinsurgency. Poppy
eradication and air strikes are likely intensifying with the addition
- in Kandahar, alongside the Canadians - of 3,500 U.S. Marines. Nor
is there much prospect of a changed approach after the U.S.
presidential election this November. Afghanistan has become the
alternative mission for Democrats opposed to the continued occupation of Iraq.

With Canada feeling its way toward the exit just as the United States
is rushing back in, a clash of policies is almost inevitable.

This country's ability to conduct its own analysis, and make its own
decisions, was not curtailed when Parliament voted to extend the
mission. Far from it: the fact that our soldiers are losing so much
demands constant vigilance, the courage to stand up to allies, and a
willingness to reconsider past decisions as new facts present
themselves. In Vietnam, the United States' biggest mistake wasn't
going to war, but stubbornly persisting as long as it did.
--

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and
International Law at the University of British Columbia. He is the
author of Intent for a Nation: What is Canada For?

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