AFGHAN-'NAM BLUES

Last updated: 3:31 am
January 27, 2009
Posted: 2:46 am
January 27, 2009

A NEW president with a strong domestic agenda and a career-long lack of interest in foreign policy inherits a distant war and feels he has to demonstrate his toughness: That was LBJ and Vietnam.

Will Afghanistan be President Obama's Vietnam, with Pakistan as Cambodia on steroids?

Such comparisons have already been made, but miss the mark. The core reason we failed in Vietnam was our largesse: We poured in so much wealth that we corrupted the Vietnamese leadership, from presidents down to battlefield commanders, beyond all utility. We became North Vietnam's best allies, destroying South Vietnam from within.

Our troops fought bravely, but infusions of well-intentioned aid undercut every success. All of the other reasons for our failure, from then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's arrogance through a long misreading of the war's nature, were secondary. Instead of inspiring self-sacrifice in our counterparts, we generated a kleptocracy.

Like the Taliban (and al Qaeda), the North Vietnamese had the advantage of poverty. The strategic goal of the leadership cadres in Hanoi never wavered.

Now we're "Vietnamizing" Afghanistan: dumping so much wealth on a poor country that we're turning pickpockets into world-class thieves.

President Hamid Karzai is despised where he isn't hated. The people view his government as corrupt and untrustworthy - and it is. A weak man, Karzai's unwilling to stand up to warlords and narcos. Anxious to retain his illusory power, he takes our support for granted.

Karzai's constant harping on American military "excesses" every time the Taliban claims the corpses holding Kalashnikovs were just discussing Oprah's latest book-club pick is meant to please the locals - at our expense.

But we can't see an alternative to Karzai. Our bad, not his.

The bitter truth (as in Vietnam) is that we still haven't decided what we really want to achieve. We babble about nation-building where there's no nation to build, just a premedieval mosaic of tribes that hate each other. And the Taliban are homeboys.

We want Afghans to be like us. They never will be. (Good morning, Vietnam!)

If we want to alter the strategic environment amid a foreign population, we must be clear on three things: what we want to achieve, what the target population wants - and how much of what we want that population's willing to accept.

Washington is vague and naive on all three points.

Another 30,000 US troops? Fine. As long as they have clear, achievable missions. More nonmilitary aid? OK. Tell us specifically what it will accomplish. And mark the bills.

We can't bear any more of the Bush-Clinton-Bush approach of sending troops and mountains of aid in the nebulous hope that something good will happen.

Can anyone in the Obama administration articulate what we intend to achieve in Afghanistan? The Bush folks couldn't. I doubt this bunch can either.