The Lesson of Vietnam

Winston Churchill famously announced, "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." As George Orwell noted, "those who control the past control the future." Thus currently history is being deviously re-written by neocons who falsely portray the Iraq invasion as an American triumph and the Vietnam War as a war which should have been won and would have been if properly fought.

This ignores the lesson of Vietnam which is that 58,000 Americans died unnecessarily. The Vietnam War, like the Iraq War, was unnecessary. Saddam Hussein was no threat to America and neither was Vietnam. Communist Vietnam is now our trading partner and a popular American tourist destination. The Cold War ended peacefully. Even Communist China is embracing capitalism in a gradual peaceful manner.

It is far better for regime change to come about through peaceful people power rather than through foreign invasions and the fomenting of bloody civil wars. Our forefathers warned against foreign entanglements, but here we are mired in Afghanistan.

Our mission in Afghanistan is supposed to be to target al Qaeda but there are only 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and our military is calling for 100,000 troops. Our presence there is destabilizing Pakistan; the Pakistanis hate us, believing we're in cahoots with Israel and India to steal their nukes.

President Obama demands to know what our exit strategy is and to whom will we hand this off. A corrupt narcostate? We are supposed to spend billions training (and paying) the Afghans, who have been traditionally recognized to be ferocious fighters. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski astutely points out that no one needs to train the Taliban!

We should leave Afghanistan and let President Karzai make peace with Taliban leader Mullah Omar as he has long wanted to do. There are increasing indications that the Taliban is willing to sever ties to al Qaeda. This war is unnecessary.