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Hello and welcome to Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan debate
series. Today I'm joined by Katria vanden Huevel editor of
The Nation and Lawrence Korb a senior fellow at the Center for American
Progress. Today's debate topic was submitted to us at rethinkafghanistan.com
by Lee from Attleboro, Masachusetts here it
is: We've all heard comparisons made between the war in Afghanistan
and the war in Vietnam. Many people including the president have
rejected this comparison as unfair and historically inaccurate
Is it a far analogy? or is it not, and why? Katrina one our
coin flip. So we'll start with you. You have one minute. History
by analogy is often imperfect but can be useful. Let me just
tick off a few similarities. As in Vietnam
we may be facing the situation where we can win every battle but not win the
war. Certainly not within a time frame that is acceptable or a cost that's
acceptable to the American people. We're occupying a fiercely independent
nationalistic country. Government corruption is endemic
if you remember Diem the leader of Vietnam in Karzai, they are not
respected by many of their people corruption endemic. The frontiers the borders
both countries, sealing off was virtually impossible
and the bombing campaign that were seen in Afghanistan has fueled
the anti-americanism and turn Afghans against us. Finally,
the most enormous cost and similarity is the cost that Vietnam posed
LBG's great society. My greatest fear is that
Afghanistan will drain the America
of the resources it needs to rebuild the country at this moment
of ecomonic crisis and provides security- Thank you very much Katrina, and Lawrence will go
for your one minute opening. I don't think there's very much similiarity
between them at all. First of all in Vietnam we ended up
with about 600,000 in the theatre. We're talking about tops
50,000 - 60,000 Americans in Afghanistan
Number two, the Afghan people want us there unlike Vietnam
We were seen as the second coming of the French
and support a corrupt government. Karzai has become
more corrupt but he was chosen by the tribal leader in
Afghanistan they're going to have another election this summer
and if it goes well I think this will help and finally we
have a regional strategy which we never had in Vietnam
we also have a comprehensive strategy which does not rely just on military
force alone. Great, and Katrina your response.
Larry, so far we're looking, we're not looking at half a million troops
as we're commited in Vietnam. We're looking to 50,000 -
60,000 yet escalation is a very slippery slope. We know
that from history and though they're only approximately
650 U.S. troop deaths so far in Afghanistan compared to
58,000 in Vietnam, I think it's very important to remember that, that figure
of 650 is a higher death toll, than was the case after
of nine years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Also, on
Afghan support for the U.S. occupation? again, its not 2001 anymore.
and though the Taliban, most of the Taliban is despised the
opposition for U.S. occupation has grown exponentially and we should
exploit the hatred of the Taliban, the core elements
and not become and occupying force but become one that is involved in the reconstruction in a
non-military way of the country and the region. Alright, and Lawrence your one minute response.
Well, I think the United States is adopting a counter insurgency strategy in Afghanistan
which we didn't do 'til very late in the war in Vietnam
We also have more than 30,000 troops from other nations which we never had
in Vietnam. It's also a NATO exercise and while our NATO
countries may not be giving us as many troops as we want, they are providing training
forces for the Afghan military and police. They're also providing a lot of economic
aid. Katrina-What we've seen in this last week
and I defer to Lawrence Korb but what we've seen with defense secretary Gates' military
budget represents the most dramatic shift in U.S. military thinking since the end of
Vietnam. We are now focused on counter insurgency and low
intensity conflict. That will be our military principle combat missions. That has
repercussions for the U.S. role in the world. Finally if we continue to escalate
militarily in Afghanistan not only will we destabilize Pakistan drain
America of the resources it needs to rebuild this nation, but as Lawrence said
we are gonna have risk with European allies. We need to re-engage wisely.
They understand the limits of military power and we should understand that
as well and provide other security-Thank you very Katrina-Thank you. We'll go to Lawrence for
your 30 second summation. The United States
needs to stay the course in Afghanistan til it achieves
its two objectives. One is to prevent Afghanistan
from being used as a haven to attack ourselves and our allies
around the world and the other is from becoming a failed state that destabilizes
the region and I'm confident will the comprehensive strategy including military
we can get this done in about 18 months. Thank you for joining
us for debate and thanks of course to our debaters: Katrina
vanden Huevel and Lawrence Korb. Visit us online at
rethinkafghanistan.com for more videos and debates.