Afghanistan: The Sequel to Vietnam?

From today's The Washington Post:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said any recommendation for more forces would have to address his concerns that the foreign military presence in Afghanistan could become too large and be seen by Afghans as a hostile occupying force. "Clearly, I want to address those issues and we will have to look at the availability of forces, we'll have to look at costs. There are a lot of different things that we'll have to look at," he told reporters.[1]

I'm starting to get a bad feeling about how this operation is going. It appears the current administration is too politically chicken to put it on the line and dump more troops in. Of course we are occupying the country, but since it's so politically fragmented to not do so would be an increasing danger to us.

This is actually the real instance of what was a bullkrap theory back in the 60s about Vietnam--that the communists would take over and we'd be in danger. Well, as the 9/11 plane crashes have shown, this time there really are clear and present dangers to the U.S. by well-financed terrorist organizations operating out of Afghanistan. (Just where is their money coming from, anyway?) Yet the secretary of defense is worried about costs? Perhaps he should wonder what the cost of another strike on U.S. soil would be.

Here, Secretary Gates, I'll tip you this Afghanistan Taliban banknote. Maybe that will help with the costs.

REFERENCES

[1] Peter Graff and Andrew Gray "U.S., NATO must change to win Afghan war says commander" The Washington Post Aug. 31, 2009.