Harry's Place

The Afghanistan/Korea analogy is about the dumbest thing I ever heard of.

The United States still has 28,500 troops on the Peninsula more than a half-century later, and it’s worked out fairly well.

That’s meant to be sarcasm, right?

Wasn’t Eisenhower’s campaign position on Korea intentionally vague rather than hard line? His slogan on the issue- “I shall go to Korea”- was a statement that committed him to no actual policy.

SSgt Smith is not the 87th British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, he’s the 224th. See here:

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FactSheets/OperationsFactsheets/OperationsInAfghanistanBritishFatalities.htm

You might have meant 87th this year?

* Smith = Schmid. Oops.

Yes my bad; this year.

What happens if Afghanistan works out as “well” as Korea: a nuclear armed Taliban state in the north of the the country? Presumably this piece by Gordon is satire. If so it is in very poor taste.

I agree with Mesquito, the Afghanistan-Korea analogy is wrong. Far better is the Afghanistan-Vietnam analogy. Karzai’s increasing shaky and semi-legitimate govt. looks more and more like the South Vietnamese govt with rampant corruption and lack of support in the provinces. Also the open border with Pakistan with the sanctories in the Tribal Lands of Wazairstan is the sanctories the VC and North Vietnamese had in Laos and Cambodia.Given this and Afghanistan’s successful resistance against foreign invaders for more than 2,000 years, I believe the US and Britain should opt for some sort of withdrawl from Afghanistan, “Peace with Honor” instead of plunging ahead into a war that looks increasingly unwinable. Afghanistan is first and foremost a problem for its neighbors Pakistan, Iran and to a lesser extent India, China and Russia, not the US and Britain. As far as Al Qaida is concerned, they already have a home in Pakistan’s border terrorities along with the Taliban.

Note: It is unlikely that the Taliban in the 1990s would have ever gotten beyond their home province in Afghanistan without the sponsership of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

Corrupt allies is something the Korean, Vietnamese and Afghan wars all have in common (The South Korean regime of Syngman Rhee was atrocious).

However there is an important difference between the war against the Taliban and the two East Asian wars- in both those cases each side was backed by a superpower, in Afghanistan this is not the case.

Afghanistan=Vietnam ? Really ?

Some statistics :

Vietnam :

Vietnamese Army 20,357 dead;[6] 1,170,000 wounded
United States US 58,159 dead;[6] 2,000 missing; 303,635 wounded[7]

South Vietnamese civilian dead: 1,581,000*[6]
Cambodian civilian dead: ~700,000*
North Vietnamese civilian dead: ~2,000,000[11]
Laotian civilian dead: ~50,000*

Afghanistan since 2001

Civilian direct & indirect deaths: 12,460 – 32,057 [ie worst case]
Total coalition military casualties : 1502

(From wikipedia and icasualties.org)

How can conflicts as utterly different as these in scale be discussed as similar ? Only in idiotic media coverage.

Regarding the NYT quote:

One example Mr. Obama may want to think about: that of a U.S. president who reversed his harder-line campaign posture and settled for a compromise course that was attacked by conservative Republicans as “appeasement.” That was Dwight D. Eisenhower and Korea in 1953. The United States still has 28,500 troops on the Peninsula more than a half-century later, and it’s worked out fairly well.”

That appears to be a staggeringly ill-judged parrellel.

Abandoning Korea would have left the entire peninsula to the tender mercies of the communists. A full escalation would have led to all out war with China, and perhaps the USSR. The only reasonable option available was a compromise. (That worked because the communist actors were (fairly) rational states.)

The situation in Afghanistan is unlikely to lead to Armageddon if 40,000 more troops are deployed. Nor is a compromise and long term ceasefire likely to be feasable against the Taliban and their allies. (And abandoning the country would be a severe blow to Western prestige and diplomacy, and a mammoth boon to Islamist morale, recruitment, and infrastructure).

The risk from escalating in Afghanistan are vastly smaller than was the case in Korea, while the chance of a successful long term compromise ceasefire and token occupation force being succesful also appear vastly smaller.

A better comparison is surely with something like the Malayan Emergency against Communist guerrillas in Malaysia :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency

MMM: Would you prefer analogies to the three unsucessful efforts(1839-1842, 1878-1881 & 1919-1920) by the British and the unsucessful ten year effort (1979-1989) by the late Soviet Union to conquer Afghanistan?

David All – No.

There are vast differences in the firepower, technology and competence of the invading armies. If the US sent a decent size force to Afgahnistan now the Taliban would be irrelevant in a couple of years max especially now they are also being dealt with in Pakistan. IMO.

I suspect you are a glass half empty man on this one…

MMM; It sounds as if you have been talking to my Mom. She always criticizes me for looking on the down side of things just like my Dad does!

Seriously, I hope you are right, MMM.

As an aside, I noticed that the clearly very brave Staff Sgt Schmid, the ATO (Ammunitions technical officer) from the ‘Commissariat Corps’ killed at the weekend, sported a ‘dettol badge’ on his left shoulder denoting that he had completed his All Arms Commando Course too.

That was Dwight D. Eisenhower and Korea in 1953. The United States still has 28,500 troops on the Peninsula more than a half-century later, and it’s worked out fairly well.

Eh? The continued existence of the regime in North Korea is an example of things working out fairly well?

Oh wait, it’s the New York Times. Never mind.

Can anyone point to a respectable military operation conducted solely by the Afghans. Say involving a few thousand men? The truth is the large majority of Afghans are in this together, milking the West for what it is worth. They are Muslims, they’ll have no truck with the infidels.

The Vietnam analogy is overdone. The South was overcome by the North Vietnamese army which of itself was capable of fielding over million men and was liberally supplied by the Soviet Union and China. But that alone would not have been enough to defeat the South. It required the treachery of the American Democrats who tied President Ford’s hands by denying him any military means to back up South Vietnam. Later in justification they and their fellow traitors would parley their duplicity into so many books, movies and TV shows purpoting to show the American enterprise in Vietnam as a uniquely evil and senseles gambit.

Gordon, it’s a good post