Alex Massie Alex Massie

Despite Pundits’ Best Efforts, Afghanistan Stubbornly Refuses to be Obama’s Vietnam

So, you see, Barack Obama is a Democratic president just like Jack Kennedy and LBJ and, right, there’s a war going on in Aghanistan which is in asia, just like Vietnam! So the parallels are just uncanny. Right? Wrong.

It’s time, people. for a comprehensive ban on making facile comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Prospect’s Tom Streithorst is only the latest fellow to warn that Afghanistan “could destroy Obama’s presidency, as Vietnam did Johnson’s.”

This seems extremely unlikely. Let’s trot through some of the reasons:

1. 50,000 Americans died in Vietnam. The current figure for Afghanistan? 796. There may be quite a number of troops involved but Afghanistan is, by the standards of these things, a small and non-deadly war. US deaths are running at a little over 100 a year. Absent soaring casualty rates body bags aren’t going to end the war.

2. Anyway, the US military is the most respected institution in the United States. This was not the case in the 1960s and 70s. More importantly, it’s an all-volunteer force. No-one is being drafted to go and die in the Hindu Kush. You want to make Afghanistan really unpopular? Reinstate the draft. Not gonna happen. At the moment, however, and for most people it’s someone else’s war.

3. One of the ugly secret truths about the war: elite opinion is much more engaged with and concerned by what’s happening in Afghanistan than is the general public. Most people don’t care that much about it. The war doesn’t make the news every night. It’s a very long way away and not much ever seems to happen. There are few battles, only the day to day grind of counter-insurgency. For a war, it lacks drama. Most people just aren’t that into it.

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