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"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it," wrote 20th-century philosopher George Santayana.
President Obama is but the latest inhabitant of the White House who has not learned that lesson. The president’s decision to send 35,000 additional American troops into Afghanistan is the latest chapter in our failure to heed the warnings of history.
The great anticipation that preceded Obama’s momentous decision seems silly in retrospect. All sober deliberation to whittle about 5,000 troops from the Pentagon’s request. All those meetings, all those deliberations, all that wise counsel and what we got was George W. Bush Lite. Even all that goodwill his administration reportedly has accumulated around the world couldn’t make our allies kick in the paltry extra 10,000 troops Obama requested. With all of that lofty rhetoric, we are essentially going it alone in the endless fight against the terrorists.
The president, of course, claims this time the strategy is different. The goals are more realistic, more clearly defined. There is the long sought after exit strategy. Maybe Obama actually believes this time is different. American presidents have swallowed their own myths before.
"We will finish the job," the president said without the slightest hint of irony. Sometimes our presidents can use a little irony as much as Fox News could use a sense of humor. If you have lived as long as me, the bravado rings familiar and more than just a little hollow.
We have heard such words pour forth in the past from the White House briefing room. From Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to the recently retired Bush, they all have issued those confident assurances. Is there any more tragic clich� in war than "failure is not an option?" All of that high-blown talk simply reminds us, no matter the party or its political philosophy, none of them understand the limits of American power. I quote that well-known hippie and pacifist, George Will, who said the indigenous population of Afghanistan has to bet their lives on who will be around longer — American troops or the Taliban — and they know the answer and so do we.
We are witnessing the dismantling of hope. The only audacity left in the White House is the failure to understand the meaning of our defeat in Vietnam or, despite the "exit strategy" and the "surge," our difficulty in getting out of Iraq. What clouds the judgment of American presidents is no one wants to go down in history as the one who lost the war. And so, as the mission becomes more impossible, we respond by sending more and more troops or in the current case, recycling the same weary troops over and over again.
No foreign invader has ever lasted to taste victory in Afghanistan. Just as we followed the disillusioned French into a lost cause in Vietnam, we are following on the heels of the defeated troops of the once-mighty Soviet Union. As in Vietnam, we are trying to prop up a corrupt government. Perhaps the CIA can assassinate Hamid Karzai as it did Diem in Vietnam, but there is no Thomas Jefferson to replace him. Just as in Vietnam, we have raised the stakes of losing. In Vietnam, all of South Asia would fall like dominos to the Communists if we lost. In Afghanistan, although most of Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, are secure in Pakistan, the president argues if we leave, they will be back.
In Vietnam, we thought we could bomb them back to the stone age. In Afghanistan, we believe we can kill them precisely with our drone missiles. Perhaps the terrorists will move to Yemen or some other safe haven and just how many places can we invade anyway? As in Vietnam and Iraq, we swallow the myth we are just there until we can transfer responsibility for defense to their own troops. Somehow terrorists are always better trained than our own proxy troops. Maybe they are just better motivated.
I have an idea. Maybe we can get the $1 million it reportedly takes to maintain an American soldier in Afghanistan for a year and use that money to bribe the Taliban. The situation in Iraq improved after we bribed village leaders to get rid of Al Qaeda. Maybe we need less idealism over there and more good old-fashioned cynicism.
Pete Seeger wrote a song called "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" about a platoon leader who kept pushing his troops deeper into the quicksand until they could not get out. The song was meant to be a metaphor for Vietnam, but it applies today as well.
When Lyndon Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam, he was riding the crest of a historic Civil Rights bill and an ambitious anti-poverty program. There seemed nothing he couldn’t achieve. He promised we could have guns and butter. Vietnam changed it all and he was sent back to Texas to die a broken man with a bad heart.
I fear we are about to have our hearts broken again.
