The Tet Offensive
The United States involvement in Vietnam stretched from 1956 to 1975. While the initial eight years was as “advisors” to the South Vietnamese Army and government, from 1964 on the United States became direct combatants in the country, with over half a million troops “in-country” by 1968.
And it was in that same year, soon after the US military announced that we had “control” of the countryside, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army forces launched the Tet Offensive. From the DMZ in the North, to the capitol in Saigon in the center to the Mekong Delta in the South; the Tet Offensive attacked US and South Vietnamese forces throughout the countryside. That offensive was ultimately driven back – but from that point, no matter how many bombs we dropped, the US was only “treading water” in Vietnam.
Vietnamization
The US signed the Paris Peace Accords five years later in January of 1973, and began to withdraw forces. President Nixon told us that his plan of “Vietnamization” would put the South Vietnamese Army in position to defend their own nation. The final US combat troops left Vietnam two months later.
The North Vietnamese gave the Americans “cover” and waited. It wasn’t until the spring of 1975 that they launched a final attack on the South Vietnamese government, which collapsed like a “house of cards”. American’s still in Vietnam were caught unprepared, and scrambled to get out of the country. Vietnamese who supported the US efforts were mostly left to the “mercies” of the North Vietnamese forces. It was as ugly as we thought it could get.
The Lesson
What lesson should the United States have learned? That however much equipment, bullets and guns, advisors and training supplied to a nation; none of that can substitute for the “will to fight”. When armies don’t believe in their leadership or their cause, they are unwilling to fight and die, no matter what the quality of their training and weaponry.
We learned that same lesson again in Iraq. From 2002 until 2011, The United States “stood up” the Iraqi Army after the defeat of Saddam Hussein and the election of a new government (remember the purple thumbs?). We trained and supplied, and advised. But when US forces were asked by the Iraqi government to leave, and President Obama gladly took the opportunity to move out, ISIS forces came out of Syria and quickly overwhelmed the Iraqi Army.
The ISIS fighters believed in their cause, and were willing to fight and die for it. The Iraqi Army, much like the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, did not. So even though they were outnumbered and out-weaponed, ISIS prevailed. It took the Kurdish Forces, knowing that ISIS represented an existential threat to their homes and lives and backed by the US, to drive ISIS out of Iraq.
9-11
The United States invaded Afghanistan in October of 2001. Our goals were clear: destroy Al Qaeda who attacked us on 9-11, and punish the Taliban government that allowed them to use their nation as a base. But while we damaged Al Qaeda, we lost the opportunity to destroy them in the mountains of Tora Bora. And while we “stood up” a government that opposed the Taliban, spending twenty years and billions of dollars to keep them in power, that government never, ever, stood a chance of existing on its own.
Meanwhile the Taliban sharpened their abilities, training against the best military ever seen in world history, the United States Forces. And when the United States said enough after twenty years of stalemate and withdrew its forces, the well trained and highly motivated Taliban had no problem removing the uninspired government troops.
Doomed to Repeat
It’s really even uglier than Saigon in 1975. The Afghan President was out of the country before his capitol in Kabul was even under pressure. With the President gone, it’s no wonder that the Army folded without even a whimper. His message was clear – get out if you can. Afghans who made their way to the international airport desperately demanded a seat on a flight out –to anywhere.
Americans have been taught the same lesson over and over again: in Vietnam, in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. We can always maintain a stalemate, always use American blood and treasure to prop up corrupt governments and maintain status-quo. But ultimately, we cannot create the “will” of a people to fight. As much as we believe in democracy, in the “purple thumb” of Iraq, our beliefs were not the question. It was the beliefs of the Vietnamese, Iraqi and Afghan peoples.
Richard Nixon began the withdrawal from Vietnam, but it was Gerald Ford who “took the hit” for the “fall” of Saigon. Barack Obama took the blame for the rise of ISIS (remember Trump called him the “creator” of ISIS), but got US troops out of Iraq. And now Joe Biden is determined to end US involvement in our longest struggle – twenty years in Afghanistan. His mantra is the “Buck Stops with Me”. It’s ugly, and awful, and we are abandoning those who depended upon us.
And it was going to happen whenever the US determined to leave.
