The United States involvement in Vietnam stretched from 1956 to 1975.\u00a0\u00a0While the initial eight years was as \u201cadvisors\u201d 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 \u201cin-country\u201d by 1968.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was in that same year, soon after the US military announced that we had \u201ccontrol\u201d 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.\u00a0\u00a0That offensive was ultimately driven back \u2013 but from that point, no matter how many bombs we dropped, the US was only \u201ctreading water\u201d in Vietnam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US signed the Paris Peace Accords five years later in January of 1973, and began to withdraw forces.\u00a0\u00a0President Nixon told us that his plan of \u201cVietnamization\u201d would put the South Vietnamese Army in position to defend their own nation.\u00a0\u00a0The final US combat troops left Vietnam two months later.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The North Vietnamese gave the Americans \u201ccover\u201d and waited. It wasn\u2019t until the spring of 1975 that they launched a final attack on the South Vietnamese government, which collapsed like a \u201chouse of cards\u201d. American\u2019s 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 \u201cmercies\u201d of the North Vietnamese forces. It was as ugly as we thought it could get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cwill to fight\u201d. When armies don\u2019t believe in their leadership or their cause, they are unwilling to fight and die, no matter what the quality of their training and weaponry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We learned that same lesson again in Iraq.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0From 2002 until 2011, The United States \u201cstood up\u201d the Iraqi Army after the defeat of Saddam Hussein and the election of a new government (remember the purple thumbs?).\u00a0\u00a0We trained and supplied, and advised.\u00a0\u00a0But 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States invaded Afghanistan in October of 2001.\u00a0\u00a0Our goals were clear:\u00a0\u00a0destroy Al Qaeda who attacked us on 9-11, and punish the Taliban government that allowed them to use their nation as a base.\u00a0\u00a0But while we damaged Al Qaeda, we lost the opportunity to destroy them in the mountains of Tora Bora.\u00a0\u00a0And while we \u201cstood up\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile the Taliban sharpened their abilities, training against the best military ever seen in world history, the United States Forces.\u00a0\u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s really even uglier than Saigon in 1975.\u00a0\u00a0The Afghan President was out of the country before his capitol in Kabul was even under pressure.\u00a0\u00a0With the President gone, it\u2019s no wonder that the Army folded without even a whimper.\u00a0\u00a0His message was clear \u2013 get out if you can.\u00a0\u00a0Afghans who made their way to the international airport desperately demanded a seat on a flight out –to anywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Americans have been taught the same lesson over and over again:\u00a0\u00a0in Vietnam, in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00a0We can always maintain a stalemate, always use American blood and treasure to prop up corrupt governments and maintain status-quo.\u00a0\u00a0But ultimately, we cannot create the \u201cwill\u201d of a people to fight.\u00a0\u00a0As much as we believe in democracy, in the \u201cpurple thumb\u201d of Iraq, our beliefs were not the question.\u00a0\u00a0It was the beliefs of the Vietnamese, Iraqi and Afghan peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richard Nixon began the withdrawal from Vietnam, but it was Gerald Ford who \u201ctook the hit\u201d for the \u201cfall\u201d of Saigon.\u00a0\u00a0Barack Obama took the blame for the rise of ISIS (remember Trump called him the \u201ccreator\u201d of ISIS), but got US troops out of Iraq.\u00a0\u00a0And now Joe Biden is determined to end US involvement in our longest struggle \u2013 twenty years in Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00a0His mantra is the\u00a0\u00a0\u201cBuck Stops with Me\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s ugly, and awful, and we are abandoning those who depended upon us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was going to happen whenever the US determined to leave.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"