Quagmire, Afghanistan ... by gimleteye

As if mortar attacks in Baghdad's Green Zone during VP Biden's visit weren't enough, there is another alarm bell going off in Afghanistan: we could lose the war if we don't commit more troops. Our strategy is to secure enough of the country to win "the hearts and minds" of local people from the Taliban. Winning hearts and minds is the phrase President Lyndon Johnson exhausted in persuading the American public to ramp up US military commitments in Vietnam in the 1960's. (He used it 28 times in speeches between 1964 and 1968).

Stopping the spread of radical Islamic fundamentalism or the corruption of despotic, corrupt Arab regimes is beyond the capacity of the US military. Of the two, endemic corruption is the bigger problem. Eventually, we can hope that the dead-end version of anarchic violence will be rejected by the people of Islamic nations. But there is no hope in our spending dollars and American treasure in service of a corrupt Afghan regime. Counting on the Karzai regime reminds how US military and political strategies to win the "hearts and minds" in South Vietnam was continually undermined by the South Vietnamese government and army. Today's trillions of wartime spending, much of it serving the goals of "privatization" and the military industrial complex, provide plenty of fortification of our own domestic corruption, too. Every time President Johnson used the phrase "hearts and minds" he looked a little older, the lines on his face etched a little deeper, as though the phrase itself had its own corrosive power.

Vietnam was where the US intended to stop the spread of communism: "The Domino Theory". Whether radical Islamic fundamentalism dies of its own weight depends more on solving corruption and its causes, than more US soldiers on the ground.