With Afghanistan in the Rearview Mirror, Have We Learned the Lessons of Vietnam This Time?
Unfortunately, we now hear the sad details of how many of those troops hadn’t been paid or even fed in weeks or months. Americans took away air support, the Afghan army quickly collapsed as President Ashraf Ghani was packing his bags, reportedly with piles of cash, to flee the capital. So much for being “well-equipped.”
There are other lessons that apply, particularly those outlined after Vietnam by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to avoid future quagmires.
But now we’re more likely to hear about the “hubris,” excessive pride and self-confidence that caused past administrations to plunge too quickly and with the best of intentions into biting off, in the end, more than we’re willing to chew.
Now I expect to see another rise in isolationism, as we saw after Vietnam.
It makes sense for us to avoid the hubris of thinking we can solve all the world’s problems. That’s sensible and understandable, as long as we don’t try so hard to ignore the rest of the world that we invite some future Osama bin Laden to bring his war over here.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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