Obama’s Vietnam?

In a haunting reminder of Vietnam’s body counts, the U.S. Army has begun publicizing every Taliban fighter killed, according to the Wall Street Journal. Another reminder of Vietnam comes from a New York Times report that Army investigators have determined that civilians at Granai, Afghanistan, were attacked in violation of the rules of engagement regarding "putting high-density village dwellings at risk."

I’ve been working on a book about Lyndon Johnson, and have had to face the fact that the case against the Vietnam War that seems so compelling in retrospect did not seem nearly so obvious in the war’s early years. Of the thirty or so civilian or military advisers that Johnson consulted in the July 1965 decision to commit enough American troops to take over the ground war, only two dissented: Undersecretary of State George Ball and Senator Mike Mansfield. Even supposed doves like Bill Moyers and Dick Goodwin remained silent. As late as the summer of 1966, Neil Sheehan, who later wrote perhaps the most damning indictment of the war, A Bright Shining Lie, wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine saying that, though no longer a hawk, he was against surrendering.

Similarly, today there is a very persuasive case for staying the course in Afghanistan. Indeed, Peter Bergen makes it in this issue. But it seems to me there is enough reason to doubt success to wonder if it is worth the American and Afghan lives that will be lost in its pursuit. I find it very hard to accept the cruelty of sending soldiers to Afghanistan after they have endured three or four tours in Iraq.

Even if we eradicate al-Qaeda, won’t other terrorist groups arise? I think that our best hope for the withering of the terrorist impulse rests not with war, but with the diplomatic approach that Obama so eloquently expressed in Cairo. To be sure, there will always be just plain bad guys and dangerous lunatics from which society must protect itself. But effective security measures, not war, are the way to do that.