President Trump is being criticized for suggesting that some or all of our troops should be withdrawn sooner than later from Afghanistan. But maybe he has the right idea.
As an old Marine Corps captain who served during the Vietnam War but not in Vietnam, I have a perspective that is more personal rather than purely analytical.
A boyhood friend of mine, Lee Roy Herron, joined the Marine Corps and was killed in Vietnam on Feb. 22, 1969, almost 50 years ago. He received the Navy Cross posthumously.
Later in 1969, his Third Marine Division began relocating to its home base in Okinawa. If our country had withdrawn months earlier, Herron’s life and thousands of others could have been spared. An earlier withdrawal would have saved treasured lives and materiel. And the results would have been the same — North Vietnam would have taken over and occupied South Vietnam.
Realistically, what chance is there in Afghanistan that the Taliban eventually will not take over and occupy most or all of the country? Will a slow withdrawal make any difference in the end, other than costing more of our nation’s treasure and likely resulting in more American deaths? Will the loved ones of our military personnel serving in Afghanistan, be satisfied to have their sons or daughters killed or maimed, all in the interest of our country saving face in a war that has no more light at the end of the tunnel than we had in Vietnam?
How many more volunteer troops should we continue to send just to preserve the current stalemate? Even if we spend months or years negotiating with the enemy in Afghanistan, what are the odds the enemy will uphold their end of the bargain once we are gone?
How long did it take North Vietnam to ignore the peace treaty once we were gone? Of course, if we negotiate long enough in Afghanistan to obtain a peace treaty, we might leave that country and declare victory, saying the war was worth it. I seem to recall that we did that in Vietnam, too.
Terrorists can train for and plan attacks on our country, whether they do so in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Iran. Are we going to attempt to kill all the terrorists, or just enough so that the remainder decides to call it quits?
Would they quit? Should we risk billions more dollars and more American lives? Can we say there is a perceived imminent threat to our national security? Could we ever get rid of all the terrorist groups that threaten us? Would our leaders over the years have made the same decisions if the general public had any real “skin in the game”? For example, if our country had a military draft in effect, or if we had to pay additional taxes to support the war, as we did for a few years in the Vietnam War, I suspect the war in Afghanistan would have ended long ago.
How sad it is for our volunteer military that the war has resulted in so many human lives lost and human misery for many who survived. Meanwhile, our government keeps kicking the can down the road, with no one wanting to admit defeat.
Can’t we learn at least one valuable lesson from the Vietnam War? Our ultimate strategy should include some risk-reward analysis, versus one of victory at any price. As President Trump further refines his strategy, hopefully he and his advisers will engage in such an objective analysis.
The final strategy should not be to spend unlimited amounts of money and risk losing an unlimited number of troops, all in the interest of making our nation only partially safer, or in preserving the current stalemate. Our strategy should be very limited, targeted and not one that risks burning down the barn, or most of Afghanistan, to kill all the rats.
If the strategy involves removing our troops from Afghanistan sooner than later, then let’s make that tough decision now, not months or years later.
Capt. David Nelson, retired, was stationed in Okinawa with the U.S. Marine Corps in 1973 when the Vietnam war ended.
