Obama’s Vietnam

In Vietnam, America worried about covert Russian and Chinese backing for the North Vietnamese (some would say too much). Here, Pakistan may not be the only country playing a double game. While neighboring Iran is predominantly Shiite, and has traditionally backed the Sunni Taliban's foes in the Northern Alliance, Tehran may also be the source of some of the more sophisticated IEDs turning up on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Certainly Iran has some interest in seeing the American forces on its border bleed a little. At times, though, the United States can seem like its own worst enemy in Afghanistan. Lacking enough troops, forced to cover vast areas, U.S. forces depend far too heavily on strikes by A-10s, F-15s, even B-1 bombers. In 2004, the U.S. Air Force flew 86 strike sorties against targets in Afghanistan. By 2007, the number was up to 2,926—and that doesn't count rocket or cannon fire from helicopters. U.S. commanders have become much more careful about collateral damage since Vietnam. There are no more "free fire zones" or Marines using Zippo lighters to torch villages. But innocents die in the most carefully planned raids, especially when the enemy cynically uses civilians as cover—as the Viet Cong did, and the Taliban does. Already, civilian casualties have climbed from 929 in 2006 to close to 2,000 in 2008, according to the United Nations. "When we kill innocents, especially women and children, you lose that village forever," says Thomas Johnson of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. In the dominant Pashtun tribe, revenge is a duty. Kill one Pashtun tribesman, sadly observes a U.S. Special Forces colonel who spoke anonymously to be more frank, and you make three more your sworn enemy.

This, then, is the mess that faces General Petraeus. He was a near–miracle worker in Iraq, and it may be that just as Lincoln eventually found Grant, Obama will have been lucky to inherit Petraeus. So far, Petraeus is not signaling a new grand strategy, instead letting various policy reviews go forward. A shrewd politician, he may be seeking to quietly educate the new president on the high cost and many years required to "win" in Afghanistan—if such a thing is even possible.

It is a sure bet that Petraeus will want to unify the different commands now muddling the situation in Afghanistan. (Divided command was a chronic problem in Vietnam, too.) Some soldiers report to the Special Operations Command, some to the regular military; some to the U.S. Central Command and some to NATO; and, within NATO, to their own national governments. There are some 37,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan but many are more concerned with "force protection"—not sustaining casualties—than seeking out and engaging the enemy.

Petraeus will work closely with Richard Holbrooke, a veteran diplomat who helped broker peace in the Balkans. Holbrooke is being sent by the State Department to coordinate the scattered and easily corrupted foreign-aid programs and to knock heads to make sure the diplomats, politicians and soldiers are on the same page. Holbrooke is a force of nature; still, he could wind up like Robert (Blowtorch Bob) Komer in Vietnam in the late 1960s —brilliant, capable and too late.

In some ways, there is no mystery to what must be done to fight a successful counterinsurgency. As Petraeus himself has said, the United States cannot kill its way to success. Foreign troops cannot defeat insurgents. Only local forces with popular support can do that. (A RAND study of 90 insurgencies since World War II showed that "governments defeated less than a third of the insurgencies when their competence was medium or low.") It is a good bet that Petraeus will want American soldiers to train local village militias to fight the Taliban. The catch is that the Soviets already tried this (nothing is really new in counterinsurgency) and failed. In Afghanistan, local warlords quickly turn to fighting each other. The local saying is that they can be rented, not bought. And who wants to kill a Taliban fighter if the result is a blood feud?

Americans are appropriately skeptical about the chances of success in Afghanistan. A recent NEWSWEEK Poll shows that while 71 percent of the people believe that Obama can turn around the cratering economy, only 48 percent think he can make progress in Afghanistan. Deploying a U.S. force of 60,000 will cost about $70 billion a year. Training and supporting the 130,000 to 200,000 troops required for a proper Afghan Army would take another decade and could cost at least $20 billion. Petraeus has consistently warned that Afghanistan will be "the longest campaign in the long war" against Islamic extremism. But it's far from clear that Americans have the appetite for such a commitment: after the economy, their top priority is health care (36 percent). Only 10 percent put Afghanistan at the top of their list, even fewer than nominate Iraq. If there is no real improvement on the ground, by the 2010 midterm elections, candidates for office may be decrying "Obama's war."