Once again TomDispatch.com offers up a must read essay. This time it's about the disturbing similarities between the debacle of Vietnam(and other past interventionist disasters) and what's going on in Afghanistan today.
I hope you will read all of this; it's worthy of your time and your attention to its premise.
There is a major exception to the similarities between the two wars as outlined in this essay, and it's the draft. We had a draft when fighting and dying in Vietnam. We have no draft today.
Why is that a major exception? American parents, grandparents, wives, husbands, children and friends are only affected by worry and grief if they are related or close to a member of our all volunteer military. That makes the ground swell of an angry citizenry, instrumental in our getting out of Vietnam, unlikely as an instrument for protesting our misadventure in Afghanistan.
It's difficult, at least for me, to read this piece without getting somewhat roiled up. I don't wish that on the reader, but, until enough people get roiled up about the disaster which is Afghanistan, the Pentagon and its Neocon sympathisers will continue to have its way with Obama and the Congress.
Back during the campaign I wrote several times about my doubts that much of anything would change in the Pentagon and its military/industrial complex regardless of who won the White House and/or won majorities in Congress. Sadly I believe I was correct in that prediction.
Leanderthal
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