Afghanistan: Haunted by the Ghosts of Vietnam

As always, the Journalist Eric Margolis is right on the mark: Our 107,000 Soldiers in Afghanistan are haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam. As I experienced with the 1/10 Cavalry Squadron in the areas around Banmethuot, Pleiku, and later as Advisory Team Leader north of Kontum and in the hotly contested "Iron Triangle" area around and near Trung Lap, most of "our" Vietnamese allies were no match for the highly dedicated Vietcong enemy, and I sadly began to realize that our ultimate defeat would only be a matter of time!

So will it be in Afghanistan. Like Vietnam, the war is about oil (and gas). In Vietnam, after the remnants of our beaten army barely made an ungraceful helicopter exit from one of the taller buildings in the surrounded and besieged South Vietnamese city of Saigon (now re-named Ho-Chi Minh City), Forbes did an article in 1973, which listed all of the off-shore oil and gas properties which had been of interest to our slimy capitalists, for whom so many of my friends had died in agonizing pain.

This is not true in Afghanistan: Though there is neither oil nor gas in that rocky and barren land, our war is merely about "our" ability to build and defend a pipeline from the areas north of Afghanistan, mostly for the benefit of our multi-national oil barons.