Here’s the thing : This may be our next “Vietnam moment,” but Afghanistan is no Vietnam : there are no major enemy powers like the Soviet Union and China lurking in the background ; no organized enemy state with a powerful army like North Vietnam supporting the insurgents ; no well organized, unified national liberation movement like the Vietcong, and that’s just a beginning. Almost everywhere, in fact, the Vietnam analogy breaks down - almost everywhere, that is, except when it comes to us. Because we never managed to leave Vietnam behind, even when we were proclaiming that we had kicked that “syndrome,” it turns out that we’re still there. Our military leaders, for instance, only recently dusted off the old Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine that once ended in catastrophe, shined it up, and are now presenting it as an ingenious new solution to war-fighting. Let’s face it : everything about American thinking still stinks of the Vietnamese debacle, including the inability of our leaders to listen to a genuinely wide range of options.

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