Dr. Richard Benkin
Keeping Afghanistan the 'Good War'
September 2, 2009

I have a good friend who fought in the 1968 Vietnam Tet Offensive. He talks about how, in the battle’s aftermath, he and his buddies patrolled the streets of Hue City, site of some of the most intensive fighting. He describes walking on the bodies of dead North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers piled several layers high in the strategic provincial capital, and is also quick to remind me that Tet was a stunning military victory for the United States; that in fact, the US did not lose a single military encounter for the rest of the war. Yet, most Americans at the time saw Tet as a defeat, and it was a turning point in America’s resolve to continuing pressing the war in Southeast Asia.

In part, this was due to what is now accepted as uniformly distorted coverage by the US media; but while that coverage was critical to the enemy’s success, it was not the most critical factor. The real problem, my friend said, was that the administration of President Lyndon Johnson even several years into the war continued to give the public overly optimistic, often inaccurate information, leading it to believe that the enemy was incapable of launching such an offensive. Thus, according to the late Peter Braestrup, the administration’s reaction to Tet was, “defensive” and Johnson “psychologically defeated [by] the onslaught on the cities of Vietnam.”

Switch to today. Is the United States just one “Tet” away from the same thing happening to the war in Afghanistan? As the tenure of the Bush administration wore on, many Americans came to see Afghanistan as “the good war” and Iraq as “the bad war”; a theme that the Obama Administration continues to reinforce. We heard this false dichotomy as a consistent drumbeat in Obama’s run for the White House and as a centerpiece of his foreign policy since taking office. Now, however, even that fragile hold on what remains of the war on terror is threatened. Poll after poll shows public support for the war eroding. In an August 2009 ABC-Washington Post news poll 51 percent of the respondents said the war was not worth fighting. Only 47 percent said it was, which is down nine points from majority support (56 percent) when Obama took office. An August CNN poll showed a similar decline: 50 to 41 percent just since May.

And consider: the ABC poll also found that 42 percent of Americans think we are winning the war; 36 percent think we are losing. They all see the same information; hear or read the same media. The problem is that they lack clear and measurable objectives by which they can determine how we are doing; and that confusion opens the door for the same frustration that led to the public thinking Tet was a defeat and the war in Southeast Asia not worth fighting.

Dr. Daniel Pipes has been consistently right in his advice on the war against radical Islam, and was perhaps the first warn us of the threat as early as 1983—ten years before the first World Trade Center bombing. Several years ago over lunch, Pipes said that the Iraq-Afghanistan dichotomy existed because of the conflicts’ stated objectives at that time and how people saw them; that the original impetus for Afghanistan was clear, neutralize those responsible for the September 11 terrorist attack; whereas discussions about Iraq always got bogged down in talk of nation building. The current lack of clarity could be the reason behind the latest poll numbers. My own experience both in business and as a human rights activist is that people have a difficult time identifying with large often amorphous goals. They lack concrete markers, and it is difficult to measure success or failure; hence, the 42-36 percent split in public perception. An administration truly committed to winning that war and the greater war on radical Islam can and would fix it by breaking the war down into several manageable objectives, such as:

▪ The assassination or capture of high ranking enemies: The “Saddam” deck of cards did that in the early stages of the Iraq War.

▪ Reduction of identified violence, like suicide bombings, to a specific level: The Israelis successfully did that.

▪ Clearing Al Qaeda and the Taliban from specific localities: This is what the Pakistanis belatedly have tried to do with little success.

▪ Markers that identify the existence of a stable government in Afghanistan as an alternative to the Taliban one we deposed: This is how the United States disengaged from a successful war and post-war effort in Europe.

▪ Afghanistan’s participation in regional alliances, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), or in bi-lateral agreements with allies like India: It actually happened in 2007, but no one made anything of it!