History Lesson: From the Big Muddy of Vietnam to the Quagmire of Afghanistan (Ryan)

The US was stuck in the “Big Muddy” for years, but it finds itself just as stuck today in Central Asia, drawn in by the enemy.

Obama’s recent decisions on Afghanistan, on Yemen and on Pakistan, coupled with the baying from Congress about Iran and the ongoing Tea Party tirades paint an American system that favours the tactical and symbolic over the strategic. There is no space to consider the observations of a man like Mikhail Gorbachev; the US is condemned to remain in their "quagmires", both real and imagined.

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Bombing Our Way to Peace? Afghanistan 2010 and Vietnam 1972

Airstrikes on Taliban insurgents have risen sharply here over the past four months, the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.

American pilots pounded the Taliban with 2,100 bombs or missiles from June through September, with 700 in September alone, Air Force officers here said Thursday. That is an increase of nearly 50 percent over the same period last year, the records show.

The stepped-up air campaign is part of what appears to be an intensifying American effort, orchestrated by Gen. David H. Petraeus, to break the military stalemate here as pressure intensifies at home to bring the nine-year-old war to an end....

Operation Linebacker II ordered by President Nixon, lasted 11 days (18-29 December 1972). The primary objective of the operation was to coerce North Vietnam to re-enter into purposeful negotiations concerning a peace agreement that helped end the war in terms acceptable to the US.

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