How Afghanistan's fall was different from that of South Vietnam’s

Quick comparison of American exit from Afghanistan and that from Vietnam are entirely misplaced. A historical analysis.

 

 How Afghanistan's fall was different from that of South Vietnam’s

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• The story: As Kabul fell in August 2021, many could not resist the comparison with the fall of Saigon in Vietnam. Many Vietnamese Americans whose families fled southern Vietnam as refugees in the aftermath of the communist victory found the latest events stir up memories.
• No comparison: Reports comparing Afghanistan’s fall to South Vietnam’s are incorrect.

1. The problem is Vietnam has been used as a catch-all term for U.S. foreign-policy failures. But it is not totally accurate to do so. In addition, it is a recipe for alienating the Vietnamese government.
2. There is no true equivalence between North Vietnamese forces and the Taliban. Why not? During World War II, the Viet Minh actually supported the United States and its allies by serving as the only Vietnamese force resisting Japan’s invasion of Indochina. This conflict hardly compares to the Taliban militia, which massacred minority Hazara communities (and forced Hindus to carry yellow badges to set them apart from Afghan Muslims—like Jews in Nazi Germany).

• History: In September 1945, Vietnam’s founding leader, Ho Chi Minh, opened his speech by proclaiming his country’s independence, saying “all men are created equal.” These words were repeated verbatim from the United States’ own Declaration of Independence! The following year, he wrote a letter to then-U.S. President Harry Truman asking for support in ending French colonial rule in Vietnam.

1. The Taliban’s founders (or the al Qaeda forces they sheltered) are a world apart
2. The Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s attacks on September 11, 2001 prompted the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan
3. Vietnam never carried out an attack on U.S. soil, and even the clash in the Gulf of Tonkin on a U.S. patrol boat that served as an excuse for escalation was distorted and lied about by U.S. leaders

• Gassing the innocent: In May 2009, the Taliban carried out a targeted gas attack against a girls’ school in Kabul that saw hundreds of young female students suffer headaches, nausea, and vomiting—one of a plethora of assaults and bomb threats that closed girls’ schools across entire districts in Afghanistan. During the Vietnam War, it was U.S. airplanes that rained hell across vast swathes of the southeast Asian country between 1961 and 1971, dropping 13 million gallons of the lethal toxin Agent Orange—an act of ecocide that left a legacy of horrifying physical deformities for generations of Vietnamese families.
• Collaboration: Once the Paris Peace Accords arrived in 1973, Vietnam sought to collaborate with the United Nations—efforts then-U.S. President Richard Nixon tried to sabotage. By contrast, Taliban suicide bombers disrupted Afghanistan’s presidential elections in 2009 by storming a guesthouse in Kabul, killing six U.N. staff members and six civilians in the process.
• Sad situation: It must be sad for Vietnam’s leaders, who hosted their country’s first-ever visit from a sitting U.S. vice president, to see themselves endlessly equated with the United States’ adversaries, especially a misogynistic force like the Taliban. The comparisons come even though Hanoi and Washington enjoy flourishing diplomatic relations.
• Why get involved: Experts realise the utter senselessness of the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. But the Afghanistan involvement wasn't that senseless. A postmortem of what occurred in Kabul should take place, but for now, the focus must remain on the civilians struggling to escape persecution. A comparison, if at all, between 1975 and today, should only focus on what it means for a superpower to lose a war—and who pays the price.

1. The United States lost more than 2,400 lives in Afghanistan and around 58,000 lives in Vietnam.
2. Add to that a quarter of a million dead Afghans and somewhere between 1.5 and 3.5 million Vietnamese.
3. The United States left both wars still the richest and most powerful country in the world; the Vietnamese inherited a shattered state and even today earn a fraction of U.S. incomes.

• Comparing the present: The fate of the many Afghan evacuees is unknown; although the United States has accepted thousands of people, it seeks to shuttle far more people to third-party states rather than take responsibility. In Ho Chi Minh City, military trucks are once again rolling into the southern metropolis as soldiers enforce a strict stay-at-home order imposed by the Vietnamese government to cut the city’s soaring COVID-19 death toll. Hospitals are totally overrun. In Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta region, factory workers, many of whom make shoes or furniture for U.S. consumers, huddle together in dangerously cramped conditions, forced to live in factories to halt the spread of COVID-19 and prevent further loss of life. If it wants to heal the wounds of the past, the US must support a desperate Ho Chi Minh City and provide refuge to the Afghans left homeless by two decades of war.
• EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Structurally, the situations in Afghanistan and Vietnam are not comparable at all. Why not? Explain. (2) The American involvement in overseas military expeditions leaves those places worse than original. Why so? Explain. (3) Why is it wrong to compare Afghanistan 2021 with Vietnam 1975? List five reasons.

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