As we finally withdraw from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of direct intervention in the region, we are all taking stock of how we view this holy American crusade now as to just after 9/11. This is probably the best 60 year game of one-upmanship by presidents and military leaders in American history. It also follows in true American fashion by creating the least inventive or original sequel ever. How can this be? Well, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and history is one long pattern with slight variations, kind of like the entire Star Wars Saga. 

Since all that most of us know about Vietnam is from white-washed school textbooks, let’s start there. Of course, everyone should know that we intervened in Vietnam, then French Indochina, to try and halt the spread of communism with the backing of the gloriously insane Domino Theory. Though it was a combination of direct and indirect, it ended in hasty and broken evacuations that culminated in helicopter airlifts from the U.S. Embassy as refugees tried to break into the embassy to escape the country after halted evacuations from the airport that was under Viet Cong fire. Fast forward to 2021, and we have a helicopter evacuating diplomats from the embassy while American forces try desperately to hold the airport, so it wasn’t a totally Saigon repeat. 

Though the War on Terror is predominantly a 21st-century debacle, its roots also lie with the anti-communism doctrine that sent America to Vietnam. The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan began in 1979 after the Soviet Union invaded and began occupying the country. America, mainly through the CIA, provided support to rebel mujahideen fighters, which also included Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

This is America’s first big misstep, secretly aiding militant rebel groups to fight a minor Cold War proxy war while maintaining neutrality in an attempt to drive the Soviets to a Vietnam-esque quagmire. I think it’s best said by former Department of Defense representative Walter B. Slocombe when he stated, “Well, the whole idea was that if the Soviets decided to strike at this tar baby [Afghanistan], we had every interest in making sure that they got stuck.” Because the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ philosophy never backfires.”

The similarities of these two wars are startling and almost hilariously similar. The Vietnam War was started to protect American interest in a country while dressing it up as helping. It ended with a rushed evacuation and a deposed government we supported after classified documents were released by the Washington Post that showed America had secretly increased its involvement and lied to the American public about the situation in Vietnam. If you add revenge, less planning and Afghanistan instead of Vietnam, you have the war in Afghanistan.

You can say Starkiller base isn’t another Death Star all you want. But if it looks like a giant laser spitting ball, walks like a giant laser spitting ball and destroys planets like a giant laser spitting ball, it is a giant laser spitting ball, and that’s just lazy writing. The Afghan Papers, named similarly to Vietnam’s Pentagon Papers and reported by the Washington Post as well, show a clear lack of planning and objectives that painted the war as more of an angry kid wreaking havoc because you spat on his shoes than a coordinated effort to root out terrorism and help establish a safe, diplomatic state based on the American model, even though this model itself is the product of an intense desire for self-governance without foreign interference. And it’s hard to do that when you are the foreign interferer.  

Both wars left millions of people dead and left service members who served and the families of those who died wondering what it was all for. Wondering why they spent years of their lives away from their family and in a field of death driven by a high belief in God and country, simply to have 20 years of “accomplishment” be swept away by an extremist political group that had been touted as defeated for almost a decade in less time than it takes to get a work order filled in a Campustown apartment. The military even sent an email to millions of veterans providing help information for those who are having a hard time reconciling with everything, including a suicide prevention number. 

All of this is a clear indication that the United States military needs to do some serious reevaluation. Our military has spent more than most of our major allies combined over the last half-century and has yet to win a major war since World War II. We have lost thousands of soldiers and millions of civilians in conflicts that were poorly planned and extended to easy political friction and save the ego of a single political official or party.

The feeling needs to be reasserted to top decision-makers: this is not just your job; it is also our lives. These decisions and these attempts to sway public opinion to “save face” is the same as the rude person at the bar who tries to talk you into hanging out or sleeping with them because they are just so awesome, and they can get you in the V.I.P section for free, as long as the bouncer they know is working.

The bottom line is, you aren’t simply breaking the shot glass on the bar. You’re breaking peoples’ lives.