Afghanistan: The New Vietnam
Costing the United States around $168 billion dollars and over 58,000 American patriots’ lives, the disaster that was the Vietnam War should have been a grim and final warning—never forget, never repeat. It was a battle that the US didn’t stand a chance at winning, and yet, five presidents oversaw the overseas combat before finally retreating in defeat. Famed broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite once remarked on the tragedy of Vietnam that “I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost—and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.” Vietnam veterans are often outspoken about the horrors they experienced in combat; thousands of these brave men and women remained forever altered by the grim brutalities they witnessed.
Since its inception 18 years ago, the Afghanistan War has claimed the lives of more than 2,300 U.S. soldiers and injured more than 20,300 service members. Each day, the war costs American taxpayers around $273,972,602.74, totaling an unimaginable $2.4 trillion as of 2017. Operation Enduring Freedom—its code name—began after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and has metastasized into something catastrophic and barbaric. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan soldiers have died while fighting the Taliban alongside American troops. The casualties, both economic and physical, extend beyond the damage they have done to the U.S. and have surely caused irreparable harm to the Afghanistan community.
On Monday, Jan. 8, Taliban and U.S. officials have come forward with a formal statement agreeing to work within a framework of peace talks and negotiation to withdraw American troops from the country. U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, wrote in a New York Times commentary piece that “The Taliban have committed, to our satisfaction, to do what is necessary that would prevent Afghanistan from ever becoming a platform for international terrorist groups or individuals.”
This sentence, in and of itself, sounds completely ludicrous and is in complete opposition with the entire reason that the U.S. first began Operation Enduring Freedom. Three years after the commencement of the war, President George W. Bush said that “The only way to deal with these people is to bring them to justice. You can’t talk to them. You can’t negotiate with them.” Again and again, this catch-all phrase has been used by various politicians, presidents, and senators — “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” It astounds me that after almost 20 years of war, trillions of dollars spent, and thousands upon thousands of lives lost, the U.S. is eager to engage in negotiations with the very same terrorist group they vowed to destroy.
I’m not advocating for a prolongation of the war in Afghanistan. But I want to make my stance clear: if these “peaceful talks” are to continue, the U.S. must remain firm in its demands, vigilantly protect the people of Afghanistan and uphold our promise to defend freedom. To blindly trust that an unsparingly violent and radical terrorist group will keep to our conditions and cease all acts of terrorism would be a grave mistake.