Is Afghanistan Worse Than Vietnam? -- Paul Waldman, Salon/The American Prospect
With U.S. troops scheduled to withdraw in 2014, a look at some key statistics from America's longest running war.
In October 2001, George W. Bush told the country he was sending the American military to Afghanistan in order to “bring justice to our enemies.” It’s safe to say support for the war would not have been as nearly unanimous as it was had he said, “Oh, and by the way, our troops are going to be fighting there for the next 13 years.” But if all goes according to plan and Barack Obama follows up on his pledge to bring them home by the end of 2014, that’s how long the Afghanistan war will have lasted.
We thought it would be useful to take a brief look at some of the basic facts of our involvement there. Last spring, Afghanistan passed Vietnam (measured by the time between the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 and the departure of the last Americans from Saigon in 1975) to become America’s longest war.
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My Comment: A good comprehensive breakdown and statistical analysis of the Afghan war.
1 comment:
Iraq's government fell in weeks, and then we battled an insurgency for years; the Taliban fell in months, and then we've battled an insurgency for years; and after we beat the Spanish and annexed the Phillipines, we fought the First Phillipine Republic for three years, and then battled an insurgency for another eleven years after. To my mind, either the Spanish-American War/Phillipine-American War is STILL our longest war, or else when I was in Iraq, that wasn't a war. But I don't see how the Moro Rebellion doesn't count as a war when the two 21st century insurgencies do. (BTW, I think all three are wars myself)
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