"Cambodiazation" of the Afghan War

Posted on 03 July 2008. Tags: Afghan, Lessons from Cambodia, Lessons from Vietnam, Pakistan, USA

NEW YORK: July 3rd, 2008: Rupee News: There are many lessons to learn from Vietnam and from Afghanistan itself. Kabul bravado exponentially related to Karzai defeats. The ISAF forces face a bad dilemna. NATO Lessons: 1880 Maiwand-Afghans defeats UK: Trained sabateurs may defect! Drones sabotaging peace deals created blowback for Pakistan! The Tet offensive of the Vietcong was a massive attack on American and South vietnamese men and material. It was daring and brave. It was well coocrdinated and took advantage of the vulnerabilities of the South and it took advantage of the American weaknesses in Viernam. The Tet offiensive was also a massive failure.

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“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.” Rudyard Kipling

The Tet offensive however was the begining of the end of the war in South East Asia. It was during the Tet offinesive that the American public and the American soldier got tired of the war and it was during the Tet offensive that the American public decided to get out of the war. The security situation in Afghanistan has reached crisis proportions. The Taliban’s ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt; exclusive research undertaken by Senlis Afghanistan indicates that 54 per cent of Afghanistan’s landmass hosts a permanent Taliban presence, primarily in southern Afghanistan, and is subject to frequent hostile activity by the insurgency.

The Battle of Maiwand was one of the most serious defeats ever sustained by the British Army in ‘India’ (Afghanistan)“

The Taliban are the de facto governing authority in significant portions of territory in the south and east, and are starting to control parts of the local economy and key infrastructure such as roads and energy supply. The insurgency also exercises a significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change. Putting blame on Pakistan won’t help war on terror

The Taliban are not the Viet Cong. Let us be clear on this score. No Ho Chi Minh lights the way for them. But they have spirit and doughtiness and believe in their cause which is more than can be said of the forces they are fighting against – the United States, its increasingly befuddled NATO allies and the redoubtable military of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The Americans have made a hash of Iraq. They are getting stuck, well and truly, in Afghanistan. ….Call Baitullah Mehsud and his partisans what you will. Call them barbarians and cutthroats. But at least give them credit for being resolute fighters. American military might has not cowed them. Ayaz Amir

The “Cambodiazation” of the Vietnam was the last big expansion of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in the 1970s. Therefore, it is responsible to begin wondering whether the expansion of the war in Pakistan will bode equally adversely on South Asia. In short, the Khmer Rouge took over in Cambodia a few years after the U.S. began to depart Southeast Asia. As well, Laos fell to communist forces that were supported by the North Vietnamese and other communist states.

6,727,084 tons of bombs dropped on Indo China by the US during the Vietnam War. from Vietnam Veterans Supporting Veterans
2,700,000 tons dropped by Allies in European theather 656,400 tons dropped by Allies in Pacific war
US Strategic Bombing Survey, 1945
2,756,941 tons of bombs dropped on Cambodia.

The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d’état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide. The data demonstrates that the way a country chooses to exit a conflict can have disastrous consequences. It therefore speaks to contemporary warfare as well, including US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite many differences, a critical similarity links the war in Iraq with the Cambodian conflict: an increasing reliance on air power to battle a heterogeneous, volatile insurgency.

The US bombing of Cambodia remains a divisive and iconic topic. It was a mobilizing issue for the antiwar movement and is still cited regularly as an example of American war crimes. Writers such as Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, and William Shawcross condemned the bombing and the foreign policy it symbolized.

Japan Focus

If the Cambodian experience teaches us anything, it is that miscalculation of the consequences of civilian casualties stems partly from a failure to understand how insurgencies thrive. The motives that lead locals to help such movements don’t fit into strategic rationales like the ones set forth by Kissinger and Nixon. Those whose lives have been ruined don’t care about the geopolitics behind bomb attacks; they tend to blame the attackers. The failure of the American campaign in Cambodia lay not only in the civilian death toll during the unprecedented bombing, but also in its aftermath, when the Khmer Rouge regime rose up from the bomb craters, with tragic results. The dynamics in Iraq, or even Afghanistan, could be similar. Taylor Owen is a doctoral candidate and Trudeau Scholar at the University of Oxford. In 2004, he was a visiting fellow in the Yale Genocide Studies Program. Daily writings and published work can be found at www.taylorowen.com

Ben Kiernan, professor of history and director of the Genocide Studies Program, is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power and The Pol Pot Regime.

This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared in The Walrus (Canada), October 2006. Posted at Japan Focus on May 12, 2007.

Ultimately, the “Cambodiazation” of the Vietnam War and the expansion of bombing in Laos eventually led to the greatest American backlash against America’s longest war. That is, the public began to be extremely vocal in demand that the U.S. presence in the Vietnam War and regional civil wars be brought to an end.

A map showing the US Bombing of Cambodia. This is the famous Ho Chi Minh trail that was bombed by America. The bombing decimated the peaceful Buddhist Cambodian society. It encompassed Cambodia and Laos. This bombing totally destroyed the infrastructure of those countries and led to the radical rise of the Khemer Rouge which came to power as a result of the US bombing.

The bombing of Cambodia led to huge blowback and fueled the Vietcong insurgency and ultimately led to the Fall of Siagon

Any U.S. attack on Pakistan would be a catastrophic mistake. First, air and ground assaults will succeed only in widening the anti-U.S. war and merging it with Afghanistan’s resistance to western occupation. U.S. forces are already too over-stretched to get involved in yet another little war.

Second, Pakistan’s army officers who refuse to be bought may resist a U.S. attack on their homeland, and overthrow the man who allowed it, Gen. Musharraf. A U.S. attack would sharply raise the threat of anti-U.S. extremists seizing control of strategic Pakistan and marginalize those seeking return to democratic government.

Third, a U.S. attack on the tribal areas could re-ignite the old irredentist movement to reunite Pashtun parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan into an independent state, “Pashtunistan.” That could begin unraveling Pakistan, leaving its nuclear arsenal up for grabs, and India tempted to intervene. Eric Morgulus

American advice is not considered the best medicine for Pakistan’s ills. Pakistan considers the following American actions as anti-Pakistan and not in good faith:

a.The Nuclear deal with India which is considered as discriminatory towards Pakistan.

b. The establishment of an non-Pashtun Northern Alliance regime in Kabul and the perpetuation of the anti-Pakistanc. The USA has been unable to restrain India and Kabul from interfering in Pakistan’s affairs.

d. The USA has not signed an FTA with Pakistan and refuses to allow free import of Textiles to the USA.

e. Amerca has not invested in Pakistani infrastructure improvement like freeways, Hi-speed trains, airports and sea-portsf. The American media is working on some sort of an anti-Pakistan agenda as if on cue

The U.S. military has grown used to attacking small, weak nations like Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. Pakistan, with 163 million people, and a poorly equipped but very tough 550,000-man army, will offer no easy victories. Those Bush Administration officials who foolishly advocate attacking Pakistan are playing with fire. Eric Margolis