Soldier's nightmare: Dying for nothing
Toolbox
By MIKE SMITH - Published: November 6, 2009
Recently, many have been pressing President Obama to make a decision about Afghanistan. All of this is particularly important to Vermonters since approximately 1,500 Vermont National Guard members soon will be deploying to fight in the region.
The focus of the president, according to news reports, is to devise a strategy with the right accompaniment of military personnel and equipment to meet the objective he establishes. The key here is the objective the president establishes and his commitment to stick to that objective through both the good and the inevitably bad times. Without an obtainable objective and an unwavering commitment to that objective then probably the best course of action is to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, now.
Clearly the troops in the field are fuzzy about their current mission in Afghanistan and the commanders are deeply suspicious that any newly constructed strategy will soon be subject to change depending on the political winds.
History always teaches us some valuable lessons. Starting in the late-'60s the boots on the ground in Vietnam knew it was a hopeless cause. The objectives were constantly shifting and elusive, and the political will to achieve any of the objectives was short-lived. Soldiers and sailors began asking the legitimate question: What are we dying for? With the fall of Saigon in spring 1975 they had their answer: for nothing.
Armies are deployed usually for the purpose of defeating an enemy. Vietnam taught us an important lesson that if we get into a conflict, that we had better do it with a clear and obtainable objective, then commit an overwhelming military force to achieve that objective and then make sure that the political leadership and the public are fully engaged and supportive, even in the dark days of a conflict. Currently, in Afghanistan, all those conditions are lacking as they were in Vietnam: And yet, there is little discussion about whether we should be in Afghanistan absent these conditions.
If our involvement in Iraq generated protests, why doesn't Afghanistan generate the same level of concern and passion? Unfortunately, it seems nowadays that party politics is the prime motivator of protests rather than the welfare of our troops or the virtues of our policy. If it's a Republican war it's bad; if it's a Democrat one, it's good, and vice versa. In the '60s and early '70s, the vast majority of the protesters against the war in Vietnam had a beef with the policy, no matter if the president was Johnson, a Democrat, or Nixon, a Republican. In fact, they crippled Democrat Hubert Humphrey's presidential bid with their anti-war protests at the 1968 convention. To them, the morality of their cause superseded politics. The same can't be said of today's fickle protesters, where morality is absent and politics is all-consuming.
The ultimate fear of any soldier is that they have died in vain — that their death was without purpose. The reality of war is that the equation always is stacked against those that fight for us. The death of our fighting men and women is the ultimate outcome of a politician committing troops to battle.
As we near Veterans Day and remember our fallen soldiers and sailors from wars and conflicts now and of long ago, it's critical that that the mistakes of the past, particularly in Vietnam, are not repeated in Afghanistan and no service member has to answer the question, why are we dying, with the conclusion — for nothing.
Mike Smith is the former secretary of administration for Gov. James Douglas.
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