Stephen Kinzer: Learn From Vietnam ... Dump Karzai
[Stephen Kinzer is a veteran foreign correspondent and the author of Bitter Fruit and Overthrow, among other works. His newest book is Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future.]
How much bad luck can we Americans have? We face a spot of trouble in a faraway country, so we install a fine-looking, English-speaking fellow as president. He turns out to be corrupt and repressive. We can live with that. But it gets worse: He won't even fight our war correctly! He steals our money. His soldiers can't, or won't, shoot straight. And when we tell him to crush the enemy, he says he'd rather negotiate.
This is the situation Washington faces with our so-called partner in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, as Afghans head to the polls to elect a new parliament tomorrow.
And to many who covered the Vietnam War, Karzai brings back vivid memories of another leader who we placed in power: President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.
“The parallels are really striking, and not just because each guy had a really corrupt bagman for a brother,” said Fox Butterfield, who covered Vietnam for The New York Times. “These relationships are very ambiguous and troubled. Whoever it is that makes American decisions in Kabul faces the same dilemmas that our ambassadors and station chiefs constantly had with Diem.”
Both Diem and Karzai were selected by the U.S. and easily maneuvered into power. Both seemed reliably pro-American. Their regimes, however, were built on corruption, nepotism, and vote-stealing, and never became broadly popular. Then, as the U.S. poured weapons and soldiers into their countries, they resisted war and urged compromise with insurgents. American commentators called Diem names that would fit Karzai today: A puppet who pulls his own strings, a reluctant protégé, a client who refuses to behave like a client...
Read entire article at Daily Beast
How much bad luck can we Americans have? We face a spot of trouble in a faraway country, so we install a fine-looking, English-speaking fellow as president. He turns out to be corrupt and repressive. We can live with that. But it gets worse: He won't even fight our war correctly! He steals our money. His soldiers can't, or won't, shoot straight. And when we tell him to crush the enemy, he says he'd rather negotiate.
This is the situation Washington faces with our so-called partner in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, as Afghans head to the polls to elect a new parliament tomorrow.
And to many who covered the Vietnam War, Karzai brings back vivid memories of another leader who we placed in power: President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.
“The parallels are really striking, and not just because each guy had a really corrupt bagman for a brother,” said Fox Butterfield, who covered Vietnam for The New York Times. “These relationships are very ambiguous and troubled. Whoever it is that makes American decisions in Kabul faces the same dilemmas that our ambassadors and station chiefs constantly had with Diem.”
Both Diem and Karzai were selected by the U.S. and easily maneuvered into power. Both seemed reliably pro-American. Their regimes, however, were built on corruption, nepotism, and vote-stealing, and never became broadly popular. Then, as the U.S. poured weapons and soldiers into their countries, they resisted war and urged compromise with insurgents. American commentators called Diem names that would fit Karzai today: A puppet who pulls his own strings, a reluctant protégé, a client who refuses to behave like a client...