Patrick Cockburn: Nixon adopted this tactic in Vietnam. It won't work any better now than it did then
[Patrick Cockburn is a foreign correspondent at The Independent.]
Could US Special Forces make a lunge across the Pakistan border in pursuit of the Taliban just as American and South Vietnamese troops briefly invaded Cambodia in pursuit of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces in 1970?
The precedent is not good. What US officers have in mind for the Pakistan border regions is much smaller in scale than President Nixon's venture, but is unlikely to be any more successful. Possible military gains are limited, while the danger of a political backlash is acute.
American frustration is great, because so long as the 2,500km Afghan-Pakistan border remains open, the Taliban can retreat to relatively safe havens to rest, re-equip and re-supply. Their fighters can recover from every tactical setback. It was this open border that prevented the Soviet army from crushing the Afghan guerrillas in the 1980s.
But would forays by US Special Forces or associated American-controlled Afghan militias really make much difference?..
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Could US Special Forces make a lunge across the Pakistan border in pursuit of the Taliban just as American and South Vietnamese troops briefly invaded Cambodia in pursuit of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces in 1970?
The precedent is not good. What US officers have in mind for the Pakistan border regions is much smaller in scale than President Nixon's venture, but is unlikely to be any more successful. Possible military gains are limited, while the danger of a political backlash is acute.
American frustration is great, because so long as the 2,500km Afghan-Pakistan border remains open, the Taliban can retreat to relatively safe havens to rest, re-equip and re-supply. Their fighters can recover from every tactical setback. It was this open border that prevented the Soviet army from crushing the Afghan guerrillas in the 1980s.
But would forays by US Special Forces or associated American-controlled Afghan militias really make much difference?..