Have we tried everything possible to save Afghanistan? No! We have not turned over the entire state-building exercise there to scholars from Michigan State University.
Does this seem like an unlikely option to you? Then you weren’t in Nam. Rufus Phillips, who has a new piece in the World Affairs Journal, was:
Despite warnings [of a South Vietnamese insurgency] at the time, Pentagon planners judged the principal security threat to be an overt North Vietnamese invasion across the 17th parallel. Hence the Vietnamese army was taken out of its territorial security role and converted into a conventional army of corps, divisions, regiments, and battalions to act as a blocking force long enough for the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to come to the rescue.
A newly created South Vietnamese constabulary, the Civil Guard, was supposed to replace the army in its rural security role. However, our economic aid mission gave the training and mentoring job to Michigan State University, which used traditional policing as a model and hired former American state and local police as trainers and advisers…
Phillips goes on to argue that the U.S. and UN are actually repeating a lot of Michigan State’s Vietnam errors in Afghanistan. His piece is worth a read. If you want to learn about how Michigan’s finest flopped in Vietnam, check out James Carter’s Inventing Vietnam. It’s a great cautionary tale for any academic or analyst who thinks that they could do a better job in Afghanistan than the guys on the ground…
