Afghanistan as Vietnam.
Gideon Rachman sees echoes of the Vietnam end game in Afghanistan:
I donâ??t know whose bright idea it was to schedule peace talks with the Taliban in Munich. But somebody with a sense of history might have avoided that location. Ever since Chamberlain and Daladier signed over the Sudetenland to Hitler there in 1938, the phrase â??Munich agreementâ? has had an unfortunate ring to it.That said, the talks with the Taliban remind me more of Kissingerâ??s protracted negotiations with North Vietnam in the 1970s. In both cases, the fighting was taking place alongside the negotiating. In both cases, the Americans were trying desperately to get out of a protracted conflict that they had concluded could not be won on the battlefield. In both cases they were destabilising the region by bombing enemy safe-havens in a third country â?? Cambodia then, Pakistan now.
Amazing that Washington has found itself in similar (although not identical) circumstances.
