Vietnam, Afghanistan & Learning from History

As President Kennedy pondered the risks of accidental war in the nuclear age -- a nightmare he would confront head on in the Cuban missile crisis -- he asked his senior advisors to read Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August," a narrative tracing the chain of events that led to World War I.

Today, President Obama is also reflecting on history's lessons, asking his advisors to study the past as they help him chart America's future course in Afghanistan. Among the "required reading" for the Obama team, it has been reported, is my book, "Lessons in Disaster," which examines how one of the architects of the Vietnam War, McGeorge Bundy, came to renounce America's entanglement in that tragic conflict and struggled to draw insight from it "to help us do better in the world ahead."

As Obama weighs the risks of escalating the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan, what can a new commander in chief learn from the disaster of Vietnam?

The president is said to believe the threats posed by the two wars are starkly different. The Vietnamese communists were passionately determined to unify their country; Al Qaeda, in contrast, is dedicated to America's destruction. Our former adversary, North Vietnam, represented little of strategic importance. Our quest in Afghanistan, on the other hand, is entwined with the interests of our ally, Pakistan, a nuclear nation and a crucial security interest of the United States.