Dr. Wilmer Leon: Afghanistan a New Vietnam?: HNN

Under the pretext of responding to the September 11, 2001, attacks in America, the United States and Great Britain invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom. President Bush 43 told the American people that the US strikes were "... designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime ... As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan ..."

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Obama promised to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq in order to bolster the forces in Afghanistan in order to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda. "It's time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan." This approach was taken in order to placate the anti-Iraq war contingent of the American electorate on the left while not leaving candidate Obama vulnerable to the "soft on defense" hawkish argument from the right. As a campaign tactic, this proved to be successful. As American foreign policy, this is proving to be one of the greatest miscalculations President Obama has made. Could Afghanistan become President Obama's Vietnam?

President Obama has taken ownership of this war and now calls this a "war of necessity" that is fundamental to the "defense of our people." In order to convince the American people that more troops are necessary to achieve the desired result, the president says as President Bush 43 said, the mission is to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda and its extremist allies".

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