10/11/2023 What ended the cold war Why was the afghan war called the Vietnam of the Soviet UnionRead NowThe Vietnam analogy said less about the similarities and differences between the wars and more about the state of mind of those using it-a state of mind that ultimately led policymakers to make decisions based on a faulty view of the war. Policymakers wielding the analogy failed to recognize the dangers it posed to their strategy-building: Not only was it historically inaccurate, but it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that helped bring about, rather than avoid, a catastrophic end to the war in Afghanistan. Given how the war ended, were those analogies prescient? In fact, a review of the analogy’s influence on decision-making suggests the opposite. Long before the Taliban’s recent takeover, some policymakers, scholars, and journalists have looked at Afghanistan and seen Vietnam. It wasn’t the first time those kinds of flashbacks emerged. The scenes of a helicopter evacuating diplomats from the US embassy in Kabul and of Afghan civilians desperately clinging to a US Air Force C-17 as it took off from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in August triggered irresistible comparisons to the US evacuation from Saigon in 1975. OctoHow a misguided Vietnam analogy sealed the Afghanistan disaster
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