What’s the difference between the Vichy government that ruled France during the Second World War, and the government that has been ruling South Korea since the Korean War?
There
is no difference between the two according to the leaders of North Korea. In
the same way that the French resistance treated the Vichy government with
contempt for collaborating with the German occupation, so do the leaders of
North Korea who consider those of South Korea puppets of the American occupiers.
And
you could see the same sort of contempt expressed both in the verbal and the body
languages of the people who used to feel disgust when talking about the
governments of South Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, that same contempt
is expressed today when the Mainland Chinese talk about the leaders of Taiwan
or Japan whom they consider to be puppets of the American occupiers.
What
these realities demonstrate when all is said and done, is that no matter what
America does, and how long it maintains troops in a foreign country, it will
never be able to install a government that the opposition or the general public
of that country will accept as legitimate. And whatever America does to force
its concoction on someone, it can never be victorious. On the contrary, every
violent act its soldiers commit, will be considered a war crime even if the
soldiers were only protecting themselves.
Some
people argue that America should be able to station troops in places like
Afghanistan and Iraq at perpetuity the way that it does in Japan and Germany,
but they don’t explain why this has been impossible to do despite the effort
that was exerted in this vein over the years. Are these people missing
something? Yes, they are.
Here
is what these people fail to see. Whereas for a short period of time after the
Second World War, America’s troops were considered occupiers in places like
Japan and Germany, their status changed to that of invited guests and allies
who are “here to help us” defend ourselves against an intimidating enemy. It is
the same status America enjoys today, having troops stationed in some Arab Gulf
states. The reality is that Japan fears a rising China. And Europe (which
includes Germany) fears a restless Russia.
With
this in mind, there is an article you should read, that will widen your
perspective even more. It came under the title: “Afghanistan was another
Vietnam,” and the subtitle: “At this moment, it’s not clear America can win any
wars.” It was written by Jed Babbin and published on August 29, 2021 in The
Washington Times.
The
following is a compilation of the passages in the Jed Babbin article that deal
with the nature of the wars that America has been fighting since the end of the
Second World War. The passages are here reproduced in condensed form:
“President Joe Biden insists there are no
parallels between our defeats in Afghanistan and Vietnam. He is
wrong. The similarities between the two are numerous and deep. They define the
reasons we lost both wars. Both lasted almost twenty years but the similarities
go deeper than the wars’ lengths. In both, we failed at nation-building. In
both, we supported corrupt regimes that were overwhelmed by enemies propelled
by nationalistic or religious ideologies and supported by third-party
nations. Limited war means we do not dedicate all our resources to the
conflict while the enemy does just that. The concept dominated our thinking in
Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan”.
Babbin says that America failed at nation
building both in Vietnam and Afghanistan. But you know what, my friend? This is
a condescension more insulting to the people that live in those countries than
saying the Europeans discovered the New World of the Americas. The fact is that
the natives who live in the Americas had discovered the place and knew of
themselves being in it, thousands of years before the Europeans became aware of
it. Similarly, the people that live in Vietnam and Afghanistan have been
building their nations for thousands of years before the Europeans started coming
along since antiquity, and have been dedicating their Satan-given talent to
destroying them.
Look what else Babbin is saying that shows he
and the other pundits, tackling the same subject, have no clue what they are
talking about: “In both, we supported corrupt regimes that were overwhelmed by
enemies propelled by nationalistic or religious ideologies and supported by
third-party nations.” To understand how off the mark this is, recall what
was said about the government troops putting their weapons down and
surrendering upon seeing the Taliban come at them. What do you think was going
on in the minds of the government troops?
Each in his own way, was saying to himself, these
are my brothers. Unlike me, they did not have to pretend they were loyal to the
foreigners who came to remake us in their own image. I lived in a state of
humiliation all these years, whereas my brothers did not have to. They are coming
now to liberate me, and I’m going to be one of them. This is the luckiest day
of my life.
Time
after time, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, the Americans failed to see this tendency
in the people they spent time and treasure to train on how to use the deadliest
of America’s weapons, and kill the brothers whose blood they could not bring
themselves to shed.
That
reality escaped the Americans even when those they trained committed the
suicidal insider’s job of opening fire on those who trained him, knowing that they
too will be killed on the spot.
It
is clear that without advisors who are human enough to predict human behavior,
America could not predict that Kabul would fall to the Taliban as fast as it
did.
It is also clear that America needs to fumigate its State Department of the know-nothing highly-paid cockroaches now populating it, and replacing them with real human beings.