Afghanistan and Vietnam

   Afghanistan is looking more and more like another Vietnam. A political war that no one wants a part of, except the U.S government and its faithful little puppy dogs including Australia.They have just substituted the threat of communism with the threat of terrorism.

Soldiers on the Streets

Gunfire Afghanistan

 The war in Afghanistan

 began on Oct. 7 2001. Two international military operations are taking place simultaneously. Operation Enduring Freedom is a U.S.-led combat operation involving a number of coalition partners, whilst the second operation is the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which was created by the UN Security Council at the end of 2001.

    The main reason cited for the invasion in 2001 was in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. The aim was to find Osama bin Laden and put him on trial along with other Al-Qaeda members. Another aim was to end Al-Qaeda as an entity and remove the Taliban regime in Afghanistan which harboured the terrorist organisation and supported them.

Osama Bin Laden Still At Bay

Latest News

    NATO warplanes bombarded strongholds near the Afghan capital, killing two dozen rebels, the alliance said Thursday, as a foreign soldier lost his life in violence elsewhere in the country. The soldier, whose nationality was not revealed, died in a Taliban-style improvised bomb attack on Wednesday,

Seventeen American troops have been killed so far this month. July was the deadliest month for American forces in the nearly nine-year war, with 66 killed.   The death brings to 437 the number of international troops who have died in the Afghan war so far this year.There are 141,000 international troops in Afghanistan fighting under the command of

US General David Petreaus.

  The troops are concentrated in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

It's a critical time for both Afghanistan and the United States.

  The latest increase in troops ordered by President Obama,USA now has nearly 100,000 U.S troops in Afghanistan - even as public opinion at home shows growing skepticism about the war. With more than 1,200 U.S. deaths over the past nine years, Americans are asking - what are we doing in Afghanistan? Another challenge for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is government corruption. Kandahar  is one of the major poppy growing provinces in a country that produces 90 percent of the heroin in the world. President Obama has insisted that, if conditions on the ground permit, America will begin the process of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July 2011.

No Glory

A poem by Wendy Darling

 Tonight I lie upon my bed

Many things ran through my head

Things I had done and now regret

Things I wish I could forget

One time that always gives me pain

I wish that I could do again

We are all included to a man

When we voted yea to Vietnam

The politicians convinced us all

Our boys must fight or we would fall

We all believed the communist scam

Australia next after Vietnam

Loved ones waved their sons good-bye

Knowing some would live and others die

Ideas changed and it was'nt long

When we decided this war was wrong

We did not cheer them home again

But greeted thenm with blame and shame

Backs were turned at the R.S.L

Those boys from Nam could go to hell

Over thirty years have come and gone

But I can't forget what we have done

When on their backs the blame was laid

For a war the politicians made

Tonight I heard a tragic story

Of a boy from Nam who received no glory

Recurring dreams he could not stand

He died today by his own hand

Vietnam

Vietnam War

  In the 1950's the United States began to send troops to Vietnam. During the following 25-years the ensuing war would create some of the strongest tensions in US history. Almost 3 million US men and women were sent thousands of miles to fight for what was a questionable cause. 

   In total, it is estimated that over 2,5 million people on both sides were killed.

     Initially, the United States had little interest in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, however as it became clear that the Soviet Union and communism were a threat.The isolating of communist movements took an increased importance. These concerns were ultimately formed into the doctrine of containment and domino theory. 
    First spelled out 1947, containment identified that the goal of Communism was to spread to capitalist states and that the only way to stop it was to “contain” it within its present borders. Springing from containment was the concept of domino theory which stated that if one state in a region were to fall to Communism, then the surrounding states would inevitably fall as well. These concepts were to dominate and guide US foreign policy for much of the Cold War.

    In 1950, to combat the spread of Communism, the United States began supplying the French military in Vietnam with advisors and funding its efforts against the “red” Viet Minh. 

 Australia in Vietnam

      The Vietnam War was the longest major conflict in which Australians have been involved; it lasted ten years, from 1962 to 1972, and involved some 60,000 personnel. A limited initial commitment of just 30 military advisers grew to include a battalion in 1965 and finally, in 1966, a task force. Each of the three services was involved, but the dominant role was played by the Army.

   
   In the early years Australia’s participation in the war was not widely opposed. But as the commitment grew, as conscripts began to make up a large percentage of those being deployed and killed, and as the public increasingly came to believe that the war was being lost, opposition grew until, in the early 1970s, more than 200,000 people marched in the streets of Australia’s major cities in protest.