How America failed to learn its lessons from Vietnam

The hasty withdrawal from Kabul has inevitably been compared to the Fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. Pictures of a Chinook flying over the US embassy in the Afghan capital to pluck staff to safety did bear something of a resemblance to the airlift of 1975. But is the comparison fair?

Joe Biden, at least, has been keen – for understandable reasons – to deny that Afghanistan is anything like Vietnam. A month ago, Biden told a reporter he saw ‘zero’ parallel between the Vietnamese and Afghan withdrawals:

‘The Taliban is not the same as the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capabilities. There’s going to be no circumstance wherein you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan’.

General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone as far as to tell reporters: ‘I do not see that unfolding’.