Will There be an Afghanistan Syndrome?

... The rise and fall of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal -- whom President Obama dismissed Wednesday as commander of the faltering U.S.-led war in Afghanistan after an explosive magazine article featured the general and his top aides deriding the president, vice president and other civilian leaders as well as foreign allies -- will no doubt play a major role in the stories we ultimately tell ourselves about the Afghan conflict. These war stories are not just morality tales to be retold in high school history books or television documentaries. They can shape the way the United States fights its enemies in the future, and the way it settles disputes over war at home. The McChrystal saga, with its echoes of the Vietnam era's bitter civilian-military recriminations, threatens to do the same.

In Vietnam, as in the Gulf War, the old stories are, to say the least, radically incomplete. The civilians did not, in fact, micromanage most of the Vietnam War. President Lyndon B. Johnson restricted bombing targets in North Vietnam for the sensible reason that he did not want to bring China and Russia into a larger conflict. The campaign in the South -- including massive bombardment and search-and-destroy missions -- was the product of a conventional military that understood the war chiefly in terms of killing the enemy, not fighting an insurgency. Similarly, a truer tale of the Gulf War would emphasize the U.S. failure to shatter Saddam Hussein's power, which paved the way for years of blockade and sporadic bombardment, leading to a second and conclusive showdown more than a decade later...

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