Is Afghanistan the next Vietnam?

Bing West, an infantry officer in Vietnam who became an assistant secretary of defense for President Reagan, has just published a book: The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy and the Way Out of Afghanistan.

West criticizes the Obama administration for adopting policies of "counterinsurgency" and "nation-building" that have produced dubious results elsewhere.

"At the military's urging, President Obama has become a convert, ordering thousands of extra young men and women to that country [Afghanistan], in hope of saving an endeavor that was beginning to look doomed," a review of his book summarized.

On Feb. 15, U.S. troops began withdrawing from Pech Valley in Afghanistan's eastern mountains, an area once labeled as pivotal to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban. The region had become a morass.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently told West Point cadets that any future Pentagon leader who urged a president to invade a backward place like Afghanistan or Iraq should "have his head examined."

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