OK! In a few months, or more likely, in a few weeks,
what will be left of the Taliban will
"head for the hills", leaving all the
Afghan population centers behind to be
liberated.
Then it's guerrilla warfare.
Understandable, many liberals and aging hippies will try to make comparisons with Vietnam and the war there in the sixties....

Actually, there are far more differences than comparisons between
Vietnam in the sixties and Afghanistan
in 2001.

HERE'S A SMALL LIST OF THE DIFFERENCES:

(1) Cutting-edge US Military technology in the sixties was transistor-based.

(1A)Today, it's based on very tiny microcircuits.

(2) Spy-satellites were primitive in the 1960's.

(2A) The LACROSSE and KEYHOLE spysats available, today, are awesome in
their capabilities, including "real
time" data gathering.

(3) Night-vision apparatus in the 1960's was bulky, and far too few
of those "primitive" night-vision
devices were distributed to frontline American combat units in Vietnam...
Unfortunately, this technological
and logistics limitation allowed the
NVA and VC to "RULE THE NIGHT" in
hostile territory in Vietnam.

(3A) Today, the US military night-vision devices,
both passive and active, IR and light-amplifying, are astonishingly
sophisticated, reliable, light-weight
and portable...And every US combat
soldier, airman or Marine has access
to them...This technological and logistics advantage will allow US combat ground troops [SF, Marines, or even the regular Army "grunts"] to "RULE THE NIGHT" in Afghanistan.



(4) Vietnam had and has vast swaths of "triple canopy jungle" that the VC
and the NVA used to great advantage.

(5A) Afghanistan has no "triple canopy
jungle", in fact it's mostly exposed
desert, alpine or treeless arid terrain. The limited acreages of forests in Afganistan are composed
of either narrow swaths of Poplar trees
by rivers or [widely-spaced] fir trees on some mountainsides.

(6) In the 1960's, the NVA and VC
used the "Ho Chi Minh trail" as a very
effective supply-line.

(6A) The Taliban in Afghanistan, now completely surrounded by hostile neighbours will not have the luxury
of a "Ho Chi Minh trail" supply-route, vulnerably exposed as it would be to 24 hour aerial & space-observation platforms AIRPOWER, and SF operations.

(7) In Vietnam, the abundance of seasonal rainy weather often proved to be a hinderance to close-air support
operation.

(7A) Afghanistan has a lack of rainy weather. Excellent, if not ideal conditions for close air-support
operations almost year round.
Also, the winter snows, serving as an excellent background for IR signatures from "body heat", will prove to be
a liability for El Qaeda or Taliban guerrillas out in the open night or day.

(8) In the Vietnam War, technological military breakthroughs and devices, such as laser-guided bombs, dedicated helicopter gunships like the "Cobra",
and the rare use of primitive UAV's,
came too little too late to affect
the outcome.

(8A) Today, US Military laser-guided bombs, "SuperCobras" and "Apaches" UAV's, etc., are or would be "in their element" in Afghanistan.
-------------------------------

These are just a few examples of the differences that do and would occur
between the Vietnam conflict and this
Afghan military theater.

Jacob