Of Course It's Not Vietnam.

Afghanistan just seems to be going in the same direction as South Vietnam.

Some of you may recall Nixon's policy of Vietnamization of his war. By that he meant handing it off to the local forces to clear the way for withdrawal of American combat forces.

What's being called Afghanization is being pushed by the British, French and German governments who are eager to have the Taliban problem handed over to the Afghan National Army. According to Asia Times Online, Washington and NATO are pushing back:

...NATO's new secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave away the mood in Washington. He said, "The public discourse has started to go in the wrong direction ... We must stay in Afghanistan as long as necessary, and we will stay as long as necessary. Let no one think that a run for the exits is an option. It is not."

...Washington's priority is that the Taliban are destabilizing Central Asia, the North Caucasus as well as China's Xinjiang province and subverting the eastern regions of Iran. A self-serving security paradigm has developed whereby regional instability is threatened by the war, which, in turn, serves to justify the prolonged, indefinite NATO presence in Afghanistan. Clearly, "Afghanization" doesn't fit into this paradigm.

The US's major NATO allies are beginning to catch up with the paradox, finally, that while the growing risk of the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban becoming a war by foreigners against Afghans must be reduced, "Afghanization" doesn't suit the US objectives.

Old Europeans see no reason why their youth should go and die in the Hindu Kush mountains to subserve the geopolitical agenda regarding NATO expansion. Rasmussen's outburst shows the hour of truth has come.