I do not think that Afghanistan is another Vietnam incarnate. There is a large multitude of things that are different between these wars. People may believe that the wars are similar because they both had rough geography, insurgent groups, and long periods of time fighting. I disagree as there are good details separating the two from each other.

    For one thing, the environment in Afghanistan is far different in comparison to Vietnam. Vietnam plagued U.S. soldiers with dense jungles. It was hard to negotiate the terrain, let alone fight in it, and the Vietcong often had tunnels and spots in the trees to hide in. In Afghanistan, this is a different case. The terrain is mostly flat, and although there are many mountains, they aren’t as numerous as the snaking jungle was in Vietnam. The Taliban didn’t have as many places to hide as the Vietcong, meaning it narrowed down the amount of locations they had to go to locate the enemy.

    Another difference is that the battle itself is different. In Vietnam, the Vietcong were favored and supported by the people. They were fighting for Communism, which sounded nice to a lot of the poor fishermen and the farmers. In Afghanistan, the situation is far different. The Taliban is generally hated by the people. This is most likely because they are fighting for a fundamentalist government. The strict social and religious rules made many unpleasant restrictions unwelcome by the people. Finally, the casualties are very different. In the Vietnamese war, more than 50,000 U.S. military personnel died, whereas the casualty number in Afghanistan is under 2,000. In short, the Afghanistan war, in my opinion, is appearing to have better, beneficial results than the Vietnam War.