Letters | Post-Afghanistan, US should be wary of stoking flames of conflict

Readers discuss aggressive American rhetoric, the rules-based world, and why some Hongkongers are keeping their masks on

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A US Air Force aircraft takes off from Kabul on August 30, 2021. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:30am, 3 Mar 2023

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After the North Vietnamese victory in the Vietnam war, the United States spent the next 20 years trying to kick “Vietnam syndrome”. Of course, there were many other reasons for the political and social difficulties America faced in the 1970s and 1980s. An economic crisis, racial division and drug epidemics probably would have ravaged the US, regardless of the outcome of the Vietnam war.

Still, the American remedy for humiliation in Vietnam seemed to be more military conflict. In the 1980s, the US invaded Panama and Grenada, and deployed forces to Libya and Lebanon. The 1991 Gulf war gave the US a much-needed morale boost.

But with the Taliban now in control of Afghanistan, America has been humiliated yet again. As a child in Canada, I watched as young men left to fight wars in the wake of September 11. Nearly two decades later, friends and colleagues of mine would leave to fight the same wars.

Like in the aftermath of Vietnam, the US is trying to recover lost morale and, on the international stage, lost pride. It should not surprise anyone that American rhetoric has become high-octane, even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The US is desperate for a fight and even more desperate for a win, whether with regard to Russians in Ukraine, or alleged spy balloons from China.