Foreign Affairs Chairman Offers A Different Analogy: We Didn’t Like the Vietnam Government Many Years Ago and Today, We Have a Good Relationship
"I think that we got to continue to engage," Rep Meeks says
Since the Taliban overran Afghanistan's capital city earlier this month — prompting one of the largest airlift operations in history — political pundits and others have been comparing the fall of Kabul and the Western-backed government once located there to the fall of Saigon nearly a half-century ago.
US forces made a hasty withdrawal from Saigon as American involvement in the Vietnam War came to an end. And two years later, US-backed South Vietnam fell and the entire nation was unified under the rule of the Communist regime the United States had opposed.
However — and it took decades — but today, the relationship between the United States and Vietnam is one of cooperation. Indeed, Vice President Kamala Harris just completed a visit to Vietnam during a trip to Asia.
It is with that diplomatic evolution in mind that the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee offered a similar hope for the future of US relations with the Taliban who now have retaken control of Afghanistan for the first time in nearly 20 years.
“Yeah, I think that we got to continue to engage. We're not just completely deserting Afghanistan, we are saying that the military option, after 20 years, after a trillion dollars being spent, and that's not going to give us any kind of outcome or work anything that will be different for the relationship between -- between the two countries,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY). “Clearly the Afghan security forces would not stand and fight for themselves, so now the Taliban is in.
“They made certain commitments. We don’t trust them. I don’t trust them. They say they're going be different or they are different from where they were 20 years ago with reference to women and girls. I think that they want to see that they have some sense of credibility or something of that nature, you know, that they can be depended upon foreign countries as far as their economy is concerned,” Meeks added. “So we still will have some leverage on them. So we'll see how that goes. You know, I’m reminded some, when I look at it today, you know we didn’t like the government that was moving into Vietnam so many years ago, but still, now, today, we have a good relationship with that government.”
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