Little Dienbienphu

.

George Santayana's epigram needs repeating (again, dammnit): "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

The recent Taliban assault which breached the outer perimeter of the US-ANA outpost at Kamdesh, Afghanistan, seems to be the fault, the responsibility of someone, or many someones, in the US armed forces who did not bother to study the French Union Forces 1954 defeat by the Viet Minh at Dienbienphu.

Kamdesh invited enemy assault before the Taliban attack on it began. Kamdesh repeated all the errors the French made at Dienbienphu, and the officers who chose it actually made worse errors than the French made. Both Dienbienphu and Kamdesh lie in low ground, in the middle of valleys. The main French base at Dienbienphu was at least a short distance from the mountains that ringed it - so it was like being at the bottom of bowl; but the outpost at Kamdesh is like the bottom of a test tube - it's in a tight valley, not just surrounded but hemmed tightly in by precipitous peaks which gave the Taliban terrain even more advantageous than that enjoyed by the Viet Minh around Dienbienphu.

Both battles were also intelligence failures: in both cases the defenders' intrinsic and higher command intelligence operatives failed to detect the long, slow enemy buildup of positions, weapons, and troops that came to surround and assault the outposts.

In both battles the enemy assault forces could and did shoot down, not just at the troops holding those outposts but also down at the aircraft upon which both of those posts depended for resupply and casualty evacuation.

I've nothing but the highest praise and eternal respect for our US soldiers' expertise, grit, and bravery, and I have - perhaps - praise also for some of the ANA soldiers (our US troops themselves will tell you that ANA units' loyalties are not to be trusted, and about a dozen or so of the ANA defenders of Kamdesh seem to have gone missing - captured or killed by the Taliban, or...?). Yet direct comparison of superior officers' choice of Kamdesh with that of the French high command's choice of Dienbienphu cannot, must not be ignored or dismissed. Given the experience of the French Union Forces at Dienbiephu the best I can say about the US choice of Kamdesh is: you can't make this stuff up.