Essay: Compare the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Syria to World War II

The wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Syria are not like the World War II. In the second World War, the United States and its allies were fighting the axis powers, which were regarded as considerably powerful opponents. By comparison, the enemies of Vietnam War and the War on Terror are inferior. Yet the United States, a victor of the World War II, did not win these wars. At least not militarily. In 1975, American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, after 20 years of struggle and waning political will. By denying the U.S. victory, the Vietnamese troops are able to declare themselves victorious. This phenomenon in Vietnam have destroyed the long held notion that conventional military might always prevails in war.
The case of the asymmetric war in Vietnam can be used to explain on why the United States has not won the wars in the Middle East against insurgencies and terror groups. Although the West and the Jihadists are on the same war, like Vietnam, they are playing by a different set of rule, thus, shifting the symmetry of the war. The first asymmetry lies on their obvious difference military strengths. Al Qaeda and ISIS are not a legitimate state without a legitimate trained armed forces. Their troops are mostly insurgents with AK-47s that were trained in madrassas. They are elusive organizations with a network and an agenda.
The second asymmetry lies on their end game. In 2001, The United States launched the War on Terror as a response to the September 11 attacks. The objective, as outlined by the George W. Bush administration, was to obliterate terrorist organizations who were involved in the planning of the September 11 attacks. The idea of victory, according to the the metropolitan power is total destruction of the enemy. To achieve this, the United States, NATO, and their allies deployed troops to the Middle East invaded Afghanistan and, later Iraq. Due to their asymmetry in strengths, the metropolitan powers posses the capability to physically invade the land of the enemy, while the weaker Jihadists do not. With this in mind, the Jihadists’ objective was never to invade and destroy the United States physically.  Their idea of victory is to deny the Americans their victory.  When the United States loses its political will, they win.
The third asymmetry rests in presumptive values. The West’s assumption of rational behavior is that the enemy holds the same values as they do, the preservation and prolongation of life, human rights, and prevention of unnecessary destruction and loss of life. They assume that the enemy seek to protect themselves and its people. However, this is not the case with terrorist groups. One of the most signature offensive of the Jihadists is suicide attacks. They have been lead to believe that they are martyrs and that heaven awaits them when they commit suicide in the name of God. They seek to turn the metropolitan powers against their own values. Through asymmetric warfare, victory is not impossible for the jihadists.
In the course of more than three decades, jihad has evolved from an organized group lead by Osama bin Laden into an amorphous movement, of which Marc Sageman dubbed as a “leaderless Jihad”. The story of the Salafist movement evolution began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Angered by the notion that kafirs started invading their land, many men flocked from different parts of Middle East to fight the Soviets. These fighters, or mujahedeen, regard this as a religious struggle, or jihad. Among them, was a Saudi man from a wealthy family named Osama Bin Laden. When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, they left thousands and thousands of refugees in Afghanistan, mostly men and boys. Bin Laden took the initiative to train and educate these thousands of boys in madrassas and arm them with the leftover weapons of the Afghan war to be part of the organization he established, Al Qaeda. With Bin Laden’s funds and leadership, Al Qaeda expanded to be a global organization and generated more mujahedeen as a result.
In 1990, the Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. Worried about Iraq’s expansion and growing influence, the House of Saud, deployed the Saudi troops to battle the Iraqis. To Saudi Arabia’s aid, the United States put their boots on the ground and thus began the Gulf War. The fact that the U.S. built military bases in Saudi Arabia, angered Bin Laden. Saudi Arabia is the home to the of the most sacred sites of Islam, Mecca and Medina. The presence of infidel foreign army on the same soil with “the two holy Mosques” is believed to have crossed the line. With this, Bin Laden got his rationale to call a Jihad against the United States.
A decade later, 19 Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked American commercial airplanes and committed attacks in U.S. soil, killing 3000 people on September 11, 2001. As a response, George W. Bush launched the War on Terror, deploying troops to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. After years of war, America and its allied forces has undoubtedly weakened the Al Qaeda organization, and eventually assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Unable to win battles against the allies, during this period, Al Qaeda, committed a series of organized terrors attacks in different parts of the world from London to Jakarta.
In 2003, U.S. force toppled Saddam Hussein’s government, disbanded the Iraqi army and occupied Iraq. The unemployed men from the army joined the insurgency which consist of mujahedeen form different parts of the Middle East, to fight against the United States.  These fighters were later known to be a part of an organized group called Al Qaeda in Iraq. As the U.S. withdrew in 2011, it created a power vacuum. With the adjacent war in Syria, Al Qaeda in Iraq grew stronger under the leadership of Abu Bakar al Baghdadi and evolved into Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIS, largely ignored by Syrian President, Bashar al Ashad, joined the war in Syria and invaded Iraq. Its radical mission is to establish the caliphate encompassing the world. Largely crippled by the Kurds and American air attacks, ISIS lost a majority of its territory.
To continue with its mission, ISIS launched an effective online propaganda and attacks on different parts of the world. Inspired by ISIS’ propaganda, men from all over the globe started to either flocking to Syria or committed “lone wolf” attacks in their home country. Marc Sageman argues that these Muslim youths who became radicalized often experienced traumatic events in their lives and that sparked a moral outrage. Chatrooms online gave them a platform to communicate their feelings with people that have shared the same experience. ISIS took advantage of this and inspired them to join the Jihad in committing attacks against the West. Although ISIS is becoming weak, this leaderless form of jihad as only began its story.
From the 9/11 to a string of homegrown terror attacks, these extremists have stained the public perception of Islam in the West. Anti-Muslim sentiments in conservative politics and rampant Islamophobia in European and American societies has largely shaped the West’s policies on the wave of Muslim immigrants fleeing the Syrian war. They are unwelcomed mostly by many people in Europe, who attributes them for the uptick in crime.  To take it further, U.S. President Donald Trump did not only propose in stopping the inflow of refugees to the U.S., but also enacted travel ban that bars citizens from seven majority Muslim countries.