PETER BEINART, SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER, THE DAILY BEAST: First of all, South Vietnam, the country we were trying to defend, was not a real country. It was an artificial country. It's created in 1954 by the French as they were leaving. The country was supposed to be reunited with North Vietnam in two years. The problem in Afghanistan may be that we have a government partner that's problematic. But Afghanistan is a real country that Afghans generally believe in. They have an Afghan national identity. That didn't exist in South Vietnam. That's why we might be able to do better in Afghanistan than Hamid Karzai. We could never have done better in South than them because South Vietnam itself was not a country that people felt loyalty to. That was one of the big differences. ... Original Transcript

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