Is this the right way to end a war?

Anthony Cordesman, an official in the Defense Department during the final years of the Vietnam War, recently wrote a paper detailing the parallels between the two wars. In an interview, Mr. Cordesman, now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recalled how late in the Vietnam War “we concealed the casualty rates, the absentee rates, the ghost soldier rates,” just as the American military and the government of President Ashraf Ghani are doing now.

“Just as in Vietnam, under the shell of top leadership there were many deep divisions,” Mr. Cordesman said. In Afghanistan, “you have a country of power brokers. A lot of the underlying economy is extremely weak, buoyed up by war and aid. And as that’s reduced, you find less and less reason for the economy and political structure to hold together.”

In some ways, Afghanistan is actually in worse shape than South Vietnam was when the American military left in 1973; the country fell to the Communists in 1975. In Afghanistan, “the only major hard currency earner is the narcotics sector, other than war and aid,” Mr. Cordesman said. Vietnam, in contrast, had a more diverse economy. Even the Afghan military units are weaker. “There were some very good units in Vietnam,” he said.