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As I write, President Obama is set to announce the deployment of another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Before our country embarks on another Vietnam with its millions of deaths and its legacy of pollution and deformed babies, it might be helpful to look at some of the lessons that Vietnam can teach us.

President Kennedy surrounded himself with advisers who have been called “the best and the brightest,” men who had excelled at the best schools, led the most successful businesses and were leaders in their fields. Their most salient characteristic, however, was their arrogance. It took Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s defense secretary, 30 years to realize that “we were wrong, terribly wrong” on Vietnam.

Only after McNamara published “In Retrospect” in 1995, did McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s national security adviser, decide to reassess his own role in Vietnam. According to Gordon Goldstein, in “Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam,” Bundy’s attitude was that America had to win because America always wins; America knows better than everyone else because her leaders come from Harvard and other elite universities. America does not need to know about other people — they are not worth knowing about. Goldstein concludes that Bundy didn’t understand the enemy because he didn’t think they warranted his attention.

Unlike George W. Bush, who did not know that there were Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq, Barack Obama is a very intelligent, well-read man. He certainly knows that Afghanistan has defeated one power after another from Alexander the Great through the British and Russian empires, and that there is a very good chance it will defeat the U.S. empire as well.

Furthermore, he knows that there are only about 100 al- Qaida members left in Afghanistan. So he can’t be sending 30,000 troops there to fight al-Qaida. What then is the purpose of this surge?

In 2005, the Pentagon drafted a plan for a “long war” of counterinsurgency. This 50-year war is envisioned to encompass Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and beyond.

Is it a coincidence that the battlefield is Moslem land rich in oil and natural gas? In fact, these, plus coal, iron ore, copper ore and gemstones are the reasons that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. What’s rarely talked about are the rare metals to be found there — such as lithium, caesium, tantalum and niobium — and the 17 rare earth metals used in smartphones, digital cameras, laptop screens, hybrid car batteries and precision weapons.

The most pernicious idea spread by the Bush administration was that so-called Muslim terrorists hate us because we stand for democracy and freedom. On the contrary, they hate us because we invade their land, imprison and torture their people and steal their resources.

Resistance to imperialism is inevitable.

Selma Sternlieb lives in Brunswick and is a member of PeaceWorks.