Is the Afghan War really the longest in U.S. history?
It has now been eight and a half years since coalition forces led by the U.S. launched air strikes against the Taliban, starting the war in Afghanistan. That, according to Diane Sawyer in ABC Online, gives the conflict a “fresh and dubious distinction” — it has surpassed the length of the Vietnam War to become the longest war in U.S. history. Can that really be true? Have we really been fighting in Afghanistan longer than in Vietnam? The start of the Afghanistan conflict can be pinpointed very precisely — the shooting began on Oct. 7, 2001, just over 104 months ago. By Sawyer’s reckoning, the Vietnam War lasted only 103 months, from August 1964, when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed, to March 1973, sixty days after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. But others dispute this timeline. Why? The start date of the Vietnam War is a gray area. The Pentagon lists American deaths in Vietnam from November 1955, when the first military advisors started working in the Southeast Asian
