The rumblings have begun. The antiwar movement is coming out against Obama’s surge in Afghanistan. Read your history, Mr. President: this is exactly what Lyndon Johnson faced. It’s a no-win situation, and it will derail your presidency as sure as it did his. LBJ may not have had a Peace Prize in his vest pocket, but it’s not going to do you much good.Shall we enumerate the parallels? Pursuing a goal that recedes with each passing year. Intervening on behalf of a corruption-ridden government. Escalating as a knee-jerk response to futility. Second-guessing troop strength. Facing an enemy that’s popular at the grass-roots level – and that’s more determined than we are. Trying to impose our prescription for government on a foreign culture. Fighting a “primitive” people with advanced weaponry to no avail. Being constrained by borders that have no meaning to the enemy. Doing it all in the name of combating what is perceived as the dominant threat to our way of life – then, international Communism; now, radical Islam.
Afghanistan isn’t called the “graveyard of empires” for nothing. We’re in yet another last-man-to-die-for-a-mistake scenario, and there’s no getting out of it. Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is looking down in the mouth.
This is insanity. It’s nuts, it’s bananas. Do the sane thing, Mr. President. Face the fact that there will always be people out there who hate us. And if the CIA can’t whack bin Laden, don’t kid yourself that all those troops can do it. Disagreement within your own administration over when we can plan on getting out ought to tell you something.
Otherwise, at least do the right thing. Give back your prize.
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