Okay, the "Best and The Brightest" of President Obama's administration in 2009 is better and smarter than the "Best and The Brightest" of Lyndon Johnson's, and if we believe the rhetoric, the American people would be foolish to compare LBJ's Vietnam conflict with Obama's war in Afghanistan.
President Obama described those who make a parallel between his escalation of the war in Afghanistan as engaging in a "false reading of history." In his address to the cadets at West Point, he said:
"There are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now -- and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance -- would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies."
Really? As I recall, the Diem government in Vietnam was as corrupt, although in different ways, as the Kharzi government is in Afghanistan. The style of corruption may differ, but the overall effect is the same. And even if there currently is not a "broad-based popular insurgency" opposing us (an arguable point) it is more likely than not that the increased presence of American troops will foster such an insurgency.
Moreover, we must consider the wise analysis of Professor Hugh Gusterson of George Mason University, who writes in "Afghanistan: Vietnam All Over Again":
"The weight of U.S. force won't crush the insurgency but displace it -- just as all of those U.S. resources devoted to eradicating cocaine trafficking in Latin America have only succeeded in displacing cocaine cultivation and production from one province or country to another. Second, the more U.S. troops there are in Afghanistan, the more provocative incidents and resentment there will be, and this will help the Taliban to recruit. More U.S. troops equals more Taliban recruits. And that equation leads to this escalatory arithmetic: More Taliban looking for people to shoot plus more U.S. troops to be shot at equals more body bags at Dover Air Force Base. This won't look like victory to the U.S. people."
The West Point audience was made up of gung-ho military careerists. I do say this pejoratively. The Vietnam War, though, was sustained by a draft. Do the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Stanley McChrystal believe an all volunteer military can support the intermediate and long term needs of a U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan? How much military troop participation can we expect from our "allies"? It is unlikely that Americans can expect European and Asian allies to assume a greater proportion of troops on the ground. Just the contrary. An article in Slate.com by Fred Kaplan noted "the American share of allied troops in Afghanistan is rising to 70% from under 50% at the time George Bush left office."
Frank Rich raised a similar question in his recent column in this past Sunday's New York Times.
"If the enemy in Afghanistan today threatens the American homeland as the Vietcong never did, we should be all in, according to Obama's logic. So why aren't we? The answer is not merely that Afghans don't want us as occupiers. It's that such a mission would require a commensurate national sacrifice. One big difference between the war in Vietnam and the war in Afghanistan that president conspicuously left unmentioned on Tuesday is the draft. Given that conscription is not about to be revived, we have to spend lots of money, lots more money, to recruit the troops needed for the full effort Obama's own argument calls for."
Lyndon Johnson thought that he too could have both "guns and butter." He instituted Medicare, the "War on Poverty" and several other social/economic programs. But he couldn't win his war. Obama similarly believes he can also have his guns and butter in the form of major health care reform, the creation of jobs, stemming of foreclosures, revamping the banking system, saving the automobile industry, implementing programs to arrest global warming, restructuring and funding our national education system, fighting HIV and the HIV/AIDs virus, refurbishing our domestic infrastructure, developing new sources of energy and annually paying the interest on our nation debt to China and other creditors. If history is any indication, at best this is an either/or proposition for our current leader.
In a few days President Obama will travel to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Prize that was bestowed upon him earlier this year. One cannot help but feel, on the heels of this new Afghanistan stance, that he'll be coming into town for his peace prize with guns blazing.
When he commenced his campaign on the steps of the capital in Springfield, Illinois, Obama said he was running to be elected President of the United States because of the "fierce urgency of now." He quoted the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., another Nobel Peace Prize winner. Dr. King used the words in the 6th paragraph of his 1963 "I Have A Dream" speech and in the last part of his speech on April 4th, 1967, "Time To Break The Silence," publicly opposing the continuation of the war in Vietnam.
However, in both instances Dr. King spoke those words to call our nation to moral imperatives. In '63, to end racial segregation: "We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now . This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy..." In '67 to a halt in the war in Vietnam, he said, "We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time ... We have a choice today; non-violent coexistence or violent co-annihilation."
What an irony of history. Obama travels and speaks to accept a Nobel Peace Prize after initiating an escalation of military force in Afghanistan, even though one of the reasons cited by the Nobel Committee for awarding the prize was his new kind of world leadership as President of the United States.
Ultimately, Obama and his advisors must ask themselves, how does he want history to judge and define his legacy? As the first bi-racial African-American elected President of the United States? Or as another American president whose one-term administration was defined by an unpopular, unwinnable war that squandered resources needed to solve critical domestic issues such as joblessness, education, and a crippled economy.