Helen Thomas: This Sure Seems Like Vietnam

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Sunday, December 6, 2009 by The Albany Times-Union (New York)

This Sure Seems Like Vietnam

by Helen Thomas

President Barack Obama insists that his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending in 30,000 more troops is not Vietnam all over again.

Well, it sure reminds me of the perils and the price of that unwinnable war and the political chaos it wreaked at home.

In Afghanistan, the designated enemies are remnants of the weakened al-Qaida network and the native Taliban, which has been growing in strength despite the eight-year war started by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 catastrophe.

Obama is too young to remember the national turmoil during the Vietnam War that resulted in the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and thousands of Vietnamese. That war also ended the political career of President Lyndon Johnson, who decided not to seek re-election in 1968.

In his remarks Tuesday, Obama rejected any comparison between Afghanistan and Vietnam, calling it "a false reading of history." He claimed that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is supported by "a broad coalition of 43 nations," that "unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency" and, unlike Vietnam, "the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan."

Well, yes and no.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/06-9

[berni_mccoy]

1. Obama too young to remember? I don't think so.

[Demeter]

3. Sure He Is

He was in grade school.

[willing dwarf]

5. Too young

He and I are the same age,and I know that while the debate about the war was going on out there, it was way beyond my understanding. I know that the people 10 years older than me took it in and felt it deeply, but to those of us who were in 2nd grade the year Nixon beat out Hubert Humphrey for the White House, it was all way beyond us.

[stray cat]

2. Helen is an expert on Vietnam now?

[Daveparts still]

4. I Think

That anyone who lived through Vietnam is more an expert that anyone who didn't. My friends brother stepped on a booby trap and the Army sent home a weighted casket. They didn't find out until later what had actually happened.

It doubled the hurt and the pain that they poured out their hearts and tears in veneration of an empty box and for what?