Will Obama Fall Into Vietnam Trap in Afghanistan?

[unhappycamper]

Will Obama Fall Into Vietnam Trap in Afghanistan?
Byron Williams
Syndicated Columnist, Author, Pastor of the Resurrection Community Church Oakland, CA
Posted: August 1, 2010 12:44 PM

Vietnam was America's most unpopular and most controversial war of the 20th century. When the last combat troops left in 1973, nearly 60,000 Americans had made the ultimate sacrifice along with an estimated two million Vietnamese.

How is that possible for a conflict that, according to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, was known by 1965 as not winnable militarily?

~snip~

It would be nearly nine years and two presidents before U.S. policy came to the conclusion that Diem was not only the wrong person to back, but such support aligned the U.S. with a corrupt government and against the majority of Vietnamese.

Meanwhile, the U.S. commitment grew deeper, digging its way into an untenable quagmire.

I raise this now because President Barack Obama stands in Afghanistan very close to the position where Johnson stood in Vietnam. Moreover, it remains unclear whether Afghan President Hamid Karzai is the 21st-century version of Diem.

[G_j]

1. it appears he already has

if we are talking about an "an untenable quagmire".

[bobburgster]

2. I think he is going to pull out sooner.

[madrchsod]

3. "...dig a little deeper in the well, well, well....."

[hobbit709]

4. Will?

[customerserviceguy]

5. The comparison to Lyndon Johnson is inaccurate

I'd say he's more like where Richard Nixon was in 1970; by that point, he owned the war, too. The only difference is that a viable anti-war movement was willing to step up it's protest tactics against Nixon the way they seem unable to when it faces a Democratic President this time around.