Presidents Johnson and Obama - Vietnam and Afghanistan - So Much in Common

Last night Moyers had an incredible show with tapes of telephone conversations between President Johnson and MacNamara, Bundy, Knight and others discussing the development of the Vietnam war. Incredible! Amazing parallels to present thought process on Afghanistan.

Link to Moyers show below. Will probably take a while unless your high speed is pretty good, but well worth it. You can even hear the airplane droning in the background as MacNamera is talking to Johnson on return trip. Awsome. I had no idea these tapes even existed. They knew they were screwed long before the public did. They were just stalling, while people died, hoping for a compromise that would save Vietnam, preserve the rest of the dominoes (they really did believe that then) and save American prestige.

I think had it not been for Johnson's belief that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of SE Asia would also go communist, Johnson would have pulled the plug when we were still only advisers.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/profile.html

Our mission goal in Afghanistan is fuzzy at best. Certainly we are not engaging Al Qaeda, only the Taliban, who just want us out of their country and are not going to launch any attacks against us. We are the best recruiting tool Al Qaeda has

This excellent article in Foreign Policy makes the point better than I could ever hope to. We gain nothing by staying in Afghanistan except the creation of more animosity and more terrorists. Staying is actually decreasing our security.

Hopefully Obamas "dithering" is a delaying tactic so the Health Care mess can pass, after which he will announce he is withdrawing from Afghanistan and wait for the political hurricane which will probably cost him a second term. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. The parallels between Obama and Johnson are uncanny.

We'll see.