Victory at the Cost of Sanity in Obama’s Forever War

"Vietnamization" is being resurrected by a new generation of the "best and the brightest," with the same horrible outcome of more names being added to a future monument to the fallen in this war of choice.

Victory at the Cost of Sanity in Obama’s Forever War

Posted on Aug 27, 2009
By William Pfaff

The Nation magazine’s Robert Dreyfuss has just published a fascinating account of Washington establishment opinion about the war in Afghanistan.

The four speakers at a Brookings Institution discussion were Bruce Riedel, adviser to the president (and believer in the catastrophic international consequences of a loss of the war in Afghanistan); Michael O’Hanlon, an adviser to Gen. David Petraeus; Tony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Kim Kagan, head of the Institute for the Study of War.

The unanimous gloom expressed by these four speakers, and the apparent absence of any sunlight shining from the attending (and largely professional-political) audience, seems clear confirmation that Barack Obama and his chosen advisers have wasted no time in placing themselves and the country—in a mere five months—into the same desperate situation that it took the combined Johnson and Nixon administrations 15 years to arrive at in the case of Vietnam. This view would seem widely shared today—without influencing policy.

This is scarcely believable. Dreyfuss summarizes the speakers’ shared views: 1. “Significant escalation” is essential “to avoid utter defeat.” 2. If “tens of thousands” of new troops were sent to Afghanistan, it would be impossible to know whether this reinforcement changed anything until another 18 months had elapsed. 3. Even if the U.S. “turns the tide,” no “significant drawdown” of American troops could occur for at least another five years.

However, the most dramatic unanimous opinion of the four experts was this one: “There is no alternative to victory.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090827_victory_at_the_cost_of_sanity_in_obamas_forever_war/?ln

...a 95 year war...vs the 100 year war we just barely avoided...conducted by the same military...and associated sectors.

Some change!