NYT: Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietman?

August 23, 2009
Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietman?
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

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Just as Mr. Johnson believed he had no choice but to fight in Vietnam to contain communism, Mr. Obama last week portrayed Afghanistan as the bulwark against international terrorism. “This is not a war of choice,” he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars at their convention in Phoenix. “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

But while many Americans once shared that view, polls suggest that conviction is fading nearly eight years into the war. The share of Americans who said the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting slipped below 50 percent in a survey released last week by The Washington Post and ABC News. A July poll by the New York Times and CBS News showed that 57 percent of Americans think things are going badly for the United States in Afghanistan, compared with 33 percent who think they are going well.

<snip>

His former boss, George W. Bush, learned first-hand how political capital can slip away when an overseas war loses popular backing. With Iraq in flames, Mr. Bush found little support for his second-term domestic agenda of overhauling Social Security and liberalizing immigration laws. L.B.J. managed to create Medicare and enact landmark civil rights legislation but some historians have argued that the Great Society ultimately stalled because of Vietnam.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/weekinreview/23baker.html

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Then you hate it. Then you Love it again. Then you like it. Then you kind of like it. Ultimately you see it for what it is.

Bush will get the blame eventually.

If Obama escalates Afghanistan he will get the blame in the end..

Keep in mind that Afghanistan was an extremely popular war at the beginning.

get out it could bankrupt us like the Russians during the Russian/Afghan war. And who's to say that Russia is not getting back at us by providing arms to the Taliban because that is exactly what we did during the Russian/Afghan war.

History tells us that no military invaders have ever been successful in that region. The Russian military machine was broken by the Taliban....

We should pay attention and get the hell out so no more of our soldiars get killed. The truth is it doesn't matter how long we stay in Iraq or Afghanastan because on the day we leave those regions will have civil wars to determine who will control the power. Not another American life should be lost...

just saying.