Will Syria Be Obama’s Vietnam?

[morningfog]

FIFTY years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized a strategic bombing campaign against targets in North Vietnam, an escalation of the conflict in Southeast Asia that was swiftly followed by the deployment of American ground troops. Last month, President Obama expanded a strategic bombing campaign against Islamic insurgents in the Middle East, escalating the attack beyond Iraq into Syria.

Will Mr. Obama repeat history and commit ground troops? Many analysts believe so, and top officials are calling for it. But the president has expressed skepticism about what American force can accomplish in this kind of struggle, and he has resisted the urgings of hawks inside and outside the administration who want him to go in deeper. Mr. Obama, his supporters say, is a “gloomy realist” who has learned history’s lesson: that American military power, no matter how great in relative terms, is ultimately of limited utility in conflicts that are, at their root, political or ideological in nature.

It’s a powerful, reasoned position, amply supported by the history of America’s involvement in Vietnam. But that history also shows that a president’s attitude and analytical assessment, no matter how gloomily realistic, are not necessarily an antidote to ill-advised military action. Foreign intervention has a logic all to itself.

Today we think of Lyndon Johnson as a man unwaveringly committed to prevailing in Vietnam. But at least at first, he shared Mr. Obama’s pessimism. He and his advisers knew they faced an immense challenge in attempting to suppress the insurgency in South Vietnam. “A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere,” he said privately in early March 1965. “But there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/08/opinion/will-syria-be-obamas-vietnam.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&referrer=

[jaysunb]

1. No n/t

[morningfog]

2. No?

[Baclava]

3. No, ISIS in Iraq will be Obama's Vietnam....Syria = Laos - we won't cross that border with boots

We'll just rain down death from above...


Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the US military was waging a devastating covert campaign to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country.

The nearly 600,000 bombing runs delivered a staggering amount of explosives: The equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every person in the country—more than what American planes unloaded on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/laos-vietnam-war-us-bombing-uxo

[randome]

4. Those who think everything in history is repeated...

...are doomed to never see the differences.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

[Bad Thoughts]

5. Maybe it will be Obama's Katrina

Or his 9/11. Or the next Benghazi. Or the next (insert trope).