"When President Obama spoke on Thursday about Afghanistan, it was like being in a Vietnam time warp"

[Better Believe It]

Obama’s Afghanistan Talk Is Vietnam Time Warp
By Matthew Rothschild
Editor of The Progressive
December 17, 2010

When President Obama spoke on Thursday about Afghanistan, it was like being in a Vietnam time warp.

Flashback to November 1967, when President Johnson had ordered a Pentagon review. “The President took control of the campaign to dramatize progress to the American people but in ways that grossly exaggerated future military prospects,” writes Larry Berman in his book, Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam.

Johnson, November 17, 1967: “We are making progress. We are pleased with the results we are getting.”

Obama, December 16, 2010: “We are making considerable gains toward our military objectives.”

Obama’s statements about Afghanistan this week, like Johnson’s in 1967, were designed as a PR ploy.

But no amount of PR can long cover up a quagmire.

Read the full article at:

http://www.progressive.org/wx121710.html

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. It's Obama's version of "The Light at the End of the Tunnel" and "Stay the course".

[Orrex]

2. I look forward to our agonizing reappraisal.

[bertman]

3. As one who spent a year of disenchantment fighting the Vietnamese people,

I have to say that this article is right on.

If the military were filled by draftees this nation would be seeing massive demonstrations against the warS, but the PTB are smart enough to hire 'professional soldiers' who make the decision to become soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors on their own. And since they can't get enough volunteers to do the dirty work of empire, they get Congress to spend BILLIONS on private mercenaries. All to keep the opposition tamped down and to make more $$$$ for the Military/Industrial/Corporate Complex.

We are Rome.