Afghanistan/Vietnam

Commentary by Ron Beasley

About a month ago I wrote:

So just like Vietnam simply throwing more troops into a country with no legitimate government cannot be a successful strategy.  This can only bring us back to the conversations going on in the Oval Office in 1965.

It's going to be difficult/or us to... prosecute ...a war that far away from home with the divisions we have here. ...I'm very depressed about it. Be- cause I see no program from either Defense or State that gives me much hope of doing anything, except just praying and gasping to hold on ...and hope they'll quit. I don't believe they're ever going to quit. And I don't see .. . any .. . plan for a victory�militarily or diplomatically.

~LBJ to ROBERT MCNAMARA, June 21, 1965

........

We know ourselves, in our own conscience, that when we asked for this [Gulf of Tonkin] resolution, we had no intention of committing this many ground troops. We're doing so now, and we know it's going to be bad. And the question is, Do we just want to do it out on a limb by ourselves? I don't know whether those [Pentagon] men have ever [calculated] whether we can win with the kind of training we have, the kind of power, and... whether we can have a united support at home.

~LBJ to ROBERT MCNAMARA, July 2,1965

And 55,000 American soldiers died after the above conversations.

With Afghanistan's Karzai looking more like Vietnam's Diem the American people are beginning to see the analogy.

A slight majority of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan is turning into another Vietnam, according to a new national poll which also indicates that nearly six in 10 oppose sending more U.S. troops to the conflict.

Fifty-two percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say the eight year long conflict has turned into a situation like the U.S. faced in the Vietnam War, with 46 percent disagreeing.

According to the poll, 59 percent of people questioned opposed sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan with 39 percent in favor. Of the 59 percent opposed, 28 percent want Washington to withdraw all U.S troops, 21 percent are calling for a partial American pullout, and 8 percent say the number of troops should remain the same.

"Has Afghanistan turned into Barack Obama's Vietnam? Most Americans think so, and that may be one reason why they oppose sending more U.S. troops to that country," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Older Americans are most likely to see parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam - possibly because they remember the Vietnam War, rather than reading about it in textbooks."

Obama has to be looking at both the polls and the threat the continuing unpopular conflict is impacting his domestic agenda.