Lyndon Johnson Is Back In the White House
December 1, 2009
President Barack Obama has by all accounts conducted a thorough review and analysis of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan after having received a counter-insurgency plan and request for 40,000 additional troops from General Stanley McChrystal in September.
Tonight at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Mr. Obama gave a speech in which he announced his decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Some of those will be deployed as early as this Christmas, and all will have arrived in country by next summer.
This surge falls 25% short of General McChrystal's request and comes with the counterproductive insistence of a time deadline for withdrawal. The General, as a good soldier, will undoubtedly testify to Congress that it's a good plan with sufficient resources and that he can make it work.
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In the mid-1960's, President Lyndon Baines Johnson agonized throughout his White House years about the War in Vietnam. Like Mr. Obama, he was pursuing an ambitious, controversial, and expensive social agenda, which included Medicare and Medicaid, two of the three programs that currently are bankrupting the country.
Also like Mr. Obama, Mr. Johnson had powerful, vocal, liberal constituents in the Democrat Party who virulently opposed the war (once it started going badly and they or their children started getting conscripted to fight in it). Of course, back then liberals were only a wing of the party, whereas today they are the party.
Johnson is said to have fretted that if he were to escalate the war, more people would die, and if he were not to escalate the war, more people would die. His solution was to fight a prolonged war of attrition, tying the military's hands behind its back so that it could not bring the full force of American power to bear on the enemy. As a result, we lost the war, the Communists took over and instituted a regime of oppression so brutal that everyone except the trees tried to get up and leave.
Johnson also hid the cost of the war from the American people because he didn't want us to know that we couldn't afford both the war and his social programs. That decision partially was responsible for the stagnant economy of the 1970's, and ultimately for the election of the worst president of the 20th Century, Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Obama stands before us today intent upon pushing his fantastically idiotic and unaffordable health care "reform" plan, and his cap and tax plan designed to rid the world of non-existent man-made global warming (See, "Copenhagen, We Have A Problem").
He can't hide the cost of the war from us because we already know what it is, and he won't relent on his social agenda, so he's sending fewer troops than requested, demanding that they get out in time for the next election, and pretending that his plan will succeed simply because he wants it to.
The Afghan tribes have been there for centuries. They are hard, shrewd, brutal people. They see Mr. Obama as a feckless prima donna, and they'll wait for him to pack up his liberal sensibilities and retreat.
Prior to the surge in Iraq, when the war was going badly, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their lunatic friends at The Daily Kos and The Huffington Post openly cheered for America to lose the war and trotted out in front of the cameras to cry crocodile tears each time the killed-in-action numbers reached a grim, new milestone.
Unlike them, we love our country and will support our troops, and we will encourage Mr. Obama to pursue ultimate victory in Afghanistan.We must admit, however, that as we listened to B.H.O. talk about his war plans tonight we couldn't shake the sickening feeling that we were listening to L.B.J., without the drawl.