Can Afganistan defeat Obama ?
There is an eerie parallel between Obama’s plans for the war in Afghanistan and the fate of another president who inherited a war that never should have been started. Johnson inherited, and was undone by, Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson, whose legacy includes the Civil Rights Act and the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, is maybe best remembered by the anti-war slogan “Hey, hey, LBJ ,how many kids did you kill today?”
Vietnam could not be won because we lost the battle for the hearts of the people in the path of the war.
Like Vietnam, Afghanistan has not been conquered by a foreign country in a very long time. Let us not forget the proxy war years of the cold war era. , The Afgan guerillas beat the Russians, just as the Vietnamese beat us. Escalating U.S. involvement in a foreign war that someone else had started brought down Lyndon Johnson.
The Afgan war cannot be won unless we win the battle for the hearts and minds of the Afgan people. It may not be possible to “win” in Afganistan at all. President Obama should remember this lesson and not fall deeper in a trap much like the one that ensnared LBJ.
Jonathan & Heidi Spero
“The technology of the man cannot overcome the will of a determined people” – Huey Newton.
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