Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Before Obama Crosses this Bridge to Nowhere ...


It would be informative to reflect on the words of one who's been there before.

Bill Moyers has announced the ending of his acclaimed Journal, sometime in 2010. Before he passes from the scene, and at this moment that our 44th President crosses the bridge of no return in Afghanistan, I wanted to record the cautionary tones of one crossed a similar bridge with our 36th President.

Moyers introduced his most recent Journal with these words:

Our country wonders this weekend what is on President Obama's mind. He is apparently, about to bring months of deliberation to a close and answer General Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops in Afghanistan. When he finally announces how many, why, and at what cost, he will most likely have defined his presidency, for the consequences will be far-reaching and unpredictable. As I read and listen and wait with all of you for answers, I have been thinking about the mind of another president, Lyndon B. Johnson.

I was 30 years old, a White House Assistant, working on politics and domestic policy. I watched and listened as LBJ made his fateful decisions about Vietnam. He had been thrust into office by the murder of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963-- 46 years ago this weekend. And within hours of taking the oath of office was told that the situation in South Vietnam was far worse than he knew.

Less than four weeks before Kennedy's death, the South Vietnamese president had himself been assassinated in a coup by his generals, a coup the Kennedy Administration had encouraged.

South Vietnam was in chaos, and even as President Johnson tried to calm our own grieving country, in those first weeks in office, he received one briefing after another about the deteriorating situation in Southeast Asia.

....Granted, Barack Obama is not Lyndon Johnson, Afghanistan is not Vietnam and this is now, not then. But listen and you will hear echoes and refrains that resonate today.
Moyers replays excerpts of recorded telephone conversations LBJ had with personal advisors and friends which convey his tortured conscience:
And nine months I'm just an inherited-I'm a trustee. I've got to win an election. Or Nixon or somebody else has.....

The Republicans are going to make a political issue out of it, every one of them, even Dirksen....

.... I will tell you the more I just stayed awake last night thinking about this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know what in the hell it looks to me like we're getting into another Korea [...] I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damned mess that I ever saw.

.... What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country?

.... It's damned easy to get in a war but it's gonna be awfully hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in.

..... all of my military people tell me and my economic people that we cannot do this to the extent of the commitment we have now. It's got to be materially increased. And the outcome is not really predictable at the moment.....

Well, I opposed it in '54. But we're there now, and there's only one of three things you can do. One is run and let the dominoes start falling over. And God Almighty, what they said about us leaving China would just be warming up, compared to what they'd say now. I see Nixon is raising hell about it today. Goldwater too. You can run or you can fight, as we are doing. Or you can sit down and agree to neutralize all of it.

Anytime you got that many people against you that far away from your home base, it's bad.
Bill Moyers concludes,
Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.
As I listen to these recorded telephonic conversations, I conclude that LBJ was more interested in appeasing the Republicans than the Communists. In other words, his short term political interests took precedent over his best guess as to the long term interests of his country.

25 comments:

  1. That last paragraph gets to the crux of the matter: Obama has to worry less about short-term political interests and more about the long-term implications of escalation. But that's a tough thing for any politician to do.

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  2. As I read the words of Lyndon Johnson, I became sad. I know that President Obama is going down the same road. The public (Americans) have said they don't want this war. But I guess they don't matter as much as the generals in the field, who are always wanting more soldiers.

    Like Johnson, Obama is trying to appease Republicans, In the end, he's going to lose the approval of the American people and his base in the democratic party.

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  3. If, and or when he escalates the troops. It will show that there is no difference between the two parties. It is not the republican party that he will be appeasing. It is the [MIC], the International Banking Cartel, and the Globalized Corps. that he is obeying.

    "War Is A Racket" Gen. Smedley D. Butler.

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  4. Vig,
    I'm with Stimpson:

    "And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.
    We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes."


    ...says it all to me.
    -SJ

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  5. Great post, Vig, and it is a terrible national tragedy we will be losing Moyers' reports sometime next year. They just don't make journalists of his caliber anymore.

    There are so many similarities between LBJ/Vietnam and Obama/Afghanistan it is horrifying. We cannot afford the repeat of such a debacle as Vietnam. Why the hell don't we ever seem to learn our historical lessons?

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  6. Gareth Porter made a strong case that with both LBJ and JFK,pressure from their National Security advisers was ultimately what caused both to increase the troop level in Vietnam. The pressure from the NSC was even more of a factor than facing charges of being Soft On Communism from the Republicans. And per Porters sources, both presidents KNEW it was wrong and we couldn't win but took what was in the short term the easy course and escalated.

    Most of us would say we wouldn't have yielded to the pressure if we were there, but who's to say ?

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  7. Oso, you, Jack, Daddy and Reality-Z are right. It's the MIC (and their civilian suits advisors) that our so-called leaders appease in the end. In Obama's case, we have this great and unprecedented albeit dysfunctional military machine left over from the Cold War. Bereft of an tangible enemy, its apologists have tried successfully to conjure up a world-wide islamofascist movement on the march that must be stopped to save our newest 'dominoes'. Like LBJ, who only wanted to be an engineer for his Great Society, Obama appears like a babe in the woods. He can't see that to decide against this tragic cause which he deemed a good war during his campaign, is not the same as discrediting military thought. Their advice has to do with, or should have to do with, what it takes to stay in Afghanistan. But we elected Barack Obama to be the decider and to decide whether or not we should stay. [It's Pakistan, dummy! Not Afghanistan!] Watching his chicken shit statement today, Obama seemed like he's let the Generals be the deciders.

    The only thing that disgusted me more was the pasty and flaccid Dick Cheney posing to speak for the troops. What a MFSOB.

    I have got to stop watching so much teevee, huh?

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  8. Looks like the number will be 34K troops. Obama should listen to the LBJ tapes over, and over, and over. He is falling into the abyss. Presidents come and go. The [MIC] along with their generals will still be there after the President is out of office. This is truly endless. They have many fuses in place.

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  9. Nombre 44 calls this Obama's war of Dick Cheney's necessity. Apt. Absolutely. I'm off the bus. I'm giving up my seat on the Barack Obama Express. I'm not even going to stick around long enough to see who takes it.

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  10. VIG; I kept warning every one, then i kept reminding every one that zbig, and albright were his foreign policy advisers during the campaign. kissinger approved of his appointments. he kept gates, patreus, mc chrystal. Holbrooke and hillary are leading his state dept. in the region. Now we did not sign the ban on land mines, looks like he will surge the patriot act. W.T.F MORE IS THERE? Beware of a major false flag.

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  11. I think Zbig, Albright & Holbrooke are good people. The failing is not to keep the Generals in their places.

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  12. The are the policy architects. The Generals fulfill their wishes. It is the policy of endless nation building. The never ending empire expansion for energy resources. ZBIG and his hatred for Russia, Albright and her love of NATO, is feeding the [MIC]. Zbig basically laid out the plan in his book The Grand Chess Board. These shadows behind the curtains will not stop until their agenda is fulfilled.

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  13. However, this is a reminder to long term readers: I have always maintained that President Obama would have better served himself with a Secretary of State Wesley Clark, then he has served himself with HRC. Marginally, anyways. I just have to say, I, ahem, told you so.

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  14. VIG; imo; Any one would have been better than Hillary. I believe she has her own covert agenda, inside the State Dept. If Obama truly wanted to go bi-partisan, he should have picked Chuck Hagel. Hagel went with Obama on his mid-esat junket before the election. Hagel is a Nam vet, he was against the attack on Iraq right from the beginning when it was not FASHIONABLE to do so. Hillary's appointment was part of the brokered the deal.

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  15. Yeah, Hagel would have been a good choice. He's varsity.

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  16. Reading from Zeenews:

    Clark supported the Obama administrations decision to enhance monetary assistance being provided to Pakistan, but highlighted that the White House should seek more action from Islamabad against the Al-Qaedaleadership.

    We must encourage and demand that Pakistan take direct action against the al-Qaeda leadership, he said underlining that it wont be such an easy task.

    That wont be easy because there must be someone in Pakistan who must believe that if it werent for Al-Qaeda being there, that we would be totally aligned with India, he said.

    So somehow weve got to disabuse the government of Pakistan of that suspicion, and its got to be driven down through the ranks. And weve got to have their wholehearted support to clean up their own internal security problems,Clark added.


    It's Pakistan, America. Not AfghanisNam.

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  17. And BTW, after further reflection, I'm taking back my seat on the Obama Express. I just don't want a member of the clusterfux community to take it and start shouting back seat driving advice.

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  18. Instead he is heading the Fort Hood investigation. One of the clues were when Obama kept Gates, and then Patreus. Obama stayed the course.

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  19. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghanistan25-2009nov25,0,87643,print.story

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  20. [Oso, you, Jack, Daddy and Reality-Z are right. It's the MIC (and their civilian suits advisors) that our so-called leaders appease in the end. In Obama's case, we have this great and unprecedented albeit dysfunctional military machine left over from the Cold War. Bereft of an tangible enemy, its apologists have tried successfully to conjure up a world-wide islamofascist movement on the march that must be stopped to save our newest 'dominoes'. Like LBJ, who only wanted to be an engineer for his Great Society, Obama appears like a babe in the woods. He can't see that to decide against this tragic cause which he deemed a good war during his campaign, is not the same as discrediting military thought. Their advice has to do with, or should have to do with, what it takes to stay in Afghanistan. But we elected Barack Obama to be the decider and to decide whether or not we should stay. [It's Pakistan, dummy! Not Afghanistan!] Watching his chicken shit statement today, Obama seemed like he's let the Generals be the deciders.]
    including the above, what a post! Well done, Vig. I've reposted onto FB for my pals to read. Hope you don't mind...

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  21. I watched this. It was one of the finest pieces of journalism I have ever seen and it gave me a different perspective of LBJ than the one I had demonstrating against the war.

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  22. I don't think that anything short of total collapse will end the warmongering now. We have to learn our lesson the same way the USSR learned theirs.

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  23. J. Roger, you give word to my deepest, unspoken fears.

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