Afghanistan.....enough.

Well, I got up yesterday and read George Packer's
ringing piece on Richard Holbrooke and the terrifying
situation in Afghanistan. It is encylodpedic, thorough
and reminds me of the intellectual jungle that
stupified Washington just before and during the the
Vietnam War.

Poor ol Lyndon Johnson, the president
who did so many wonderful things in this country, all
the way from the anti-poverty program (which was
hugely successful) to Medicare and weaving the
civil rights movement into our mainstream, this same
guy was destroyed by an endless, pointless war
whose best result was a black marble wall a hundred
yards from the Lincoln memorial. Are we going to do
it again? Will another president, this one a "son" of
Johnson's presidency....be destroyed by another paralyzing
war explained by 9/11 and the international horror of
the jihadists.....just as the Vietnam War was explained by
the "domino effect" of nations falling under the winter of
communism.

Holbrooke says, explaining that this war
is different (aren't they all?), that the failure in Vietnam
"was based on a profound misreading, by five presidents
and their advisors, of he strategic importance of Vietnam
to the U.S." Try applying that paradigm to the
Afghanistand of Karzai, Gary Cooper and the Khyber Pass.
In truth I was scared silly by the article.....it was the same
dense, short-term reasoning that David Halberstam
uncovered in "The Best and the Brightest". McGeorge
Bundy, MacNamara et. al. writ large in 2009. All of the
same rationales are in place......guerilla warfare, villages
on the brink of going "Taliban", an endless supply of
American soldiers rolling into the maw. And most of all,
the threat of communism engulfing the world is now replaced
by a new darkness, crazy Islam.

Nobody, and I mean nobody is angrier and than I am about
9/11. I had the incredible bad fortune to be there....standing
with my family watching those poor souls jumping from the
top floors of the World Trade Center. I want to get those
bastards who did that. And I think a strategy organized
around targeting Al Queda...wherever they are....is manda-
tory. I also hate the sexist lunacy of the Taliban...but I'm
not if favor of a consuming war to "get" them. My God, Islam
(and it's lunatic fringe) has been around for 1500 years,
"Al Queda"in those days was called "The Assassins". Pope
Urban II started the Crusades and noone could stop them.
Even the gentle St. Francis couldn't negotiate an end to the
Third Crusade. The poison of theocratic warfare flows
forever......

I love Obama...and I love his pragmitism. I love his
balance and his humanity and I think he will find a way out
of this mess, but I do not think he is well served by the men
and women of the State Department.....and I do not want him
to be wasted by another Vietnam.

ol Val