Obama will fold to the generals, just like LBJ did

John Mearsheimer at Foreign Policy says, Accept defeat and get out of Afghanistan now. 

The real tragedy of Vietnam is not that the United States lost, but that it became involved in the first place. It pains me to say this as someone who served in the American military from 1965 to 1975, but the anti-war movement was right: It did not matter to U.S. security whether North Vietnam conquered the south and unified that country under communist rule. More than 58,000 American soldiers and more than 2 million Vietnamese died in an unnecessary and foolish war.

A similar logic applies today with regard to Afghanistan. The Republicans and General McChrystal claim that it is absolutely necessary to win the war in Afghanistan for the simple reason that a Taliban victory will allow al Qaeda to re-establish a sanctuary in Afghanistan. And we all know what happened the last time Osama bin Laden was free to scheme and plot against the United States from Afghanistan: September 11. The fatal flaw in this argument is that al Qaeda has a sanctuary next door in Pakistan from which it has been operating since it was driven out of Afghanistan in Dec. 2001. It does not need a sanctuary in Afghanistan. …

In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, it simply does not matter whether the United States wins or loses. It makes no sense for the Obama administration to expend more blood and treasure to vanquish the Taliban. The United States should accept defeat and immediately begin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.

Of course, President Obama will never do such a thing. Instead, he will increase the American commitment to Afghanistan, just as Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam in 1965. The driving force in both cases is domestic politics. Johnson felt that he had to escalate the fight in Vietnam because otherwise the Republicans would lambaste him for "losing Vietnam," the same way they accused President Harry Truman of "losing China" in the late 1940s. 

Obama and his fellow Democrats know full well that if the United States walks away from Afghanistan now, the Republicans will accuse them of capitulating to terrorism and undermining our security. And this charge will be leveled at them for decades to come, harming Democrats at the polls come election time. The Democrats have no intention of letting that happen.

A few words about leadership/credibility. Reagan could declare Lebanon a defeat and get out because he was a hawk. Mearsheimer uses his own military background (West Point, Air Force, as a young man) to increase his authority. Note that when Chris Matthews calls on Obama to play Eisenhower to McChrystal’s MacArthur, he overlooks the fact that Eisenhower had complete cred as a military man, while Obama has no such background. This makes Obama even less likely to go against the generals. JJ Goldberg got at this logic at J Street, when he said that the people criticizing Israel tend to be liberals who are afraid of guns. As a lefty who is afraid of guns, I would say, So what? Guns don’t solve very much. I wish liberals would learn to affirm this.

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