Obama's Vietnam?

Tomorrow evening, President Obama will give a speech in which he will lay out his plans for a troop escalation in Afghanistan. Apparently he has decided to send many more of our young people into harm's way. And for what?

Bush began that war eight years ago for what may have appeared to be a good reason at the time: The Taliban who ran the country were harboring al-Qaeda. But it's eight years later and al-Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan. The Afghan people don't want us there. Congress doesn't want us there. The American people don't want us there. The American troops don't want to be there. And it seems that all we're doing is continuing to prop up the corrupt Karzai government. And people continue to die.

So Obama has a lot of explaining to do tomorrow evening. And I'm not optimistic that his explanations will be good enough.

I'm also not optimistic that Congress will find the strength to use its purse strings to force some sanity into the debate.

I fear that Obama's Afghan war is looking more and more like Johnson's Vietnam. And we should remember the fact that Johnson's troop escalation in Vietnam ultimately cost him his chance at a 1968 reelection.

I don't want to see that piece of history repeat itself.