In the preface of former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara's, apologia on Vietnam, In Retrospect - The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, one will read:
"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."
Tens of thousands of American service men and women died in Vietnam and billions of tax payer dollars were wasted and in 1995 Mr. McNamara writes that it was a terrible mistake. That mistake is part of our history. As this country continues to stumble haphazardly through Iraq and Afghanistan one can only wonder if our current elected and appointed leaders remember the debacle of the United States policy in Vietnam. Did our current political and military decision makers study world history and political science? Have they forgotten the cost to the USSR after its 10 years of war in Afghanistan? Consider the warning of philosopher George Santayana "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it". It appears as though we are repeating the mistakes of our past.
It is becoming more obvious every day that the lessons of Vietnam have been lost and forgotten. As a result of the Bush administration's lies and deviousness we now find ourselves militarily involved on two fronts: Afghanistan and Iraq. We seem to have no clear military object nor do we have a rational political objective. I seem to recall Obama's campaign pledge to get the US out of both Afghanistan and Iraq. How does the plan for sending tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan bring about this promised withdrawal?
The President continues to meet with his war council trying to decide how many more U.S. troops he will send to Afghanistan. I tend to agree with the skeptics that the decision has already been made to send tens of thousands of additional ground forces. The delay in announcing this troop build-up is due to the fact that the right language has not been formulated by which to make the announcement and convince the American people that this unpopular war will continue ... indefinitely.
In the mean time we have seen Secretary of State Clinton standing with that fraud of a President Hamid Karzai promising all who will listen that he will try to do a better job. American soldiers now have to conduct themselves as if they were a civilian police force in dealing with suspected enemy detainees, complete with evidence gathering and paperwork. All the while the money keeps flowing out of the USA and into the black holes of Iraq and Afghanistan. To date these two wars have cost the American taxpayers almost $935,000,000,000 ... read that as 935 billion dollars and it will more than likely exceed one trillion dollars by year's end. To see the counter go to ---- http://www.costofwar.com/. Imagine what this amount of money could have done for the U.S. economy had it not been wasted in and on Iraq and Afghanistan?
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
