We’ve been here before

To continually repeat the same action and expect something different to happen is just plain stupid.

Thus does Barack Obama follow George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson into some rat hole on the other side of the world, there to prosecute an unwinnable war, using starry-eyed assumptions about a premodern nation with a corrupt government. How much treasure and how many lives will be sacrificed in one more futile effort at nation building, denials notwithstanding?

Vietnam didn’t, Iraq didn’t and Afghanistan doesn’t have any relevance to America’s national security. The 9/11 excuse is a smokescreen. Obama’s new troops are being sent to where al-Qaida is not. This is another presidential war of choice, wrong on all counts.

New evidence suggests that Lyndon Johnson did not think that prosecuting the Vietnam War was really in the nation’s interest. But he did it anyway because he was afraid Republicans would label him an appeaser in the 1968 elections. So Johnson put his own interest above what he thought to be the best interest of the nation by sweet-talking and scaring Americans into an unconstitutional war that left 58,000 American troops dead.

Could Barack Obama be doing the same thing right now?

Lee Freese

Spokane