COLUMN: Obama should reflect on Johnson, Vietnam decision

Do you have a sense that we have been here before — maybe a little feeling of déjà vu all over again, as Yogi might put it? It might be a very good thing if Barack Obama reflected on what happened to Lyndon B. Johnson.
It is columnist George Will who brings this to mind. He is a conservative, not a right wing radical who gets mistaken for a conservative, but an actual conservative. Will had a column about Afghanistan the other day, saying it is time to pull back in that country, not get in more deeply as Obama seems to be doing.
Will points out some issues that seem to escape the attention of many. For one thing, does anyone understand what we mean to accomplish in Afghanistan — or Iraq? I don’t. It never was clear since we turned our attention from going after Osama bin Laden to invading Iraq.
More than 40 years ago the Johnson presidency was riding high. After passage of the Civil Rights Act and programs designed to give elderly and low-income people a fairer share of the productive output of the land, LBJ was on top of the world.
But there was a big problem. We had gradually become involved in what amounted to a civil war in Vietnam. It was not clear what we were accomplishing there, other than opposing what we saw as communist expansion while the Vietnamese saw it as a war for national independence.
We were getting in deeper and deeper, and the chance for a positive outcome was not clear. In fact, it was unclear what would be a positive outcome for us. Still, we were getting in deeper as some high officials in the Johnson administration had escalating doubts — mostly kept to themselves.
Johnson stepped up the war, thousands upon thousands of Americans lost their lives, and Johnson kept Americans involved in Vietnam because he feared that if he withdrew, the right wing would charge him with “softness on communisn.” As it turned out, staying in Vietnam wrecked his presidency and led to nearly 40 years of right wing dominance of U.S. politics.
In Afghanistan, Obama finds himself in an LBJ-like fix. Again, it is hard to see what a good outcome for us would be in this war, and losses are piling up. Will said the smart thing to do might be to pull most of our troops back and just keep enough military clout at the edge of Afghanistan to remind terrorists there would be consequences if we are struck again by people based there.
Afghanistan has never had an effective government, and there is little reason to think we can create one for them. There is a better chance that this war will wreck the Obama presidency than that a stable Afghan government can be created. Afghanistan could be Obama’s Vietnam.
Remember the “domino effect”? They said if we pulled out of Vietnam, all of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes and communism would sweep through Indonesia and threaten Australia.
We finally abandoned that fight. All of those dominoes did not fall, but LBJ did. Obama should reflect on that.
Kennedy thought
With a very heavy touch of irony, Sen. Ted Kennedy told his son, “We Kennedys bring out the best in everybody.”
He was making a joke of his political opponents’ habitual demonization of Kennedy, an easy and reliable way to raise right wing money. That story came up at the Kennedy funeral the other day, and it struck me as not only ironic, but also a symptom of the personalized meanness afflicting American politics in the 21st century.
As was noted often, many Republican colleagues were in the congregation at the Kennedy service in Boston. They spoke of the senator’s ability and capacity for working with them to reach compromises that would pave the way for passage of legislation. They praised his kindness and empathy and willingness to reach out personally regardless of disagreements on political ideology. He was often called the best senator of his time.
So I wondered: Might they feel a twinge of regret that their political operatives have so demonized the Massachusetts senator for the political advantage of themselves and their party? If they do you can bet they will never admit it. The base wouldn’t like that.

— Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including the Morning News. He can be reached at .