{"id":743,"date":"2009-10-01T20:36:07","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T01:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=743"},"modified":"2011-03-16T23:40:59","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T03:40:59","slug":"seems-like-old-times-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=743","title":{"rendered":"Seems Like Old Times in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=747\">Next I Read The News Entry<\/a><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Seems Like Old Times in Afghanistan\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p>They say that <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20091001\/ap_on_go_pr_wh\/us_us_afghanistan\">President Obama is meeting with platoons of advisors to determine whether and if so how to carry on that conflict<\/a>.\u00a0 To those of us old enough to remember Vietnam, it all seems eerily familiar.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Take one Democratic president, elected with a mandate to further a liberal agenda, but with one reservation.\u00a0 In Kennedy, and then Johnson\u2019s case, whatever they might have wished to do domestically, they had to fight world Communism, which in its day was regarded as fearfully as radical Islam is today.\u00a0 Add some generals who swear they cannot honor that paramount presidential priority unless they escalate an unpopular war.\u00a0 Add the fact that the opposite side is a popular guerilla insurgency with a more or less safe haven in another country.\u00a0 Then top it off with a corrupt local government that has used the shelter of U.S. military protection to avoid reforming itself and behaving honestly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In retrospect Vietnam was clearly unwinnable.\u00a0 Afghanistan has a lengthy record of humbling foreign occupiers including the British and the Russians at the height of their respective imperial powers.\u00a0 (Shades of the French at Dienbienphu.)\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dirty_Harry\">In the words of Dirty Harry<\/a>, \u201cYou got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?\u201d\u00a0 Because luck will be required in large doses to overcome the Afghanistan jinx.<\/p>\n<p>I for one do not feel lucky.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=747\">Next I Read The News Entry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Next I Read The News Entry Seems Like Old Times in Afghanistan\u00a0 They say that President Obama is meeting with platoons of advisors to determine whether and if so how to carry on that conflict.\u00a0 To those of us old enough to remember Vietnam, it all seems eerily familiar.\u00a0 Take one Democratic president, elected with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[791],"tags":[585,84,798,799,797],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-i-read-the-news-today","tag-afghanistan","tag-barack-obama","tag-dienbienphu","tag-dirty-harry","tag-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}