“Doves” opposed American involvement in Vietnam; “hawks” supported it.
Technically, the president was right.
Vietnam was jungles and Buddhists. Afghanistan is mountains and followers of Islam.
Al-Qaida plotted the 9/11 attacks from safe havens in Afghanistan. Ho Chi Minh never tried to bring down American skyscrapers or murder American civilians.
Americans who grew up and lived through Vietnam, however, got a familiar feeling as they listened to Obama.
Political scientist John Green experienced a “faint déjà vu.”
Green, now 56, was a college student as the Vietnam War escalated, worried about being drafted into military service.
“I was sweating it out,” said Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
Green had a high enough draft lottery number to miss being called.
The draft has been replaced by an all-volunteer Army, but there still is a Democratic Party, just as there was during Vietnam. Democrats today are becoming as divided over Afghanistan as they were over Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s, Green said.
Vietnam drove Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, architect of that war’s escalation, from office, paving the way for Republican Richard M. Nixon’s political resurrection.
America’s growing involvement in Afghanistan — which will bring troop strength to about 100,000 — has just started and Democrats already are turning, mostly politely, against the Democratic president they helped elect a year ago.
“While I’m encouraged that the president laid out clear goals and a responsible timeline for completion, I remain skeptical about a commitment of 30,000 of our service men and women,” U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a press release.
The two candidates seeking the nomination to run for Ohio’s other U.S. Senate seat in 2010 — Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner — were more than skeptical.
“Keeping America safe is our most sacred duty. ... But defeating al-Qaida does not require 30,000 additional troops be sent to Afghanistan,” Fisher said in his release.
Brunner was the least guarded:
“It’s time to say ‘Enough’,” she said on the Huffington Post. “It’s time to employ more than military and mercantile strategies in Afghanistan and set a timetable to bring our troops home.”
Obama’s support came mostly from Republicans, including Rob Portman, who’s seeking the GOP nomination in Ohio’s 2010 U.S. Senate race.
“I agree with President Obama’s decision to follow the advice of his military commanders,” Portman said in a release. “... However, I disagree with an exit strategy that includes arbitrary withdrawal dates that will embolden our enemies.”
That strategy, Obama said, will “allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.”
“From a political point of view, that’s about (all) the tolerance Americans are going to have,” Green said.
Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@CoxOhio.com.
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