Posted on 09/18/2014 9:19:46 AM PDT by Lorianne
Ed Morrissey over at HotAir has a great write-up on the new Wall Street Journal story about how President Obama plans to exert a great deal of “personal control” over Middle Eastern air strikes, so I won’t try to reprise his arguments. To briefly recap, here’s what the WSJ reported last night about Obama’s new strategy:
The U.S. military campaign against Islamist militants in Syria is being designed to allow President Barack Obama to exert a high degree of personal control, going so far as to require that the military obtain presidential signoff for strikes in Syrian territory, officials said.
Here’s where it gets spooky. Compare that paragraph to the following quote from the book “American Generalship: Character Is Everything: The Art of Command.” In it, the author recounts a passage from Gen. William Westmoreland’s memoirs about how political interference from a know-it-all president severely hampered the American campaign in Vietnam. The parallels are terrifying:
Westmoreland LBJ Outhouse
A controversial new war with no definition of victory, no clear exit strategy, and a naive president who thinks targets should be picked from the Oval Office? What could possibly go wrong?
It’s not too late. He could go be a mercenary, which is what I wish all the hawks’d do instead of bothering us about it.
What Congressional obstruction?
2 losers
Ok, you got me there.
I was just trying for that “superman” phrase,
they really haven’t stopped him from doing
anything have they?
A mercenary? In Syria or Iraq?
I don’t get your last statement “instead of bothering us about it.”
Thanks for that
By bothering us I mean whipping us up into a frenzy so that we’ll support their bombings/invasions. Not that our support is strictly necessary; Obama doesn’t think he needs anyone’s permission and he’s practically correct. But they are a little afraid of us, as evidenced by the Syrian war we narrowly averted not long ago. You remember, with the red lines and all.
My preference would be for them to leave us alone and either go themselves or buy their own armies and fight Al Queda II, or whoever it is posing a grave threat to someone else’s national security.
The president promises every day that he won't commit "armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq."
The more he promises, the more I suspect that's just what will happen.
FDR made similar promises in 1941, but his situation after Pearl Harbor wasn't quite the same.
The parallel to Johnson in the 1960s is much closer.
The business of telling the other side what one plans to do is also similar, though I don't think LBJ ever offered Ho and Giap tactical advice.
But Obama is even smarter than LBJ, so “he’ll do it right” this time.
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