Let's go back to 1975, when Saigon fell. Gerald Ford was president. Should Ford be blamed for losing Vietnam? After all, there was talk at the time of using massive B52 strikes to slow down the NVA advance.
But Ford declined. The Congress and the country just didn't have the stomach for it. And Saigon fell.
So did Ford lose Vietnam? Most folks would say no. The blame goes to LBJ. It was LBJ who made the lion's share of bad decisions that led to that disaster.
The same goes with Afghanistan. Obama will probably preside over the fall of Kabul. Or it might happen under is successor.
Either way, the LBJ equivalent for Afghanistan is not Obama. It's Bush. And that's a hard thing to say.
LBJ was going to implement a surge in Vietnam, but then gave into political pressure and caved, sending in far fewer men than those in field command thought necessary.
In contrast, President Bush committed to a surge and his successor, President Obama, is the one who decided to send far fewer than those in field command thought necessary - and he was able to do this easily because the press ran interference for him.
Bush ‘declared victory’ (quit while ahead) and left A’stan, for the most part. But intense pressure to get out of Iraq and go back to fighting the ‘good war’ in A’stan, under impossible ROI, ensured it would become the mess it has.
Unless we are willing to radically change the ROI, we will not eliminate enough madrassa cannon fodder to keep our men there one more day. (Even if we do open up ROI it may not be worth staying one more day.)
Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford-—Bush-1, Clinton,Bush-2, Obamuzzie——It is all their faults. Failure to utterly destroy an enemy who has taken a cheap shot at us is half-assed at best. Each failure of leadership has left us with even more enemies. The only security is the willingness to use overwhelming force against aggressors. As with Travon: throwing the first punch can get you killed. Anything less at the national level is lazy, gutless, and even suicidal. God bless napalm-——Semper Fi