Obama's Vietnam

by Dennis Green

I listen to Leon Panetta, head of our CIA, on ABC’s This Week and it’s obvious, as the old French saying goes, that his ass is sucking air. Panetta presides over one of the weakest and most discredited intelligence agencies in the world. The CIA could have foreseen and prevented 9/11 and didn’t. It hasn’t anticipated and prevented the attack on Fort Hood, the Detroit Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, or come anywhere close to finding Osama bin Laden.

“He’s somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” Panetta says, and then adds, “We haven’t had any certain location intelligence on him since the early 2000’s.” Wow! America, the most powerful nation in the world, and we can’t even find one terrorist, lost track of him almost ten years ago, and with all those satellites, all that money, all those agents, no results. Failure.

Panetta also reminds me of the national leaders lying to us during the Vietnam War. He attempts to assert that we are having success against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but other reports, (Face the Nation), make it clear that we are failing in that effort too. He can’t even explain precisely how the Taliban is a threat to the security of the United States, except to say that “They are willing to harbor Al Qaeda, who are still trying to attack us here.”

Neither Panetta, nor Obama, nor Clinton, nor anyone else can explain how North Korea or Iran pose a threat to our security. Even if they acquire nuclear weapons, so what? The Soviet Union had more warheads than we did, and the “Mutually Assured Destruction” clause prevented both sides from using them. If either Iran or North Korea launched a missile in our direction, we would retaliate with hundreds of our own long-range missiles, and wipe them off the face of the earth. Suicide bombers with suitcase nukes? Don’t make me laugh.

Just as our invasion of Iraq was totally unjustified, based on lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction, our entire involvement in the Middle East lies on a platform of lies and exaggerations. Incompetence made 9/11 possible, and we can only hope those agencies responsible for our security are now on their toes. But if Obama perpetuates the conflict in Afghanistan, especially using the strategy of Counter-Insurgency, he is doomed to become another LBJ.

Using a “Counter-Terrorism” strategy instead, however, has one big disadvantage to our Military. It doesn’t require 150,000 troops on the ground. Perhaps as few as 10,000, and a more efficient use of drones and the occasional commando attack on Al Qaeda across the border into Pakistan. Illegal? So what? If we can invade Iraq, we can certainly penetrate Pakistan from time to time.

But our Military needs and wants a full-scale force deployed in Afghanistan to retain the kind of power they have during wartime. Are we, as Obama said, “A nation at war?” Doubtful. Except for those Jarheads and Special Forces, Navy SEALS, Blackhawks and others, nobody knows and nobody cares, except to wonder why we spend all those trillions and all those lives. For oil? For Israel? Certainly not for the U.S. of A.

Panetta explains how “excellent” the CIA has become, since the bad old days when it couldn’t find its own ass with both hands. And again, he is about as convincing as General Westmoreland explaining how much we were winning “Hearts & Minds” in Vietnam by burning hooches. Yep.

One of the reasons Americans have lost faith in their own government is the pathetic War in Afghanistan. And the more President Obama ties his destiny to outcomes there, the more miserable and forsaken that destiny will be.

©2010 Dennis Green