When President Kennedy was assassinated, there were 16,300 U.S. fighting men in Vietnam. Their status had been upgraded from advisers to the South Vietnamese army to warriors. Five years later, when President Johnson decided the war was unwinnable, following the Tet offensive and Walter Cronkite's verdict the war was unwinnable, there were 536,000 U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. By the time the Paris peace accords were signed on Jan. 17, 1973, Americans killed totaled 58,193. The 21-year-olds and younger KIA numbered 24,488. Conventional wisdom was turned on its head, and defeat in Vietnam didn't make a particle of difference in the outcome of the Cold War. The U.S. and its allies won; the USSR and its captive states lost.
President Obama is not Lincoln with a BlackBerry, as some have suggested, but Lyndon Johnson with a war the country no longer supports and a new Cronkite yapping at his Afghan heels.
A growing number of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats -- and a majority of Europeans -- can see Afghanistan moving inexorably toward stalemate. And the future of the Atlantic alliance is at stake -- yet again. The generals, part cerebral, part swashbuckler, are a new, learned breed of experts in counterinsurgency warfare. Yet they, too, like their predecessors, look to more and more troops to lead them to victory. A year late and a trillion dollars short sums up their predicament.
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