[Marxism] A lesson from Vietnam for Obama’s War in Afghanistan

[Nasir Khan]

A Lesson From Vietnam for Obama’s War in Afghanistan
by Joe Galloway, Antiwar.com, July 18, 2009


It was half a century ago, on the night of July 8, 1959, that the
first two American soldiers to die in the Vietnam War were slain when
guerrillas surrounded and shot up a small mess hall where half a dozen
advisers were watching a movie after dinner.

Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand of Copperas Cove, Texas, and Maj. Dale Buis
of Imperial Beach, Calif., would become the first two names chiseled
on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial — the first of 58,261 Americans who
died in Vietnam during the next 16 years.

The deaths of Ovnand and Buis went largely unnoticed at the time,
simply a small beginning of what would become a huge national tragedy.

Presidents from Harry Truman to Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy
to Lyndon B. Johnson to Richard M. Nixon to Gerald R. Ford made
decisions — some small and incremental, some large and disastrous — in
building us so costly and tragic a war.

The national security handmaidens of those presidents, especially
those who served Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, were supposedly the
best and brightest that Harvard and Yale and Princeton could
contribute.

Continued >> http://original.antiwar.com/galloway/2009/07/17/a-lesson-from-vietnam-for-obamas-war-in-afghanistan/