You remember that war, don’t you?

That was where the US (under a Democratic president named Johnson) decided we could jump ugly in somebody else’s civil war.

Vietnam had been stewing in conflict under the occupation of foreign (French in this case) troops for many years. When the French tired of the situation, the United States stepped in first at a low level measured in the thousands of advisers.

That simmering participation took huge leaps when war president Johnson upped the ante to hundreds of thousands of troops and lots of planes and artillery and war ships and stuff. And never forget the reality we directly participated in the slaughter of what many sources peg at millions of dead non-combatants. (I’m not even to start on the still ongoing environmental issues such as agent Orange … yet one more huge corporate interest well fed by the Democratic led war machine.)

In the end the war industry gorged themselves on our tax dollars, well meaning young people died and were maimed because they believed those they were taught to believe and the end only came when the Vietnamese people decided their own fates.

And now Obama has Afghanistan and his very own civil war to be in the middle of, and he’s in for a penny, in for a pound. This dog has Obama by the tail and isn’t gonna let go.

But this is what Obama wanted and wants. He spoke of this “good war” in Afghanistan often and prominently during his quest for the presidency, and he’s continued that line of talk since being elected.

I suspect most progressives just weren’t really paying attention.

Good morning Vietnam Afghanistan.