So, you see, Barack Obama is a Democratic president just like Jack Kennedy and LBJ and, right, there’s a war going on in Aghanistan which is in asia, just like Vietnam! So the parallels are just uncanny. Right? Wrong.
It’s time, people. for a comprehensive ban on making facile comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Prospect’s Tom Streithorst is only the latest fellow to warn that Afghanistan “could destroy Obama’s presidency, as Vietnam did Johnson’s.”
This seems extremely unlikely. Let’s trot through some of the reasons:
1. 50,000 Americans died in Vietnam. The current figure for Afghanistan? 796. There may be quite a number of troops involved but Afghanistan is, by the standards of these things, a small and non-deadly war. US deaths are running at a little over 100 a year. Absent soaring casualty rates body bags aren’t going to end the war.
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