From Salon.com

"...Many of Obama's initiatives in his first few days in office -- preparing to depart Iraq, ending torture and closing Guantánamo -- were aimed at signaling a sharp turn away from Bush administration policies. In contrast, the headline about the strike in Waziristan could as easily have appeared in December with "President Bush" substituted for "President Obama." Pundits are already worrying that Obama may be falling into the Lyndon Johnson Vietnam trap, of escalating a predecessor's halfhearted war into a major quagmire. What does Obama's first military operation tell us about his administration's priorities?"

Lest we forget, pundits were calling Iraq a failure and a quagmire within 24 hours of the start of the war (remember the dust storms?). And for the next few years, all we heard was that Iraq was "Bush's Vietnam" from the left (and they were wrong). And here we are, less than 7 days into Obama's presidency and we have Obama's Vietnam now.

Jordan .

yeah, i'm not too sure how he is going to handle that tight rope. ain't gonna be easy. He's gonna find that campaigning is easier than governing. LOL!

Jordan .

Here's hoping that drone was just a 'muscle flex'.  I think there's a benefit to Obama to let the world know he's not going to wet himself at the prospect of military action.  That said, Pakistan is so unstable that more incursions have a real risk of either turning the gov't against the US or resulting in an overthrow.  We've probably all seen the 20/20 style reports that go into detail about how the Taliban is in bed with Pakistani intelligence.  Unfortunately it means we can't really count on any proactive support from Pakistan.  It's not clear to me that just paying off people in Pakistan will work as well as it did in Iraq...

About Afghanistan- my impression is that it is so unstable now that somebody needs to go in there.  It may need to be a fairly length rebuilding process, like Iraq.  I think there are probably goals short of completely ridding the mountains of extremists that are worth increasing troop numbers for.  Will we ever get Bin Laden?  Who knows.  I'm sure Obama  realizes that capturing/killing him is not the ultimate  goal for the region

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

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