Ah, the first “Is [INSERT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION HERE] [INSERT PRESIDENT'S NAME HERE]‘s Vietnam?” article written about a Presidential administration.  Always a magical time.

Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

Naturally, the NYT is mostly concerned with Afghanistan as it relates to American domestic policy – the idea that the situation might have either national security or humanitarian implications that might affect the decision-making process is carefully ignored – but that’s not unexpected. As the article itself references (but does not admit), the Left has never been interested in Afghanistan as Afghanistan: it was a convenient club with which to try to beat the (Republican) President with, and now that there is no (Republican) President in office the progressive wing is abandoning the illusion of caring, with happy sighs all around.

At any rate, given the choice between finishing up the GWOT and instituting health care rationing… well, the NYT knows what side it’s on.  Which is actually the less insulting interpretation of this: the other is that the NYT is using the specter of a possible failure in instituting health care rationing to justify retreating from Afghanistan…

Moe Lane

PS: I’m assuming the former interpretation in large part because the word ‘quagmire’ appears nowhere in the NYT article.  That word is, as they say, a tell.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.