Gary Wills Gets it Completely Backwards

Is this Backwards Week? What in the name of Fuck-All is Garry Wills thinking?

I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate.

These are the arguments that have kept us in losing efforts before. They are the ones that made presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon pass on to their successors in the presidency the draining and self-lacerating Vietnam War. They are the arguments that made President George W. Bush pass on two wars to his successor.

One of the strongest arguments for continued firing up of these wars is that none of these presidents wanted to serve only one term (even Lyndon Johnson, who chose not to run for a second full term). But what justification is there for buying a second presidential term with the lives of hundreds or thousands of young American men and women in the military?

I have great hopes for the Obama presidency, even in his first term, and especially if he could have two terms to realize the exciting new things he aspires to do in the White House. But I would rather see him a one-term president than have him pass on another unwinnable war to the person who will follow him in office.

Is there a form of dementia particular to historians that make them draw the exactly wrong lessons from history? Because Wills has it.

LBJ escalated instead of withdrawing and what happened? He became a one-term president.

LBJ, like Obama, inherited a stupid, unwinnable war.

JFK was assassinated before he could execute a war policy or be electorally judged on it. Nixon escalated secretly while publicly negotiating for peace. Smirky/Darth, UNlike Obama, started their stupid, unwinnable wars.

Wills' claim that presidents who withdraw from stupid, unwinnable, unpopular wars always lose re-election is completely baseless. Because it's never happened.

With precisely the same amount of evidence Wills has, I can confidently predict that if President Obama withdraws immediately from both Iraq and Afghanistan, then uses the trillion-dollar-per-year savings to launch the massive jobs program he should have launched last spring, then not only will he be re-elected with 538 electoral votes and 85 percent of the popular vote, but a national referendum will overturn the 22nd Amendment, allowing Obama to serve not two, not three, not four, but FIVE terms as president.

Actually, my basis for that prediction is much stronger than Willis' for his: In 1965, LBJ was in the same position Obama is in now: an inherited war with no path to success, and a monster domestic agenda at stake. LBJ chose to escalate.
What were the consequences? 57,000 dead, the Great Society strangled in the cradle, a near-civil-war at home, and 40 years of republican domination.

And one more thing: LBJ left office a one-term president.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....