Here we go again; more interventionist death-dealing, this time brought to you by that die-hard opponent of unnecessary wars, Barack Obama. The war in Afghanistan is all but lost, and will be no less lost with the processing of more American lives though this Muslim extremist meatgrinder. 

But our new president, perhaps in fulfillment of his campaign promise (or for God only knows whatever reason), has decided to play a dangerous game of switcheroo with the lives of our Americans soldiers.

Mr.Obama is ready to add up to 30,000 troops into Afghanistan over the next two years, a near doubling of the current American force there of about 31,000.

The outlines of the military plan for Iraq, presented to Mr. Obama in December, envisioned withdrawing of only two brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops over the next six months. But now military commanders are drawing up renewed plans for a faster withdrawal of American troops, in anticipation that President Obama will reject current proposals as 'too slow'.

But why, all of a sudden has Mr. Obama decided to get antsy about Afghanistan?. What is pertinent here, (and may be already becoming apparent) is Mr. Obama's complete lack of military knowledge, and the frightening thought of him playing general without any battlefield experience. And now is not the time to play political maestro in such a dangerous theater of war.

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War in Afghanistan is a pointless war. If Russia were there for almost 10 years with no victory strategy, then what makes Obama think we can do any better?. Osama Bin Laden may be there, but who really knows for sure where he is? And with all our great intelligence, why haven't we caught him by now? 

And what is there to gain there? Does it actually affect us one way or the other whether the warlords or the Taliban run that godforsaken country? Unlike Iraq, There are no geopolitical gains to be made there, unless the U.S. wants to wrest control of the poppy seed industry.

This Afghan war expansion is remarkably parallel to the beginning of the JFK administration. A newly-elected Mr. Kennedy, anxious to prove his toughness, was suckered by the Pentagon into entering an endless guerrilla war in Vietnam on a terrain that was not favorable to a conventional military power.  And is this expansion not a chilling deja' vu similarity?

But not surprisingly, Mr. Obama has yet to make clear his overall goals beyond calling for more forces, money and diplomacy in an increasingly violent, ungovernable country. Obama inherits the biggest financial crisis since the 30's, so can anyone give a rational explanation as to why he would want to drain the treasury further with billions for an escalated war in Afghanistan?

Is Obama playing war games just for the sake of pleasing his left? Why fire up Afghanistan before the job in Iraq is finished? Does Obama play chess with our troops just to appear as though "he's the military man" in deference to his critics on the right? This is a troublesome thought indeed.

Senior military officers have expressed uneasiness about a quick withdrawal from Iraq ,and are unclear at this point about Mr. Obama’s overall strategy. This begs the question ...Mr Obama, what's goin' on? Do you yourself even have any idea?

If he isn't careful (or prudent), escalating the Afghan theater may prove to be a horror movie for Obama far worse than the Iraq war was for Bush. And one cannot ignore the obvious camparisons of the two presidents, neither of which ever experienced the fright of combat, acting like it's some sort of adventure; when in reality, any veteran will always tell you; war is hell! 

And Afghanistan is an unwinnable hell hole that will make Vietnam look tame in comparison.

Perhaps it's time for President Obama to have our soldiers on his mind instead of playing war games. Our American soldiers could be guarding OUR southwestern borders, patrolling our coasts, and actually defending us from terrorist attacks-- instead of dying halfway around the world while trying to impose American-style democracy on some lawless Muslim country.

Violence has reached record levels this year, and Afghanistan is now considered a deadlier battlefield than Iraq, where the Taliban have the "home field" advantage.

And what of the numbers? Obama's surge of 30,000 troops--into a country the size of Texas, with hostile tribes and warlords lurking in every province-- is a mere military spit in the ocean. Even 130, 0000 would be inviting only a longer war of attrition, similar to the Vietnam fiasco.

As of now, it cannot be ignored-- the parallels between 'Nam and Afghanistan are starkly evident. More buildup is like pouring money down a rat hole, with no apparent strategy of how to win. It is much more than a question of how fast you can add troops; it includes calculating how much risk you are willing to take, with no apparent goal other than, what---killing the enemy?

 This Afghan war he wants to escalate is both culturally, politically, and militarily unwinnable.

But Obama chooses to play professor backwards. He's abandoning completion of the already-won war in Iraq for political reasons, and chooses to fight the unwinnable one in Afghanistan for the vague possibility of hunting down Bin Laden. 

But finding Bin-Ladin will be like finding the cure for cancer: we know he's out there, but where should we look? Osama fought the Russians for a decade in Afghanistan as a Mujahadi freedom fighter, and knows of thousands of secret hiding places. And the man seems immune from betrayal.

Unlike Iraq, the Afghan terrain is like fighting on the moon--forbidding, and it nullifies all possible U.S. advantages such as armor, or the fast mobility of the humvees. The U.S. soldiers, exposed down below on narrow mountain passages, have no place to hide , while the enemy above remains invisible. Classic military flanking maneuvers have little chance of success.

If Obama had the analytical experience of a war veteran commander in chief, he'd realize that the best way to escalate would be not more ground forces, but adding more air forces-- the drones, always hovering menacingly  from above. These are the only way to countermand the height advantage of the enemy Taliban fighters, who know every square inch of the battle terrain.

But with vast new numbers of airborne spy drones patrolling, the Taliban would be forced to stay in perpetual cover, and give a huge strategic advantage over to our guys on the ground. "Death from above" would be a constant threat to the enemy and would save American troops the risk of-search and destroy missions through unfamiliar terrain.

And while were talking strategy, how’s this for a tactic--night vision goggles! Why not use the one technological advantage that could really checkmate the enemy? If the U.S. was the only side who wore them and only moved at night--- then why not do it? The Taliban would be faced with hiding by day from the drones, and forced to keep a defensive posture at night from Americans who can see them, but remain nearly invisible by night themselves.

The Afghan theatre is the total opposite of the Iraqi urban conflict.  Political settlement in Afghanistan is the only possible victory, because once troops are withdrawn, the same problem emerges: the Taliban snakes will slither again out from under their rocks, and resume their bullying posture of religious extremism.

Obama should understand that the history of Afghanistan is unique;  the expansive countryside is so geographically isolated by mountains, it is a land of a thousand territories. There can be no lasting military victory

President Obama is going to inherit the problem the Russians had roughly 25 years ago during the Soviet jihad. You cannot tame the people in this craggy, hostile country where the only rule of law is the bribe given to each of the thousand of local warlords that change sides accordingly.

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But Obama must make good his political promises. And so, next January 21, he will huff and puff mightily away in his inaugural speech..."We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority,"

Yes, and in so doing, thousands of additional American troops are likely to perish, far more  than the 4,000 American casualties suffered in Iraq. But at least we're about to become victorious there, while Afghanistan, by all accounts of history, is unwinnable.

No nation has ever brought the Afghanis to their knees.

From Alexander the Great in 338 B.C. to the USSR in 1980, Afghanistan is always the 'invaders' graveyard.

And Obama is only fooling himself  to think the U.S. is an exception.

Every president faces international crises. Kennedy and the Cuban missiles. Johnson and the gulf of Tonkin; Nixon and the Pueblo incident; Ford and the Mayaguez crisis; Carter and the hostages; Reagan and Korean flight 007; Bush I and Saddam's Kuwait invasion; Clinton and Kosovo in the Balkans; Bush the 2nd and Sept 11. A president must be ready to answer the zero-hour call for either decisive action or inaction to avoid war.

Flashback to the election of '92. Clinton was being painted as unfit to be president, because of his pacifism and draft avoidance of the Vietnam war. But the "comeback kid" shrewdly replied that, "Franklin Roosevelt was a great commander-in-chief during World War II, and did not serve". Clinton went on to a spotty performance in the foreign policy crises of the Balkans, and Somalia. But he did grievous damage to our present military strength when he balanced the budget in his second term, committing the liberal sin of subordinating the military to social policy priorities.

Actually, Franklin Roosevelt was an effective wartime commander-in-chief, but he was more the administrative wizard rather than military master. His friend, Henry Stimson was appointed Secretary of War. Stimson's master stroke in appointing George Marshall, led to Marshall appointing Dwight Eisenhower. Stimson also presided over the Manhattan project. FDR led the nation to victory, but his historic leadership can be attributed mostly to his political astuteness. FDR seemed to have had that uncanny ability to navigate through the 4 year crisis without ever putting the ship of state on the rocks. But his one big Yalta blunder originated the cold war.

When Harry Truman assumed command in spring 1945, the Red Army was at the borders of Iran. Unlike Roosevelt, his steel-spined decisions were shaped during his days as a World War I artillery captain. Truman never backed down. Truman ordered Stalin to back off from the oil-rich country, or he would drop a 3rd atomic bomb right on top of the Soviet armies, who were massed at the Iranian border. Stalin complied. Truman also knew instinctively that the Korean War could have easily escalated into a third world war, and went for a stalemate- a politically unpopular decision that cost him re-election in '52.

Eisenhower proved to be a great peacetime president; but ironically, his greatest legacy was the result of his wartime experience in Germany. Mr. Eisenhower saw how mobility on the autobahns favored Nazi troop movements. This was his original intention in 1956 for constructing our invaluable interstate highway system. To this day, we continue to reap the economic benefits from Eisenhower's greatest peacetime accomplishment.

Question: Would John Kennedy have been able to back down the Russians in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis if he had not been an experienced World War II veteran? We'll never know. But everyone remembers how Kennedy's gut instincts called for force rather than negotiation with the Soviets. This is the essence of what any president does during any foreign crisis...deciding under pressure when much is at stake. This often separates the soldier presidents from the civilians. Do we fight or take flight?

Jimmie Carter may have been a nuclear engineer in the Navy, but his bungled appointment of his college roommate, Stansfield Turner, as head of the CIA in 1977 has had repercussions to this very day. The experienced CIA operatives back then resigned in droves rather than subordinate themselves to Turner, who knew nothing about spying. We lost most  of our Middle East agents on the ground back then, and the 1979 Iran hostage crisis began a domino effect of U.S. setbacks in the Middle East. Carter had zero wartime experience, and America has paid dearly for it ever since.

Ronald Reagan never fought in World War II , but he acted in war movies while living through the era. Reagan also understood the importance of absolute power and not backing down. Reagan had a poker face. By showing strength and decisiveness, he ended the cold war with the Soviets without firing a shot.

George Bush Senior was a World War II Navy pilot who was shot down and rescued during action in the Pacific. He proved to be a master coalition builder, and commander-in-chief during the first Gulf War. And he knew when to back off, and chose to stay within the borders of Kuwait after defeating Saddam in '91. History will always wonder what he could have accomplished during a second term.

George Bush II also avoided the Vietnam war by serving in the Air National Guard. He got the nation into the quagmire in Iraq chiefly by appointing buddy-buddy Don Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld saw to it that the war was under-funded, under-supplied, and under-manned. Only the intervention, war experience, and fortitude of Senator John McCain saved the nation from a possible involvement in an all-out civil war there. 

McCain constantly badgered Rumsfeld for more weapons, more soldiers, more armor, and a different command structure. He convinced Bush that we could win with 50,000 more troops. Whether elected or not, he will eventually standout in history as having saved the U.S. from a possible humiliation a hundred times worse than Vietnam, because it would have alerted the enemy that America always eventually backs down politically at home, if only they suffer enough soldier casualties abroad. The Islamic radicals are well aware of our great disadvantage...we value the lives of our soldiers. To us life isn't cheap as it is to them, with their unlimited cadre of ready-to-die suicide bombers.

We are a nation of Christian principles and freedom; polar opposites to the ones who oppose us. And John McCain knows this. The Vietnamese were no different. The enemy will lie during negotiations, and will not back down unless forced. They have no values. Only the desire to destroy us.

But is Barack Obama aware of their principles? Does he believe that conflicts should be fair? Would he be his own man in command, or basically just use the Joint Chiefs as subcontractors for all his military decisions to either back down, fight, or negotiate?

Is McCain the next Harry Truman? And is Obama the next Jimmie Carter? History always repeats itself, and leopards never change their spots. America is at an electoral crossroads. Will we turn right this November, or vote to make a hard left?