BHO meet LBJ, continued

Back in January--yes, seems like eons ago now--I linked to Juan Cole's observation, which was eerily titled "BHO meet LBJ."

That theme is gaining a lot more momentum recently.  While not that specific phrase, the theme is clear.  First, here is John Kerry--yes, the same Kerry who was one of the early supporters of candidate Obama:

Before we send more of our young men and women to this war, we need a fuller debate about what constitutes success in Afghanistan. We need a clearer understanding of what constitutes the right strategy to get us there. Ultimately, we need to understand, as Gen. Colin Powell was fond of asking, "What's the exit strategy?" Or as Gen. David Petraeus asked of Iraq, "How does it end?"
Why? Because one of the lessons from Vietnam—applied in the first Gulf War and sadly forgotten for too long in Iraq—is that we should not commit troops to the battlefield without a clear understanding of what we expect them to accomplish, how long it will take, and how we maintain the consent of the American people. Otherwise, we risk bringing our troops home from a mission unachieved or poorly conceived.

It was interesting that Kerry's op-ed was in the Wall Street Journal.  I wonder what the deal is with that.
Well, it is not that the "liberal" media is quiet about the ghost of Vietnam.  In the NY Times, Frank Rich presents the following comments in the context of Woodward "leaking" McChrystal's report, and then an unnamed White House official countering it:

it’s “eerie” how closely even these political maneuvers track those of a half-century ago, when J.F.K. was weighing whether to send combat troops to Vietnam. Military leaders lobbied for their new mission by planting leaks in the press. Kennedy fired back by authorizing his own leaks, which, like Obama’s, indicated his reservations about whether American combat forces could turn a counterinsurgency strategy into a winnable war.
Within Kennedy’s administration, most supported the Joint Chiefs’ repeated call for combat troops, including the secretaries of defense (McNamara) and state (Dean Rusk) and Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the president’s special military adviser. The highest-ranking dissenter was George Ball, the undersecretary of state. Mindful of the French folly in Vietnam, he predicted that “within five years we’ll have 300,000 men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again.” In the current administration’s internal Afghanistan debate, Goldstein observes, Joe Biden uncannily echoes Ball’s dissenting role.
Though Kennedy was outnumbered in his own White House — and though he had once called Vietnam “the cornerstone of the free world in Southeast Asia” — he ultimately refused to authorize combat troops. He instead limited America’s military role to advisory missions. That policy, set in November 1961, would only be reversed, to tragic ends, after his death. As Bundy wrote in a memo that year, the new president had learned the hard way, from the Bay of Pigs disaster in April, that he “must second-guess even military plans.” Or, as Goldstein crystallizes the overall lesson of J.F.K.’s lonely call on Vietnam strategy: “Counselors advise but presidents decide.”
Obama finds himself at that same lonely decision point now.

And Ross Douthat--the conservative columnist at the NY Times who replaced William Kristol--piles on:

However serious his doubts about escalation, Obama seems boxed in — by the thoroughness of McChrystal’s assessment and the military’s united front, by his own arguments across the last two years and by his party’s long-running insistence on painting Afghanistan as the neglected “good war.” But if Obama takes us deeper into war out of political necessity rather than conviction, the results could be disastrous.

Meanwhile, Germany's newly (re)elected Chancellor Merkel's deputy, Guido Westerwelle, will lead the cheers for continued Afghan military engagement:

While Germany's deployment to Afghanistan has become increasingly unpopular, Mr Westerwelle has emerged as the most powerful and articulate proponent of sustained involvement in the war.

So, instead of the Anglo-US lead into the Iraq debacle, we will now have a German-American push in AfPak?