By Ray McGovern
November 24, 2009
"....Moreover, Obama is surely aware that the majority of Americans are no longer deceived by the pundits at Fox News. Recent polls show broader and broader popular opposition to sending more troops.
The choice, in my view, is between courage anchored in a determination to do the right thing and cowardice cloaked in the politics of the possible. Let me guess what you’re thinking — “But that’s asking too much of a young President; cowardice is too strong a word; Obama cannot possibly face down the entire military establishment.”
John Kennedy did. So the question is whether Barack Obama is “no Jack Kennedy,” or whether he will summon the courage to stand up to the misguided military brass of today.
We are talking, after all, about thousands more being killed — and for what?
I would suggest to the President that he give another close read to Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster and then ponder the lessons that leap out of Barbara Tuchman’s The March to Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.
Obama may also wish to ponder the words of W.E.B. Dubois:
“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow.”"
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