Oh for the good 'ol days of LBJ and the Vietnam War

Never thought I'd look back fondly at the Presidential administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. The much-maligned LBJ was a crook who started stealing elections when he ran for class president of his junior college back in Texas and refined his technique over the years but never changed.

But at least he was a President who backed the troops while they were at war. LBJ did micro-manage the military to the point of actually picking out the bombing targets and setting ridiculous rules of engagement that virtually guaranteed we would lose that war. But at least he did provide the troops with the funding to fight, despite the ever-dropping polls back home on that unpopular war.

Now we have another war on which polls are being charted daily, as if popularity has something to do with whether our troops should be fighting terrorists who want to destroy our nation. And now we have a President in office who sniffs the wind on every issue to decide which way to go.

And President Obama also has a lapdog media with the sole exception of Fox News, which is solemnly reporting daily polls about the popularity/unpopularity of the war on terror. I almost choked when I read the lead of The Washington Post story this morning on that farce.

As President Obama and his war cabinet deliberate a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, Americans are evenly and deeply divided over whether he should send 40,000 more troops there, and public approval of the president's handling of the situation has tumbled, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Obama's "war cabinet"? What a crock. You have a grand total of one cabinet member, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has the stones to stand up for our military and urge the President to support the war in Afghanistan and give the general Obama handpicked and put in charge, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the surge in troops he has asked for. The rest of the cabinet is lined up solidly behind White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advising Obama to leave the troops slowly twisting in the wind while he abandons the war on terror as politically inexpedient.

Somewhere in between LBJ's micro-managing a war and Obama abandoning one under way while he endlessly dithers to "deliberate a new strategy" there's gotta be a happy medium. We need a President who will give the troops what they need to fight and let the generals in charge develop and implement strategy. Oh wait, we had a President like that. George W. Bush.