Shortly after his election in 1964, US President Lyndon B. Johnson made a fateful decision, a historic mistake, encouraged by his military chiefs who disdained his predecessor John F. Kennedy’s caution, to send 400,000 American troops into the Vietnam war. Before it ended in defeat 10 years later it became America’s longest war that produced a generational divide and massive anti-war protests.

Ukraine president-elect Petro Poroshenko’s sending troops to

re-take the airport in Donetsk from pro-Russian separatists is understandable

in terms of political necessity, and it was applauded by much of the worldwide

media as good show, but it was no breakthrough in the escalating level of

fighting.