'Days, not weeks' should haunt Obama

On March 18, President Obama told congressional leaders that the "kinetic activity" (fighting) we were getting into in Libya would be a matter of "days, not weeks." He used the same "days and not weeks" phrase in a news conference on March 22.

We played a lead role in the "no fly zone" military missions starting March 19. On Monday, NATO announced U.S. war planes were shifting to a "supporting role." But that was two-and-a-half weeks after fighting started, and we're still there.

That might not sound like a big deal. Except it emphasizes that Obama, like several presidents before him, simply doesn't understand that "war is hell," as Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman so aptly put it.

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Obama, after tripling down our troops in Afghanistan and now getting into a civil war in Libya, joins these two other recent presidents who didn't understand that war is as unpredictable as hell:

•President Lyndon Baines Johnson. His continuing commitment in Vietnam cost 58,267 U.S. military lives and $738 billion. It also cost LBJ any re-election chance.

•President George W. Bush. He invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, and foolishly displayed a huge "Mission Accomplished" sign in a "victory" speech May 1. Then that war continued for more than seven years.

I've known every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. He understood that war really is hell because he'd been there and done that as Supreme Allied Commander in WWII. That's why he warned against the "military-industrial complex," which woos war for its own benefit.

As a U.S. senator, Obama criticized the Iraq war. Now he's falling into the same trap as some of his predecessors.

I voted for Obama for president, but ...