When this showed up in my twitter search on @timespeople (The NYTimes social networking startup)   my expectation was that it was a piece by some conservative all a flutter with glee over “all the Obama political trials”….but it was Frank Rich,  so I read on…..and it’s talking Afghanistan,  and so I continue reading:

As Goldstein said to me last week, 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.

Op-Ed Columnist – Obama at the Precipice – NYTimes.com

This part leaves me with a nervous feeling about what might come “after Obama”…..

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.