“[The Obama administration] inherited the perception that Afghanistan was the good war, and they took over largely bipartisan support of it, and by the summer they lost that,” said David Isby, a Washington-based defense and foreign policy consultant. “Now we are seeing Obama’s very own party is very much starting to turn against him on it, and he will have to depend on the Republicans who neither like nor trust him for support.”
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Asked about concerns that he could experience the same fate of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who decided against seeking re-election due to the public’s turning against the war in Vietnam, Obama told The New York Times and CNBC, “You have to learn lessons from history. On the other hand, each historical moment is different. You never step into the same river twice.
“And so Afghanistan is not Vietnam, but the dangers of overreach and not having clear goals and not having strong support from the American people — those are all issues that I think about all the time.”