President Obama is escalating American involvement in the war in Afghanistan, just as President Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam. But Obama should stop following LBJ's example and start following President Kennedy's example of resisting military ventures. Just as LBJ's war in Vietnam was a hopeless cause, so too Obama's war in Afghanistan is a hopeless cause.

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Duluth, MN (OpEdNews) December 9, 2009 â?? At times, President Obama, you have invoked President Abraham Lincoln as an example. Perhaps this is understandable because each of you has a connection to Illinois. You read Doris Kearns Godwin's book about Lincoln, â??Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincolnâ? (2005), and her book influenced you to appoint your former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton to be your Secretary of State.

But I now want you to read another book, James W. Douglass' â??JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Mattersâ? (2008). In this fine book Douglass (born in the late 1930s), himself a Roman Catholic, draws extensively on the thought of a Roman Catholic convert, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968), to understand the life and death of our only Roman Catholic president, John F. Kennedy (1917-1963).

Douglass uses Merton's prescient comments in his January 1962 letter to his friend W. H. Ferry as the framework for reviewing well-known events from Kennedy's presidency. On pages xiv-xv in the introduction, Douglass quotes the following passage from Merton's letter:

â??I have little confidence in Kennedy, I think he cannot measure up to the magnitude of the task, and lacks creative imagination and the deeper kind of sensitivity that is needed. Too much the â??Timeâ? and â??Lifeâ? mentality, than which I can imagine nothing further, in reality, from, say, Lincoln. What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what the politicians don't have: depth, humanity and a certain totality of self-forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole: a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe Kennedy will break through into that some day by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination.â?

Thus far, President Obama, apart from your shrewd appointment of your former rival to be your Secretary of State, you appear to embody the â??Timeâ? and â??Lifeâ? mentality of journalists, which probably accounts for the favorable media attention that you have received. How many times have you been on the cover of â??Timeâ? so far?

To this point, you have not manifested Lincoln's creative imagination and deeper kind of sensitivity, as President Kennedy did more and more as he progressed in his presidency.

Douglass uses Merton's reflections to help us understand why Kennedy was assassinated â?? he had somehow managed to break through into that deeper kind of dedication to the human race as a whole. Douglass reviews Kennedy's presidency step by step to show how Kennedy did manage to break through to this deeper kind of dedication.

Is it possible that you, President Obama, might somehow manage to turn away from your characteristic shrewdness and break through to the deeper kind of dedication that Merton refers to? I hope you do, but I am not optimistic about your doing so.

In the Cold War, the cold-hearted manipulators on one side competed with the cold-hearted manipulators on the other side to maintain a so-called â??balance of powerâ? â?? which might more aptly be called a balance of terror. Each side in the Cold War had enough atomic power to obliterate millions of people in a relatively short time.

Unfortunately, the United States today still has such power at its ready disposal, just as it still has the CIA doing strange manipulative things around the world.

Thomas Merton referred to such possible atomic destruction of human life as the unspeakable. But President Kennedy's cold-hearted military advisers were enamored with speaking of a pre-emptive first atomic strike against the Soviet Union. But Kennedy resisted his military advisers time and time again.

To understand what Merton meant by the multi-purpose term the unspeakable, President Obama, I suggest that you consider Dante's famous work known as the â??Inferno.â? In this vivid work about the Inferno in the afterlife that Christian tradition had for centuries been imagining, Dante imagined the worst evil to be the cold-hearted betrayal of one's own benefactor. So he put four representatives of this worst-imaginable evil in the icy depths of the Inferno (Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius).

But as you know, President Obama, enterprising human beings brought new, previously unimagined evils into existence in the 1940s, most notably with President Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because Truman brought the light of atomic bombs to war, I would dub him the New Lucifer (i.e., the new light-bringer).

Merton refers to new evils of this previously unimagined kind as representing the unspeakable, because in earlier times people had not spoken of such unimagined evils as somehow obliterating millions of people. However, as we have noted, President Kennedy's military advisers were enamored with speaking about a pre-emptive first atomic strike against the Soviet Union. For his military advisers, nothing was unspeakable.

But what kind of men were President Kennedy's military advisers? And what kind of men and women are your military advisers today? And what kind of man are you, President Obama?

Douglass also refers to the code of â??plausible deniabilityâ? and â??need to knowâ? as an example of what Merton refers to as the unspeakable.

Unfortunately, the cold-hearted American mastermind(s) behind Kennedy's assassination may never be identified, because the code of â??plausible deniabilityâ? and â??need to knowâ? may succeed in preventing us from ever learning the identity or identities of the master manipulator(s).

By contrast with the rightly celebrated warrior's code, the CIA's code of â??plausible deniabilityâ? and â??need to knowâ? is manipulative and antiheroic. The cold-hearted manipulators manipulate underlings. The goal of the cold-hearted manipulators is power.

In my estimate, the CIA's code of â??plausible deniabilityâ? and â??need to knowâ? represents the polar opposite of the warrior's code that Hector admirably articulates in the Homeric epic the â??Iliad.â? In what is arguably the most moving episode in the â??Iliad,â? Hector tells his wife Andromache that he would die of shame if he did not lead in battle. Hector cares about his wife and his young son as well as his father and mother and the people of Troy. As a result, Hector goes forth into battle to fight to defend the people he deeply cares for from immediate threat. As a good warrior, he was willing to die in battle defending what he most cherished in life. And die he did.

Like Hector, President Kennedy faced the prospect of his own death in the spirit of a good warrior. He was willing to die for what he most cherished. And die he did â?? taken out by American conspirators because he turned away from the Cold War and toward peace. In Douglass' estimate, this is why he died.

But why does it matter why he died? In Douglass's estimate, it matters because the national security state and its war machine are still with us today in the United States. It matters because we Americans have not followed President Kennedy's example and turned away from war in support of peace.

The death of President Kennedy brought Lyndon Baines Johnson to the presidency. In accord with the dictates of the American war machine, LBJ escalated the war in Vietnam, thereby giving President Kennedy's military advisers a war. Since the death of President Kennedy, America has been a nightmare world to live in as the American war machine that conspired to kill President Kennedy has ruled unchecked -- with truly bipartisan support.

In recent years, the nightmare world of the American war machine that killed President Kennedy has involved the United States in unnecessary and expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan â?? both wars enjoying broad bipartisan support from members of Congress. In a truly bipartisan way, members of Congress are willing to put billions and billions of dollars into supporting the American war machine and the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course the politicians are putting all the financial support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the tab â?? the expenditures are rolled into the national debt, so as to keep the American war machine rolling along in Iraq and Afghanistan. But who is going to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan â?? and how and when?

So what kind of man are you, President Obama â?? another LBJ giving the American war machine its way, or another JFK resisting the American war machine?

As long as you continue to act like another LBJ, you will not have to fear being assassinated, as Presidents Kennedy was. If you are not ready to die, perhaps the shrewdest thing for you to do is to continue to act like another LBJ. You are indeed a shrewd politician.

But you are not likely to â??succeedâ? in your war in Afghanistan â?? not by 2012, and not by 2016 â?? not in any serious sense of the word â??succeed.â? Your war in Afghanistan is a hopeless cause, just as LBJ's war in Vietnam was â?? unless you want to follow Truman's example and drop atomic bombs on Afghanistan! But even LBJ stopped short of following Truman's example in that way.

There is no good reason why American lives should be lost in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The so-called â??war on terrorâ? should not take over as the new Cold War.

The acts of Islamist terrorists against the United States are not acts of war because by definition only countries can perpetrate acts of war. But the Islamist terrorists are not acting officially for another country. Therefore, attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists are not acts of war but crimes.

Islamist terrorists are criminals. To be sure, they should be dealt with as criminals are dealt with in different countries around the world by the criminal justice systems in each respective country. Consequently, Islamist terrorists should be dealt with by the criminal justice systems in the countries they attack and in the countries where they reside.

Nevertheless, should the Islamist terrorists in a given country somehow manage to win the support of enough people in the country, then a civil war will probably have to be fought within the country to determine how the country will be governed in the future. To the chagrin of some American politicians, the Islamists might prevail in a civil war.

As you know, our American ancestors first fought a bloody Revolutionary War and then fought a bloody Civil War to determine how this country would be governed. When we consider the total loss of human life in the American Civil War in terms of the total population of the country at that time, the total loss of human life in that war was a greater percentage of the population at the time than the loss of American lives in any other war. To be sure, civil wars are terrible.

Nevertheless, the people in Afghanistan may have to fight a bloody civil war to determine how their country is going to be governed, just as the people in Iraq may have to. Preferably in each case without American support or CIA involvement.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview