Just A Thought After Watching Meet The Press This Morning:

[HereSince1628]

17. As I remember it Johnson threw in the towel in spring 1968 before there were 58K dead and missing.

And in 1972, four years later, when I stepped into Davis Station at Saigon the US wasn't sending draftees to Vietnam anymore. The war was still plodding along without draftees. And the campaign promise of Nixon's secret method to get us out before the end of 1969 was pretty much forgotten.

Nixon had been overwhelmed by the problem that a US "retreat" from Vietnam was politically intolerable.

This has to do with a phenomenon gambling psychologists call 'sunk costs.' When you're deeply invested it's hard to walk away and accept the loss. You're willing to ante up everything on the chance of a win.

The nation's leaders so fear the humiliation of looking defeated and the shame of having spent American lives and treasure for nothing
that you just keep slogging along hoping for an end.

Nixon and Kissinger figured out how to use The Big Lie to get us out of Vietnam under the cover of "peace with honor", the same tactic was available to the Shrub...declare victory and leave. But then, Cheney and the neocons couldn't work out how to distribute the profits of their nasty little war and the opportunity to get out under the cover of the big lie was lost.

The nation as a whole, and Obama in particular face the same pressures of trying to recoup something like a win to cover the "sunk costs." Just this last week McCain was crowing again for more commitment to "achieve victory" in Afghanistan, and our regional allies continued to press for continuing the expanded conflict from the Kenyan border to Pakistan.

Our troops, and our unmanned aerial assassination vehicles, will come home when we find a way to achieve "peace with honor." It will probably come the same way it did for Nixon...through a big lie.