On Texan leaders, inept bureaucracies

We have had two presidents from Texas in recent history.

Lyndon Baines Johnson had us embroiled in a no-win war in Vietnam. As the death toll rose and the sentiment on the home front became increasingly anti-war, LBJ continued the fight against all reason. He kept trying to make a deal with Ho Chi Minh, saying "Old Ho can't turn this down."

Well, old Ho did, as with all the other offers LBJ made. What "old Ho" wanted was us out of his country.

A little-known fact was that Ho Chi Minh was at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I to try to get the French out of French Indo-China, which was what Vietnam was called in those days. Of course, no one paid the least attention to him.

It wasn't until World War II that he made his point fighting against the Japanese who occupied his country. He did it again in 1954 at Bien Dien Phu by running the French Foreign Legion out of his country. Then it became our turn.

Now we have another Texas president who can't see past the Texas border and who is suffering from the Alamo Syndrome of being beset on all sides by an enemy.

In spite of the obvious, he is unable to see past his own mania to win a war that can't be won the way he has gone about it. The bad planning and missed opportunities have resulted in too much damage to a feeble plan at best.

As Donald Rumsfeld said, "We'll just play it by ear." Well, George is tone deaf and you can't take everything you can get your hands on and throw it into a box and expect it to turn out to be something without some intelligent planning.

As to the new Iraq government, the president can't lead, the parliament is mired down in bipartisan bickering and can't get anything done and they are taking the summer off.

Without even trying, Iraq has a democracy just like ours!

Raleigh Sutton Elgin