Peace activist fears we are waist deep in the Big Muddy

Back in 2001, when young Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was coming off a crushing loss in his first attempt at a national office, Kevin Lindemann of Winfield was on the street talking about Afghanistan.

On a rainy, cold, December day eight years ago, Lindemann huddled on the sidewalk in front of a Naperville postal office with less than two dozen other activists from the DuPage Peace Through Justice Coalition. They held signs with slogans such as "Stop the Bombing" and "Peace is Patriotic."

"A military response is not an effective response to terrorism," Lindemann told a Daily Herald reporter that day, voicing the minority opinion in a nation where an overwhelmingly majority of Americans supported President George W. Bush's military strategy in Afghanistan. Using the imagery of a "Wanted: Dead or Alive" poster from the Wild West, a smirking Bush vowed to get Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida gang.

"We will smoke them out of their holes. We will get them running and bring them to justice," a confident Bush told the world.

Lindemann wished his nation would go after bin Laden with an international law enforcement strategy, such as the one that put infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal behind bars. Lindemann warned in 2001 that Afghanistan, which already had been the Soviet Union's Vietnam, could become our new Vietnam.

Now 51, the married, unemployed warehouse worker still makes that comparison. And a new U.S. president refutes that.

"There are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam," a somber President Obama told the American people in his speech promising to send 30,000 more soldiers to our war in Afghanistan. "They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing."

While many peace advocates were wishing Obama would stop right there, the president noted that our war with Afghanistan is different from Vietnam because it was launched with international support as the result of a direct attack on American soil, is not being waged against a broad-based popular insurgency and has goals and deadlines.

There are differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan, concedes Lindemann, but, speaking only for himself, he focuses on the similarities.

"I really can't quite figure out what he's doing with Afghanistan," Lindemann says of our president. "Obama didn't even state the goal. 'Our national security is involved here.' How?"

Just as cockroaches temporarily scatter when the light goes on only to return later, many of America's enemies momentarily go into hiding when more U.S. troops arrive. In Lindemann's opinion, pouring more traditional military forces into that effort doesn't seem any more promising than the military responses of presidents Johnson and Nixon to Vietnam.

"I can remember in fifth grade, boys sitting around in the playground playing, asking, 'If you got drafted, would you go to Vietnam?'" Lindemann says. "I remember a great feeling of dread."

Afghanistan seems full of dread to Lindemann.

A veteran of many social causes ­- from international fights against apartheid and for Lech Walesa's labor union, to the homeland battles for civil rights and women's rights ­- Lindemann dips into the 1960s Vietnam protests to sum up his feelings as he hears Obama's plans for Afghanistan.

"Of course, what I thought of was the Pete Seeger song, 'Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,'" Lindemann says.

The lyrics of Seeger's classic song tell the story of a platoon in 1942 attempting an unwise slog across a river in Louisiana.

"We were waist deep in the Big Muddy, the big fool said to push on," Seeger sang.

Lindemann figures we are waist deep in Afghanistan.