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November 1, 2009 (LPAC)—Financial Times Washington, D.C. bureau chief Edward Luce filled two-thirds of a page of the Oct. 31 edition with the latest British push for President Obama to walk into London's Afghan trap, by boosting American troops by 20,000 or more. Taunting the President with reminders of how Vietnam brought down the Lyndon Johnson presidency, Luce promoted the idea that the President needs to significantly expand the American troop presence, regardless of the midterm electoral consequences, or the likely desertions of many in his liberal base.

Luce's psywar piece was mild, compared to last week's Economist, which featured a cover headline, "Obama's War," and outright demanded that the President give Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the 40,000-80,000 troops he is demanding. The Economist had the chutzpah to praise British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for acting decisively, by announcing he'd send 500 more British troops to Afghanistan. Last week, Asia Times published a revealing story, exposing how the Gordon Brown government is doing everything in its power to goad Obama into the Afghan trap—in much the same way that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair snared George W. Bush into the Iraq war.

In stark contrast to these British psywar schemes, to trap Obama and the United States into a disasterous, no-win fiasco in the mountains of Afghanistan, Lyndon LaRouche, in a forthcoming strategic study, is calling for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan. Citing Gen. Douglas MacArthur's and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's sage advice to a young President John F. Kennedy, never to get American soldiers engaged in a land war in Asia, LaRouche states, in no uncertain terms, that the United States, in its current state of physical economic collapse, financial ruin, and military disintegration, cannot survive any further military engagement in Afghanistan. Under no circumstances, should America be trapped into a land war in Asia!

In 1961, John Kennedy took the advice of MacArthur and Eisenhower, rejected the demands of his top cabinet and national security aides, including Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy, and decided to not send American combat troops to Vietnam. Indeed, Kennedy cancelled already standing orders, to send 10,000 Marines to Vietnam, as a first echelon of combat troops. No American combat troops were sent to Vietnam while Kennedy was alive, and even Lyndon Johnson waited until early 1965, before the deployment of American combat soldiers got underway.