It was Kennedy - the peace treaty allowed any country to send in up to 500 soldiers of various sorts.  Eisenhauer tinkered around the edges and sent in 800, who proceeded to do dumb things like drop nail filings into gas tanks and spread rumors that the Vietnamese were going to change their currency, stuff like that.  But that's not a war.  Kennedy, by contrast, took office and sent in 16 thousand marines and began saturation bombing of the south.  

Anyway the whole article is odd because one of Obama's critiques of the war in Iraq is that "it distracted us from the central front on the war on terror: Afghanistan".  He said this all through 2008 and before - there's been no ambiguity in his position here.  Scheer disagrees, as he's long been critical of the war in Afghanistan, but to wrap it in terms like "disappointment" is stupid.  Maybe he felt he couldn't get his editors interested in yet another piece critical of Afghanistan unless he made it about Obama.

Incidentally I happen to agree with him, but a) I decided in 2002 that publicly opposing the war in Afghanistan was a non-starter, and that the peace movement should hold their fire for the upcoming war in Iraq.  This was something of a concensus opinion among other peaceniks that I knew.  And b) Dennis Kucinich will never make it out of a Democratic primary.

journalist interested in issues, not personalities.  He wrote extensively and incisively against the policies of bush et al when they were riding high and it was unpopular to do so - and largely proved right.  

To me he is saying that the actual term and all that it implies are foolish:  "war on terror" - much like saying "terror on terror."  But the term is so embedded in our consciousness that we don't question its validity.  To him, Obama is just another equation in the mix - not the end all of American democracy.  Some of us think that way.  

If it was about the missile crisis again he played hard-ball and got the USSR to back the hell off.

Just to get history right it was pragmatic hard ball. Part of the reason Russia back down was that Kennedy cut a deal with Khrushchev to remove all missiles that were set on the Turkish border. This along with a pledge by the US never to invade Cuba.

I am not taking away from your post just adding some clarification.