War on Poverty 50 years on, victory nowhere in sight

War on Poverty 50 years on, victory nowhere in sight | Fox News

As wars go, America's war on poverty is its longest and it portends to grind on indefinitely. Some $15 trillion later (roughly the size of the current national debt) and by most metrics, it would seem that the Americans have gotten precious little for this war.

Of course, the truth is rather different. The various campaign fronts have not all been total losses and millions of Americans have benefited from its programs (or is that pograms?) but the turnover in the demographic not static, in fact is quite high, so there are replacements for any losses reflected by the beneficiaries.

I have decided that the problem with the War on Poverty, like the Global War on Terror, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq, and unlike the  Persian Gulf War, is that the US Government had no "exit strategy" when it declared war on poverty. You see, that is the flaw with all the unsuccessful wars the US has fought since World War II that none of them really had an exit strategy to give the war an ending point. A point set in advance that said when we achieve this goal, we can declare victory and go home now.

We achieved those goals in World War II, the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War. Of course, others my view it differently, but I think the Americans pretty well definitely (along with various and sundry allies) won those conflicts.

So, my challenge to anyone wanting to be president of the United States, including its current President Barack Obama, is to come up with the definitive exit strategy for the War on Poverty. Lyndon Johnson made a huge mistake and sold the American a bill of goods, with his lies and distortions, by not defining that exit strategy. No president since then has corrected that mistake.

I mean any stupid arm-chair general and military genius knows you have have an exit strategy when you go off to war.