On Tuesday, December 15th, President Obama misused the word precipice and the world blew up. Ok, not really, but by the way some people are reacting you might be forgiven for thinking that this mistake could mean the end of democracy as we know it. Discussing health care, President Obama claimed that “we are on the precipice of reform.”

Precipice, which is defined as:

1. a cliff with a vertical, nearly vertical, or overhanging face.
2. a situation with great peril: on the precipice of war

It’s probably not the word he was looking for (although there are those who think it exactly the right word). It’s possible that the bar is set too high for Obama. Especially when compared to President George W Bush who, on September 26th, 2001 accidentally coined the phrase “misunderestimate.” While it’s not exactly scientific to compare a real word with a made up one, a quick look at Google Insights might illustrate how easily some words cycle in and out of the internet lexicon:

Note: Google Insight measures the use of search terms, but the numbers are normalized and presented in a scale of 1-100. The above chart doesn’t represent absolute volume.

Considering it’s a made up word, “misunderestimate” has managed to worm its way into general usage. Particularly when used ironically, as in the case of this Associated Content piece about adult illiteracy, which was responsible for the jump in “misunderestimate” searches in January 2009.

“Precipice” peaked in May 2008 thanks to the release of the video game Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. Other spikes in searches containing precipice can be contributed to phrases repeated in mainstream media such as “At the precipice, Pope welcomed by thousands” in May of this year and “”edge of a precipice”, used to describe the state of cancer stricken reality star Jane Goody in March. It should be noted that President Obama has used the word precipice before. In July of this year, he claimed the economy has “stepped away from the precipice.”

Although this statement might not be acurate, he did use the word correctly.

Obama’s proposed plan for the war in Afghanistan generated a significant amount of opposition from bloggers on both sides of the political fence. And as much as he’d like to discount any similarities, political pundits have already started comparing the current campaign to the poster child of modern war failures: the Vietnam War.

From President Obama’s Address on the War in Afghanistan:

First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we’re better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. I believe this argument depends on a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now — and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance — would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.

Frank Rich, Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times, commented that 30,000 troops is a half-hearted investment for attaining true success in Afghanistan:

If the enemy in Afghanistan today threatens the American homeland as the Viet Cong never did, we should be all in, according to Obama’s logic. So why aren’t we? The answer is not merely that Afghans don’t want us as occupiers. It’s that such a mission would require a commensurate national sacrifice. One big difference between the war in Vietnam and the war in Afghanistan that the president conspicuously left unmentioned on Tuesday is the draft. Given that conscription is not about to be revived, we’d have to spend money, lots more money, to recruit the troops needed for the full effort Obama’s own argument calls for.

Christian Parenti, contributing editor at The Nation and Playboy, saw motives mired in political defense:

The real goals of the Afghanistan escalation are domestic and electoral. Like Lyndon Johnson who escalated in Vietnam, Obama lives in mortal fear of being called a wimp by Republicans.

Others disagree. General David Petraeus warned pundits against using “‘history by analogy’ as an excuse not to come to grips with the intricacies of Afghanistan itself,” as reported in a Newsweek article entitled, “Obama’s Vietnam”:

Some problems do not have a solution, or any good solution. Two studies of the Afghanistan mess cochaired by retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones, now President Obama’s national-security adviser, asserted last year that America cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan. Who wants to be the American president who allows jihadists to claim that they defeated and drove out American forces? Daniel Ellsberg, the government contractor who leaked the Pentagon papers, used to say about Vietnam, “It was always a bad year to get out of Vietnam.” The same is all too true for Afghanistan.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, political analyst and social issues expert, contrasted the two wars by citing President Johnson’s initial support for Vietnam:

In one sense Obama is right to decry any comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam. Congress and the public enthusiastically backed Johnson on Vietnam until things went bad. That’s a luxury Obama won’t have with Afghanistan.

Bob Herbert, Op-Ed Columnist for the NY Times, placed responsibility of war misguidance on the previous administration:

Afghanistan is not Vietnam. There was every reason for American forces to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. But that war was botched and lost by the Bush crowd, and Barack Obama does not have a magic wand now to make it all better.

Finally, in the LA Times:

Afghanistan served as the base for terrorists who attacked American citizens on American soil, and it harbored their associates afterward. In Vietnam, vaguer premonitions of superpower balance and a “domino effect” caused Kennedy to dedicate troops (after President Eisenhower had refused). Those same fears, as well as the threat to American prestige and domestic political pressures, caused presidents Johnson and Nixon to order escalations of the Vietnam War. The provocation in 2001 does not justify a blind or endless war in Afghanistan, but this conflict, at least at its outset, was a war of necessity; Vietnam was not.

Are the comparisons anything new? No. In 2005, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll compared support for the Iraq War with that of the Vietnam War, stating that over 50% of those polled favored a timed withdrawal. To draw even more similarities, the poll also suggested that only 38% of people felt going into Iraq was “worth it.” Similarly, a CBS News Poll conducted on Obama’s performance in Afghanistan resulted in 38% support as well.

(David Horsey, Tribune Media Services)