Garry Wills is an emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University. His books include Why Priests? A Failed Tradition, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. His book Nixon Agonistes earned him a coveted place on Nixon’s list of political opponents.

In his campaign for the presidency, Obama said he was not against war, just against dumb wars. Yet he is waging and expanding the dumbest kind of war—and creating his very own Vietnam.