President Obama’s
speech on his new path forward in Afghanistan has drawn fire
from both the Left and the Right, and here’s why: The Left fears
that Obama has “escalated the war” indeterminably; the Right
fears that he has planned for a premature defeat. The Left fears
that Obama has sold out to the Generals; the Right fears that he
has sold out to his dovish political base.
The Left thinks that the United States can’t win in Afghanistan.
The Right thinks victory is possible, but not with Obama as
commander-in-chief; he won’t, they believe, pursue victory.
Both the Left and the Right view the July 2011 transfer date with
deep suspicion. The Left fears that Obama either doesn’t mean it
or won’t be able to effect it. The Right fears precisely that:
that Obama does mean it and will
effect it (a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan
beginning in July 2011).
To the Left, this means a never ending war that will sap the
Obama presidency of its raison d’être, while ruining the
president’s “reform agenda.” To the Right, a premature withdrawal
means a debacle of historic proportions, which will seriously
embolden the jihadists and jeopardize vital U.S. national
security interests.
So who’s right? Well, that’s the million-dollar question, the
answer to which no one knows: because the answer lies in Obama’s
head. It all depends on what, in his mind, the July 2011 transfer
date really means, and how committed he really is to winning in
Afghanistan. The evidence thus far is mixed.
Certainly, as I have argued
elsewhere, including
here at The American
Spectator, the president’s speech does not inspire
confidence. For starters, Obama never used the word victory. “The
mission he outlined is not to win,”
explained Forbes
magazine’s Claudia Rosett, “but simply to bring the war to
an ‘end.’”
Obama, moreover, cited President Eisenhower to try and justify
why the American mission in Afghanistan must be severely
constrained, and why it must end almost as soon as it begins.
“Our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended,” Obama
said, “because the nation that I’m most interested in building is
our own.”
In other words, as the Lexington Institute’s Dan Goure has
observed:
The President’s justification for his decision on troop levels
and timelines was that we would only do what could be achieved
at [a] reasonable cost, and [that] he needed to balance between
national programs.
Apparently, the demands of U.S. national security and the real
danger of attacks on our homeland needs to be balanced against
all [of] our domestic concerns. National survival and the
safety of our people is no more important than job creation or
cap-and-trade, I guess.
The President’s prescription for attacking the cancer that is
the Taliban is to provide only a reasonably priced response,
not what it is likely to take to actually cure the condition.
Kind of like his health care reform proposal.
On the other hand, say uber-hawks Frederick W. Kagan and William
Kristol, although “Obama’s decision, and the speech in which it
was announced, were not flawless,” the president nonetheless “has
ordered sufficient reinforcements to Afghanistan to execute a war
strategy that can succeed.”
What’s more, they
note:
The plan the president announced on Tuesday features a
commendably rapid deployment of reinforcements to the theater,
with most of the surge forces arriving over the course of this
winter, [thus] allowing them to be in position before the
enemy’s traditional fighting season begins.
This is certainly true and important; and yet, as
Charles Krauthammer points out, the
president’s commitment to the war, and his will to win, are still
very much in doubt. Winston Churchill, after all, famously
promised “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” Obama, by contrast,
promises “hedges, caveats, and one giant exit ramp.”
The conservative hawks take solace in the recent remarks of
senior administration officials — Defense Secretary Robert
Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the National
Security Adviser, General James L. Jones — all of whom have
labored to make clear that the July 2011 transfer date does not
mark the end of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.
In fact, quite the contrary: As Gates said yesterday on the
Sunday talk shows (ABC News’
This Week and NBC News
Meet the Press):
This is a transition that is going to take place… It will be
the same kind of gradual, conditions-based transition —
province by province, district by district — that we saw in
Iraq. But it begins — but it begins — in July 2011…
[So] we will have 100,000 forces, troops there [in Afghanistan]
and they are not leaving in July of 2011. Some — [a] handful,
or some small number, or whatever the conditions permit — will
begin to withdraw at that time.
The real question is whether the Afghan war is in its last throes
and ending, or whether instead it’s really just begun.
Critics like to complain that the war has dragged on for more
than eight years, “with no end in sight.” This is only half true.
The U.S. military has been fighting essentially the same
seriously under-resourced war, based on a flawed strategy, for
each of the past eight years. Consequently, the war has not gone
well or progressed much. In fact, the situation in Afghanistan
has deteriorated.
Now, finally and belatedly, the United States seems poised to
wage an adequately resourced war based upon a sound
counterinsurgency strategy. That’s why, according to General
McChrystal, “things are [now] different. We have a level of
commitment [now] that we have not had before, and that will
change everything,” he
told U.S. troops in Afghanistan last
week.
But McChrystal also paraphrased Winston Churchill to explain that
the war is far from over. “I don’t think this is the end. I don’t
think it’s the beginning of the end. But I do believe it’s the
end of the beginning,” he
said.
Exactly so. Forget the past eight years, because ever since the
overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a vastly undersized U.S.
military contingent there has been waging a rear-guard holding
action — but not anymore. Now, apparently, the United States is
gong to wage a classic counterinsurgency
campaign tailored specifically for
Afghanistan.
Thus, far from ending; the war instead is just beginning. And the
question is: does the President of the United States understand
this?
Perhaps not. In his
speech at West Point, after all, Obama
said, “we must come together to end this war successfully.” He
explained the “strategy that my administration will pursue to
bring this war to a successful conclusion.”
But again, the war is not really concluding; it is beginning —
and it could take some time to turn the situation in Afghanistan
around. And if it does, will the president have the intestinal
fortitude to stay the course and see things through to victory?
Or will he instead demand an end to what the critics say is an
“endless war”?
One thing that might save the president from his more dovish and
self-destructive instincts is the U.S. military — and
specifically the superb planning and warrior expertise of our
officer corps coupled with the fighting spirit and martial skill
of our grunts and their non-commissioned officers.
After all, these are the men and women who effected, in near
record time, a dramatic turnaround of the once dire situation in
Iraq. And they did so when all of the so-called experts had
written off Iraq as a hopeless cause.
If our U.S. military men and women can effect an equally
miraculous and quick turnaround of the situation in Afghanistan
— and I wouldn’t bet against them because they’re that damn good
— then President Obama may, to his great surprise, inherit an
Afghanistan for which he can claim credit, if not victory, in
2012.
Oh, U.S. troops will still be there in large measure, and they’ll
have to stay in Afghanistan for some time. But by 2012 perhaps,
the situation in Afghanistan will have stabilized, and U.S.
military casualties will be few and far between. Afghanistan then
will have receded from the front pages of our laptops and our
iPhones to become essentially not that big a deal for either the
politicians or the American people.
I have no doubt that, if President Obama allows it, that will
happen at some point. It is, in large measure, what has already
happened in Iraq. I just don’t know whether the situation in
Afghanistan can be turned around by 2012. I also don’t know what
the president is thinking, nor what he will do when tested. We
will see.
