*Why Is Obama Dithering On Afghanistan? *During the 2008 campaign, Obama vigorously attacked the Bush administration for not doing enough to win the (good) war in Afghanistan. (Some cynics thought that Obama made this argument only for contrast with his lack of support for the (bad) war in Iraq, and his failure to recognize the success of Bush's surge in Iraq.)
In March, Obama proposed a more aggressive strategy <http://www.cfr.org/publication/18952/> in Afghanistan. So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That is the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just. And to the terrorists who oppose us, my message is the same: we will defeat you. To achieve our goals, we need a stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy. To focus on the greatest threat to our people, America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq. To enhance the military, governance, and economic capacity of Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have to marshal international support. And to defeat an enemy that heeds no borders or laws of war, we must recognize the fundamental connection between the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan --- which is why I've appointed Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to serve as Special Representative for both countries, and to work closely with General David Petraeus to integrate our civilian and military efforts. (The new strategy was, as we have learned from Dick Cheney <http://neoneocon.com/2009/10/22/dick-cheney-reams-out-obama-on-afghanistan-after-emanuel-claims-the-dog-ate-bushs-homework/>, mostly copied from plans the Bush administration had made, though Obama did not credit his predecessor in that speech.) In August, Obama's chosen Afghanistan commander, General McChrystal, told Obama that more forces were needed, if we did not want to risk "mission failure" <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092002920.html>. President Obama has yet to decide whether to send the additional forces McChrystal requested. Why has Obama changed his mind, why is he now delaying after making those campaign promises, and that warlike speech in March? Why, after deciding in March to seek victory, has he become undecided? I don't know for sure, but I think that the Obama administration is beginning to worry about the political costs of a protracted war in Afghanistan. (And a successful war will be protracted.) The left already has doubts about the Afghanistan war, and those doubts will only grow over time. And relying on Republicans for anything is not something that this hyperpartisan White House wants to do. There is evidence for my tentative conclusion in the reports that officials in the Obama administration have been reading Gordon Goldstein's defeatist book on the Vietnam War <http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1009/p02s01-usmi.html>. But past events also weigh heavily on the debate. The new must-read among Obama's top advisers is a 2008 book about Vietnam called "Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam." As national security adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, the late Mr. Bundy supported deepening US involvement in Vietnam but had second thoughts later in life. Afghanistan and Vietnam are similar, says Gordon Goldstein, the book's author and a former adviser to the United Nations. Mr. Goldstein points out that President Kennedy went against military advice when he moved to reduce American involvement in Vietnam before he was assassinated. His instincts were right, Goldstein says, though it remains unclear what impact Kennedy's reluctance to send troops into Vietnam would have had on the broader conflict. "I don't think the strategy [of more troops] was a viable strategy in Vietnam and I don't think the strategy is viable in Afghanistan," he says. Former US commander of Afghanistan Dan McNeill has said that going by counterinsurgency doctrine, Afghanistan would need a force of at least 400,000 to win. There are currently 100,000-odd foreign troops in Afghanistan, not counting local indigenous forces. (That the US won in Vietnam, and then threw away the victory, as Lewis Sorley has established <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/opinion/18sorley.html>, does not seem to have penetrated the Obama inner circle. Note also that the journalist, Gordon Lubold, casually skips over the number of "indigenous forces", though those are the key to victory in this kind of war.) There is no one in Obama's inner circle who has any military training or experience. Almost all of them have political experience. And now they find themselves in a trap built from their own campaign promises. They would like to find some way to semi-gracefully cut back in Afghanistan, but can't do so and be consistent with what Obama said, over and over, in the campaign, and what he said again in March. And so, having two bad political choices, Obama delays and dithers, while our allies, and our troops, wonder and wait. And I am sorry to say this, but I don't think he, or anyone close to him, has really thought about the strategic consequences of a semi-graceful, disguised withdrawal from Afghanistan. In fact, I am not sure that any of them /could/ think about US strategy in a systematic way, even if they tried. (Here's a brief critique of Goldstein's argument, from another revisionist historian, Mark Moyar <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/disastrous_lessons>.) - 10:40 AM, 23 October 2009 [link] <http://www.seanet.com/%7Ejimxc/Politics/October2009_3.html#jrm8019> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
