TIA Daily • December 1, 2009 FEATURE ARTICLE No Idea Whether
He's Coming or Going Obama's Afghanistan Strategy Is the
Bush Surge, But Without Conviction by Robert Tracinski Something
immediately struck me as strange, creepy really, about Barack
Obama's speech at West Point on his new strategy for
Afghanistan. Because I read the speech first, rather than listening
to it, my mind immediately filled in a familiar voice to speak
these lines-and it wasn't the voice of the current president.
Try it for yourself: We did not ask for this fight. On September
11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to
murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and
economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women,
and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were
it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of
those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great
symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more. As we
know, these men belonged to al Qaeda-a group of extremists who have
distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great
religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents. Al Qaeda's
base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by
the Taliban-a ruthless, repressive, and radical movement that
seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of
Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America
and our friends had turned elsewhere…. Under the banner of
this domestic unity and international legitimacy-and only after the
Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden-we sent our troops
into Afghanistan. Within a matter of months, al Qaeda was scattered
and many of its operatives were killed. The Taliban was driven from
power and pushed back on its heels. A place that had known decades
of fear now had reason to hope. And later: I am convinced that our
security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the
epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is
from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that
new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger;
no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have
apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from
the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of
terror. This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards,
and al Qaeda can operate with impunity. Obama's speechwriters
always like to crib from past presidents. A little JFK here, a
little Reagan there. But I really didn't expect the first
paragraphs of this speech-and a few passages later on-to read
incongruously like a George W. Bush speech. (Except that Bush's
speeches were actually better than this. Obama has always been able
to use a smooth, measured delivery to elevate his pedestrian
material, while Bush's awkward delivery prevented his audience
from realizing what good speechwriters he had.) That weird
similarity sets the tone for the content of the speech, which is
Obama's endorsement of a repeat of the Bush "surge"
in Iraq-but without the sense of unwavering personal conviction
that Bush brought to his decision. Blaming Bush for all of the
challenges he faces is one of Obama's most annoying habits, and
he does so in this speech, too-but it only serves as camouflage to
cover up the fact that he is basically acting on the Bush legacy.
That becomes clear early in the speech with Obama's awkward,
indirect admission that we've won the war in Iraq. Or rather,
he says that we've "achieved hard-earned milestones in
Iraq" which allow us to bring the war "to a responsible
end." We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end
of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011. That we
are doing so is a testament to the character of our men and women
in uniform. Thanks to their courage, grit, and perseverance, we
have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are
successfully leaving Iraq to its people. Does that mean we've
won? Of course it does, but Obama's not a big enough man to
come out and say so, because that would mean admitting that he was
wrong about the "surge," which he opposed. This is the
big context for Obama's speech. By ordering the
"surge" in Iraq, Bush demonstrated that America could
learn how to fight and win a counterinsurgency war. That was the
real answer to the "Vietnam Syndrome." The legacy of
Vietnam was not that America couldn't successfully fight a
conventional war. It was the fear that foreign insurgencies would
always prove to be quagmires and that we were always doomed to
lose. In Iraq, Bush provided a model for how to win such a war-and
he raised up into positions of command a whole cohort of officers
who are experienced at fighting them. One of those officers is
Stanley McChrystal. President Obama has basically accepted this
achievement without giving credit for it, and so he goes on to
apply to Afghanistan the same reasoning and strategy, the same
counter-insurgency "surge," that allowed us to achieve
all those "milestones" in Iraq. He even goes so far-and I
did not expect this-as to explicitly reject the comparison of
Afghanistan to Vietnam and to reject Vice-President Biden's
quixotic notion of fighting the war through isolated air strikes
against al-Qaeda hideouts. Even more surprising, given his explicit
rejection of this notion in past speeches, Obama caved in on
American exceptionalism: "[O]ur country has borne a special
burden in global affairs…. We have not always been thanked
for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more
than any other nation, the United States of America has
underwritten global security for over six decades-a time that, for
all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions
lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and
advancing frontiers of human liberty." Thank you for the
acknowledgement, Mr. President. It's about time. And yet there
is still one big difference between Obama and Bush. Yes, he backed
the Afghan surge, but throughout his speech, Obama conveyed no
sense of conviction, of an unshakable personal commitment to
victory in this war. Quite the opposite. To begin with, consider
the shallowness of his actual explanation of his "new"
Afghan counter-insurgency strategy. As far as I can tell, this is
all there really is to it: The 30,000 additional troops that I am
announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010-the
fastest pace possible-so that they can target the insurgency and
secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to
train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so
that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create
the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to
the Afghans. This is one of the vaguest descriptions I have ever
heard of the military science of counter-insurgency. It glosses
over virtually everything. President Bush used to talk in detail
about "clear, hold, and build" strategies, and during
last year's campaign, John McCain spoke authoritatively about
reforming the fractured command structure of international troops
in Afghanistan. These are the kind of details that convey a sense
that a leader is really engaged with and understands the details of
the war policy he is ordering. We should expect as much or more out
of President Obama. After all, wasn't his over-prolonged,
nearly four-month period of analysis justified by the claim that
Obama was thoroughly investigating every detail and considering
every possibility? But his speech shows no trace of such an
exacting effort. It shows no knowledge of or interest in the
details and implementation of the strategy it announces. For
example, the president gives General McChrystal almost as many
troops as he asked for, but not quite. Why that many troops and not
more? What does he know that his commander in the field
doesn't? What objective was going to be accomplished with the
extra troops that will now have to be abandoned? Obama offers no
explanation. Or note the speech's reference to the idea that
the added troops will "secure key population centers."
This gives us our only clue about the difference between 30,000
extra troops and the 40,000 to 45,000 McChrystal wanted. It implies
that some population centers and possibly large swathes of the
Afghan countryside will not be secured. But which areas are
"key" to victory and which are not? And doesn't this
just mean holding the cities while the insurgents control the
countryside-the recipe that led to failure for the Soviets? Maybe
there's a good answer to these questions, but we sure
didn't hear it from the president. It's looking more and
more like Obama's exaggerated period of indecision on
Afghanistan was intended to demonstrate to the left that he is
thorough and deliberate-the opposite of their caricature of Bush as
a "gut player" who rushes into war-in order to give cover
for his decision to order a surge. And the decision to cut the
number of troops was intended to show his skepticism concerning the
claims of his generals-again, in contrast to Bush-while not
actually changing the overall strategy. But the shallowness of
Obama's decision is most clearly demonstrated by the way he
talks about having a timetable for US withdrawal: Taken together,
these additional American and international troops will allow us to
accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow
us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July
of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this
transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the
ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's
Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul.
But it will be clear to the Afghan government-and, more
importantly, to the Afghan people-that they will ultimately be
responsible for their own country. Again, is this all we get from
the man who spent four months supposedly exploring every angle of
the war strategy? He says that this withdrawal timetable will
"take into account conditions on the ground"-yet he is
predicting it for a specific month, before the Afghan surge has
even been implemented and at a point when our position in
Afghanistan is still deteriorating. All of this invites the
question: what happens if July 2011 arrives and we're not
clearly winning yet? Will Obama still insist on a withdrawal? No
wonder Obama advisor David Axelrod was reduced to incoherence when
he was asked about this timetable. Half of winning a
counter-insurgency war is conveying a sense of resolve. You want
the enemy to sense that continued resistance is futile because you
just won't give up, and you want your allies and potential
allies to sense that they can rely on you over the long term. But
no one wants to cooperate with the US if they suspect that
we're stampeding for the exits in July 2011, and their heads
are going to end up on display in the town square the next day.
This is the crucial issue of Obama's speech: convincingly
demonstrating and explaining the degree of his resolve to achieve
victory in Afghanistan. And Obama is disastrously unclear. He
announces a surge-while at the same time announcing a withdrawal.
Obama doesn't know whether he's coming or going. Or as Der
Spiegel put it, "It was a dizzying combination of surge and
withdrawal, of marching to and fro." The deeper impression
conveyed by Obama's speech is that he doesn't really care
that much about Afghanistan. He's just checking a box on one of
his expected responsibilities as president, but his heart isn't
in it. I suspect this is the real reason for his extended
indecision. The passage that is most ominous in this respect begins
with the most completely non-stirring quotation I have ever heard
in a major presidential speech: "Indeed, I am mindful of the
words of President Eisenhower, who-in discussing our national
security-said, 'Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a
broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among
national programs.'" Obama then cites the more pressing
needs of the economy and of his plans for domestic spending:
"In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our friends
and neighbors are out of work and struggle to pay the bills, and
too many Americans are worried about the future facing our
children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has
grown more fierce. So we simply cannot afford to ignore the price
of these wars." To turn Jefferson's famous dictum upside
down and inside out, Obama's rule seems to be: trillions for
health-care and "stimulus," but billions for defense?-I
don't know. We'll have to "balance our
priorities." Deep down, Obama is still a dyed-in-the-wool
leftist who believes that war is a jingoistic distraction from the
task of imposing socialism on the economy-that a bayonet is a
weapon with a worker on both ends. That's why we're getting
a half-hearted surge. The message of Obama's speech is: I'm
surging troops into Afghanistan to show the hawks I'm serious,
but I really want to get out as soon as possible because I think
other things are more important. The message to the Taliban and
al-Qaeda is: wait me out. Sure, the next year is going to be really
tough with all of those extra US troops coming after you. But if
you can just hang tough until July of 2011, I'll decide America
has done all it can afford to do, and we'll leave. That
doesn't mean that we are doomed to lose in Afghanistan. We have
many more advantages there than we usually realize. And remember
that the crucial turning point came in Iraq in early 2007,
precisely at the point when the Democratic Congress was attempting
to cut off funding for the war. If I had to bet-and all of us are
anted up for this game-I would say that an Afghan surge will
produce significant results next year, making it a political
success that Obama will want to keep rolling. (God knows he'll
need one.) And so the withdrawal timetable will suddenly become
very flexible. But still, signs of wavering and divided priorities
in the commander-in-chief are far more significant than anti-war
sentiment in Congress. That's particularly true from the
perspective of our enemies, who are accustomed to authoritarianism;
they know to ignore the carping of the political flunkies and just
size up the head guy giving the orders. And Obama's speech must
have made him seem weak and uncommitted. As a result, he
significantly and unnecessarily undermined the prospects for the
success of his own strategy.
