Ross Douthat postulates that there may be worse things than cutting and running from the Af, worse even than trying to muddle through or split the difference between the augments the forward commander has requested and the forces currently arrayed:
(I heard a) theme, in public and private, from many counterinsurgency advocates last week. Having recently described Afghanistan as a “war of necessity,” they asked, can the president really turn down a request for more troops from a general he himself appointed to support a campaign that he personally endorsed?
The answer is very likely no. However serious his doubts about escalation, Obama seems boxed in — by the thoroughness of McChrystal’s assessment and the military’s united front, by his own arguments across the last two years and by his party’s long-running insistence on painting Afghanistan as the neglected “good war.”
But if Obama takes us deeper into war out of political necessity rather than conviction, the results could be disastrous.
He’s got to believe it’s possible to forge something like a victory, and that the cost of doing so is less than the consequences of outright retreat and failure. He’s got to commit not just forces, but his presidency.
If he can’t – if in the depths of his soul he can’t – then he would be right to ditch the whole project before any more damage is done, before even one more soldier or Marine dies in a cause their commander in chief does not believe in. He can even blame it on Bush, if that gets him through the night.
It’s a tough place to be for a 47-year old half term Senator with a background in community organizing. But this is the job he fought for, and these are the choices he faces.
But he needs to remember that he’s not facing them alone. That his actions – and even his inaction – has consequences.
It’s time to man up and pull the trigger, Mr. President. One way or the other.
Surely you jest, Lex. “Man-up” and “pull the trigger” from a guy whose entire career was built on working the angles and voting “present?” Put me in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” column.
I think Obama is going to wait until 1) all of the ramifications of the Afghan elections are known and 2) the SecDef and Pentagon have sweated for a couple of months, to delineate that this President is not a yes-man to the Pentagon bureaucracy and will think things through on his own. That’s why SecState Clinton is saying to Karzai “You must earn the trust of the Afghan people” (and between the lines, NATO too), and SecDef Gates is downplaying the possibility of troop increases on behalf of the boss.
My gut says they are looking for a way out. A month or two down the road, if there is significant evidence that President Karzai may not be worthy of trust, blood, or treasure, then the end of mission, close station and march order will be forthcoming in short order.
As you say, a determination—one way or the other—ought to come about sooner, but I don’t think it will.
Reading Chomsky.
There are no moral imperatives in Chomsky that I have been able to find. Whether we do too much or not enough, either is a reflection of the failure of the United States and our policies, whatever they are.
This reveals for me the mind-set of many on the Left.
They are prisoners of their own intellectualization. The indeterminate is preferred. Since they really know nothing, anyway.
Reading Chomsky and listening to our President reveals a great deal of similiarity when addressing the need for problem solving. There is less a need to lead than there is a need for consensus. There aren’t any rules for how to achieve this consensus, what seems to be important is that the appearance of consensus building was achieved. From that appearance it can be determined which policies should be adopted until the need to replace those policies is reached through a new consensus.
Seriously.
Read the guy. There is no “there” there.
.
“Mansized Target” has an excellently reasoned 22 Sept post on this subj. @
http://mansizedtarget.com/
Don’t agree with his analysis en toto, but
makes some points with a different slant
than most such things I’ve seen. VERY worthwhile reading.
Leopards and spots…he will do what he has always done … vote present
He will waffle and procrastinate, and good men and women will die or be maimed for no good cause hamstrung by politically correct ROE.
Either we commit for the long haul and give the Afghan people protection that they can trust or we must retreat/fail/lose/surrender.
There is no middle ground between victory and defeat.
I was wrong. After reading that, I will only settle for feeding him into a woodchipper. How ’bout you fliterman? Wanna help? I’ll need someone to mind the fuel guage.
whoops, thought this was posted in a different post, “in the beginning”.
I’m with Virgil on this one; he might “metrosexual up” and vote “present” but that’ll just about exhaust the testosterone in the tank.
And frankly at this point I think lots of people–really too many people–in the United States don’t give a flying flip which way Obama goes on this one–pull out or all in.
But what Obama has failed to learn is the old maxim “To govern is to decide”. And so men die while The One dithers.
Do not forget the ability of politicians to play kick the can. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were two of the biggest rallying points for the left during the Bush administration. With health care rapidly unwinding, heavy unemployment numbers even as his own administration claims the recession is over, a carbon tax bill proposed that makes the health insurance bills look cheap, more bank bailouts suggested, VAT taxes floated, need I go on?
The man has to be pondering the possibility of losing votes in both houses in the mid-term election, and the probability of being a one-term president, plus losing the House and possibly the Senate in three more years. Which, uh, just won’t do.
If, on the other hand, he can keep Afghanistan low on the front page, it provides him three convenient excuses. It would still be Bush’s fault (of course!), it allows him to bash allies for not stepping up and thus blame the continued recession and unemployment on Bush’s War and the costs thereof, and finally if he does lose Congress he can blame the Republican majority for not giving him the money necessary.
Keeping Afghanistan low-key for three years shouldn’t be terribly difficult, the odd large action could be arranged for the purposes of publicity, and if he’s a one-term president he can kick that can down the road to the next administration, where Democrats will again use it to garner support from the left in their party.
Personally, I really don’t think Afghanistan is on his radar, nor do I believe he thinks it can be won — as a community organizer the Taliban are closer to his background of political organization than the elected government or the tribal and village leaders are. Not to say he sympathizes with the Taliban, you understand, but I am implying that to him winning the war will take an army of advocates and organizers rather than divisions of soldiers, and he sees no such assets he can put in place to counter the Taliban on the ground in the villages.
Pure speculation on my part, but The Won campaigned mainly on domestic issues, feel-good issues, and his first year in office has been dominated by his domestic agenda. His foreign policy agenda has been, in a word, naive. America’s allies are watching and calculating our diminished abilities on the world’s stage. Our enemies are watching and calculating the same. Gambling on a troop surge and the bold action needed to win would put even more of his agenda at risk, and at heart Obama is not a risk-taker. Instead, he votes “present.”
– Max
You’re expecting President Obama to “man up and pull the trigger”, Lex? I’d sooner expect porcine aviation.
Nothing in his past or present indicates that he is willing (or even able) to make such a tough executive decision. He was the master of voting “present”, wrote very little of substance, hid anything else he’d written (ahem … Columbia), and was a carefully-cultivated cipher his entire adult life. His feeble executive instincts when confronted by an Asian insurgency will prove to be even worse than those of another Senator-turned-President.
But hey … if we’re lucky Obama will be a one-termer, too.
Obama has gone from candidate to candidate-in-chief. He has no leadership skills. He can command a room with his oratorical skills, so long as TOTUS is along for the ride. He stumbles and fumbles over and on everything. He is fast proving that he will be one of the worst presidents in our nation’s history.
Whatever he does in Afghanistan – he’ll fumble that too. He supposedly chose Biden as his VP because of Biden’s foreign policy chops. He names Clinton as SecState.
Yet he hasn’t let either of them do their jobs. He continues to hog center stage like the perpetual candidate he is.
Not that either Clinton or Biden will do great job either. But Obama has already painted the country into a corner with his rhetoric about Iran – either do this or do that (or else being implied). He should have let Clinton take center stage on that – it’s her job.
It’s clear he has no idea what it means to be president; he wanted the title without the responsibility. He can’t lead, he can’t get a consensus on anything even within his own party. In the corporate world he’d have been fired 3 months ago.
And while all this goes on, our warriors are left hanging in the breeze, on the whim of a man clearly ill-suited for the job of being their leader. Any one of our warriors shows P.BO what leadership is just by breathing.
P.BO has no prayer to ever earn the respect of our warriors. He’ll never earn mine either.
” man up and pull the trigger “…Sweet Jesus Lex… an impossibility for this sh*t-head…voting present or however you style this administrations actions…we’re bugging out…as I said yesterday ” its Deja Vu all over again”… the grunt takes the fall… after a time a new, hopefully smaller wall, will be built to honor the good men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to this wasted effort…I see no other outcome. Best
PS, Hey…Lets get back to some hot Babes with guns or the like…I/we need the deversion.
Snake,
This work for ya?
Many Thanks for the link…SE Cupp is clearly my cup of tea. Best
Snake Eater — If you’re desperate for “hot babes,” you can always go to Theo Spark’s site. He has them every day, as well as other interesting links.
Marianne
M/M, Many thanks…you are indeed an amazing soure of usefull knowledge. Best
Snake/
How ’bout just simply amazin’, period?
I’ll second that.
Lex, I’ve always been surprised by the fundamental optimism you seem to have retained through 30 years of military service when others would’ve dropped it a long time ago. Is there anything more than optimism that makes you think he’ll do what you are asking? As others have written above, I don’t see any reason to hope our president is capable of what is needed. And yes, that makes me terribly sad, scared and angry.
FbL/
Looks like your worst fears are going to be realized. I passed out early last night, so was up early this am. Was watching “Morning Joe” and my favorite smarmy weasel, NBC WH correspondent ChuckTODDdd was on and basically said that it was Fox and Grapes time at the WH. That AQ is spreading to places like Somalia, Yeamen, etc., and that perhaps better just to use UAVs, etc to go after them wherever they go–that we may see a REDUCTION of forces in Afghanistan, yada, yada, yada. When combined with Obamas’ statement yesterday that Af is primarily a NATO mission, I see Presidential feet that are growing not just cool to the idea of troop increases, but ice cold. I could be wrong, and Obama could still yet flip-flop several times in succession while he dithers, but everything in this mans background and personality tells me that he is congenitally adverse to putting more troops in–his basic constitution–his entire psyche and thought processes–scream out against the use of force in any form. It’s bug-out time. Big Time.
VX, Saw the same show this AM…sinking feeling increasing as the useless pres and his butt boys tap dance…avoiding despair is painfully harder …our troops in country are screwed…now back to fun and games with Theo Sparks. Best
PS, Suggest you ease up on the early pass- out situation…a gomer of your vintage needs to husband his energies.
UAV’s? I’m okay with that so long as they’re the BUFF and the BONE…Linebacker style. As for the Af, IMO, either we do the deed or we get the hell out and let it implode. The memory of Vietnam is still too painful. Anyone else remember Dubbya telling us that the War on Terror was going to take a while to sort out?
What I would add about BHO is that he hasn’t disappointed me in the least. He’s doing (or not) pretty much what I thought he would. Zero substance, incapable of making a sound decision, blames others for failures, diverts attention from real issues to back channel what he wants to get done, and builds up an inner circle akin to an inner CAP barrier around the Carrier. Unlike Truman, this guy believes that ‘the buck better not stop here!’. Wants/needs people to LIKE him.
Additionally, we need to remember that this guy from his earliest days was taught and raised up to be a Marxist, to live and promote a philosophy that around the world has destroyed, not built, entire nations. We can talk liberalism all we want, but Obama is NOT a liberal. Obama is a MARXIST, and Marxists end up destroying everything around them. His closest friends are terrorists and Marxists. I don’t need to list them, or we’d be here a long while.
Gotta quit here or I’ll turn this into an all day diatribe. Obama truly believes that he can keep sticking us in the backside with a daily dose of epinephrine, but what he doesn’t get is that for most of us the cortisol is starting to kick in; reality.