Let me first acknowledge that I have written a sympathetic post on George Will's critique of our current Afghanistan policy. I didn't do so simply to be contrary with Obama. I noted with some amusement that former Democratic Mayor Ed Koch, an early supporter of the Afghanistan and Iraqi operations, fears that the GOP is cynically setting up Obama to take a fall on Afghanistan:
For political reasons and primarily to defeat Barack Obama in his second election yet to come, the balance of the Republican leadership and their followers will gradually turn against the war in Afghanistan, as the war becomes less and less popular with Republican Party members.Ed Koch is wrong. Republicans and conservatives, including myself, have no interest in seeing Afghanistan fall into the hands of the Taliban; none of us wants the precious blood of American lives to have been spilled in vain. At the same time, we don't believe in giving Obama a blank check. There has been a wide mistrust over Democratic Presidents in recent history attempting to micromanage the military; this does not mean that the military brass is always right. In the case of Iraq, it was clear to many of us (including McCain) that staffing levels were inadequate: no sooner a stretched-thin army would withdraw from an area to pursue other missions than the enemy would reclaim hard-won territory. Many of us suspect that the military's recommendations had more to do with managing aggregate manpower and troop morale issues than extrapolating manpower requirements from the singular goal of stabilizing Iraq; Bush's error was the exact opposite of micromanaging the military: it was not holding the generals accountable when it was clear their strategy was not working.
I do share Ed Koch's concern about the overall failure of other Western democracies to respond appropriately to international threats of terrorism from the Middle East and the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. Let me make the point very clear: The United States is NOT sending its soldiers and associated military hardware and supplies to provide a blank check for dysfunctional regimes; we are not there to prop up unpopular regimes whom fail to take necessary steps for reconciliation and compromise. This is merely an extension of the principle of "too-big-to-fail", e.g., in the S&L crisis and the recent economic tsunami whereby private-sector managers (or state governors and legislatures) make reckless commitments, essentially transferring their risk to the federal government. In other words, we refuse to allow the parochial interests of foreign leaders to trump American interests.
To a certain extent, I had some sympathy for the related arguments of so-called progressives (i.e., liberals) especially around 2004 to 2005 when it seemed as though Shiite leaders were more interested in settling scores for decades of repression by the Saddam Hussein regime than in making the difficult decisions needed to make for a better Iraq than they inherited. The Bush Administration clearly botched things with the appearance of being one-sided in sympathy with the Shiite majoritarians (particularly in disbanding the army and limiting opportunities for Sunnis to serve in government-sponsored positions).
Obama's handling of Afghanistan has been suspect from the get-go. Obama's position on Afghanistan was founded on the progressive rationalization that the Bush Administration had allegedly taken its eye off Afghanistan and the "real war" against international terrorism. This position logically requires a beefed-up commitment to defeat the "real enemy" in Afghanistan; the point is that the Democrats can't politically afford to appear to be soft on international terrorism and pursuit of the "real enemy". We've heard and seen this song and dance before; for example, John F. Kennedy could not afford to be seen as soft on communism, i.e., Cuba and Vietnam.
The analogy of Afghanistan to Iraq is disingenuous. If the reader recalls, US military action during the liberation of Afghanistan principally involved the use of air power. The insurgent Northern Alliance liberated key towns from retreating Taliban forces. The "rope-a-dope" tactics of the Taliban to transition into more of a guerrilla force is not unexpected; for example, we saw a similar response from the Iraqi civil service after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime. The task of sealing a mountainous border with western Pakistan, a region de facto not under control of the Musharraf government, made things difficult. I believe that the Democrats deliberately understated the intrinsic difficulty of the problem; Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state and traditional ally, resented American pressure and any hint of American troop incursions on its own territory.
The argument made by the progressives, i.e., that fighting a guerrilla movement is simply a law of numbers, is naive and sheer nonsense; it's the same kind of muddled thinking that yielded LBJ's dramatic, fateful escalation of American forces in Vietnam.
Barack Obama is now being caught in a crossfire of his own making: he largely postured himself as the "real" anti-Iraq invasion candidate of the 2008 Presidential campaign, while at the same time trying to convince the American heartland that he was not soft on international terrorism. His long delay in responding to McCristal's request for significantly more troops has rightfully drawn criticism. McCristal is his trusted man to give a clear, impartial assessment of what it would take to stabilize Afghanistan; if Obama fails to accept McCristal's recommendation, barring some compelling rationale otherwise, it makes it clear that Obama has to accept personal responsibility for his decision. On one hand, he's accepted the thesis that the status quo is not working; he's also on the record noting that the return of the Taliban and their allies (e.g., Al Qaeda) is unacceptable.
The anti-war faction is clearly accusing Obama of a contradiction with the rationale underlying the Democrats' 2007 attempts to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq, no matter the consequences on regional stability or American interests. They are similarly demanding a unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan. What I'm concerned with is Obama trying to steer a middle ground--and maintaining the status quo commitment. You can't buy stability on the cheap; if Obama decides to triangulate the issue, he is doing little more than imitating George Bush's "stay-the-course" policy, which I attributed to Bush's similar lack of military and foreign policy experience. The major difference this time is the fact that the military leadership which failed under Bush has been replaced with people whom have learned lessons from our anti-insurgent policies in Iraq which worked, a military clearly championing change in our nation's multi-year strategy in Afghanistan. In overruling the judgment of his hand-picked expert, Obama would not only undermine his own credibility as a manager, but he would be taking full responsibility for any ensuing shortfalls in regional stability and related military and diplomatic objectives. Obama must also accept responsibility for the unrealistic expectations he set that he could negotiate nontrivial Western country contributions to the Afghanistan stabilization effort. My understanding is that McCristal is NOT advocating a permanent large-scale military deployment in Afghanistan.
President Obama, it's time to fish or cut bait.
