The Los Angeles Times reports that there were 4,582 words in President Obama’s Afghanistan speech on Tuesday night. Al Qaeda was used 22 times, Taliban 12. “Victory,” however, was not uttered once, although we did get 44 references by Mr. Obama to himself.
President Obama ups the stakes in Afghanistan.
Last September, General Stanley McChrystal provided several different reinforcement proposals to the Obama administration, one of which included a request for as many as 80,000 additional troops. President Obama settled on just 30,000 troops. And, oh, we’re beginning withdrawals in July 2011.
Transport, billeting and supply issues being what they are, it will be mid 2010 before the deployments are complete — so effectively we have a year till we start quitting. Counterinsurgency takes time and is labor intensive. What’s the objective here?
How is the military supposed to achieve in about a year what we haven’t been able to in the past eight? All the Taliban has to do is wait us out, avoid our engaging their main forces – just keep the casualties high enough for us to keep the public and the media demoralized and to remind the locals that the Taliban’s still there, and will remain when we’ve left.
In effect, we’re telling our soldiers and their families — up front and in public –”don’t be the last guy killed because this is a mistake.” We’re telling the Taliban: “just wait, you’re going to win it all.” We’re telling the Karzai government we’re propping up there: “start getting your New York apartments, your book contracts and your Yale teaching jobs lined up, and get your loot out.” We’re telling the locals: “you’re fools to trust the Americans — they’re leaving, but the Taliban is forever.” Finally, we’re telling the world (as if it needed reminding) that we really don’t do counterinsurgency.
I’ve never been really hawkish on the nation-building mission in Afghanistan. I thought major military involvement in nation-building there was the worst thing Bush did, that Al Qaeda could be harassed there with something more on the lines of punitive expeditions against supporters, raids and attacks from the air. But nation-building and a full spectrum counterinsurgency conflict in Afghanistan? If you’d told me, or anybody else, in 2000 that we’d have almost 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2010, you’d have been rightly looked at like you were a crazed lunatic.
Obama, to do him justice, inherited this mess. However, the President told us (when he was begging us for the job) that Afghanistan was the good war; the war that, after 9/11, we really needed to fight; the war that Iraq sucked attention and money away from. Now he owns this war. What kind of war leader have we got here? The war may have been a questionable idea — but it’s an accomplished fact. We’re in it. Why didn’t Obama come out swinging last night – say he’d send McChrystal the 40,000 that he finally asked for, talk some about victory, and shut off the withdrawal talk? Obama could have – and should have – told the generals PRIVATELY – that they had a year or so to make something happen because we were going to have to begin leaving afterwards. Why encourage the enemy with public talk of withdrawal?
As it is, last night’s lowball escalation promise, and the promise that withdrawals will begin by a given date, made it obvious to everybody, especially the Taliban, that this President doesn’t really want to fight; but to flee. Simon Jenkins, writing today in the Guardian, is right – paraphrasing him: Obama has the watch, but the Taliban has the time.
