Afghanistan: Now It's Obama's Afghan War
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Afghanistan Troop Surge
(c) Paul Tong

Generals are notorious for fighting each new war the way they should have fought the last one. President Obama seems to have picked up that tendency as he orders a troop surge in Afghanistan, a strategy that he rejected in Iraq until it worked.

Experience is the best teacher, but every war is different. As we became bogged down in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, I was one of many critics who called for the George Aiken remedy. The late Vermont Republican senator famously suggested as early in the Vietnam War that we declare victory and bring our troops home.

In Iraq, a troop surge, which then-Senator Obama opposed, turned the tide. It gave Iraq enough stability and Americans enough breathing room for our troops to begin our pullback and withdrawal, which still continues.

Now Obama is employing a surge of his own in Afghanistan. I hope it works. Afghanistan is very different from Iraq. Yet Obama's long-standing support for the Afghan war as "a war of necessity" moved him to give the war and the government of President Hamid Karzai another chance.

He called for 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan before beginning a withdrawal, depending on "conditions on the ground" 18 months later. What if the Taliban simply fade back and bide their time until Obama's deadline arrives? No problem, a high-ranking White House official said in a briefing with columnists before the speech; the top priority of the surge is to break the Taliban's momentum long enough to grow the Afghan military from its current strength of 92,000 to as many as 260,000. If the Taliban take a break, so much the better.

Obama could have taken the Aiken route, declared victory in Afghanistan based on our rout of al-Qaida and begun an immediate withdrawal. Instead, he is making the war his own at a time when public opinion, especially among his fellow Democrats, has soured on it.

They have good reasons: The war's original purpose of chasing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida after the Sept. 11 attacks has faded. Al-Qaida's leaders fled, apparently to neighboring Pakistan, where our CIA has been picking them off with high-flying robot Predator drones. The Karzai government is infested with corruption. While the U.S. was focused on Iraq, the Taliban have reemerged to pose a possible threat to the Kabul government, which has little control of its own nation outside the capital city of Kabul.

And, back home, Americans feel more pressing matters such as jobs, the economy, deficits and the health care debate.

Obama took all that into account in a notably sober, yet internally conflicted Afghanistan policy speech at West Point. This is still a war in which "the common security of the world" is "at stake," he said. Yet, he also said, if it's not working in 18 months we're going to start packing up to go home. In classic Obama fashion, he tried to include everybody's views. The result was one of the least stirring speeches with which any commander-in-chief has sent troops to war.

Still his surge could work, which would be a blessing. Al-Qaida must be denied a safe haven that the Taliban might restore if they topple Karzai's shaky government. The same is true of Pakistan next door, which also poses a potential nuclear threat.

Obama's deadline sends a signal to Afghans that we don't plan to stay long, which tends to be OK with them after fending off centuries of imperial invaders. A deadline also puts Karzai, who won reelection amid widespread vote fraud, on notice to clean up his act and his government. Nothing concentrates the mind like a firm deadline, especially with the prospect of being hanged in a Taliban takeover.

Whether this surge works or not, America's larger war against al-Qaida-style terrorism is being fought less like Gen. George Patton than James Bond. Beefed-up human intelligence collection has resulted in Predator strikes that have killed at least a dozen al-Qaida leaders in recent months, the Pentagon says. Obama's Afghan surge includes an expanded CIA drone program in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, the New York Times reports, to target hideouts of Afghan Taliban leaders.

Like his surge, Obama's secret war on terror, including drones, has stirred protests on his left for taking out civilian casualties. On that sad score, at least drones are preferable to, say, B-52 bombers. A smart "war against terror" is fundamentally a big international police action against ideologically driven criminals. Before we deploy our military, we need to employ science and good detective work. When the enemy is always looking for new weapons, so must we.

 

 

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Afghanistan: Now It's Obama's Afghan War | Clarence Page

 

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