Afghanistan: A Missed Turning Point

Jules Witcover

Placards proclaiming "Change We Can Believe In" were hoisted at candidate Barack Obama's rallies across the country. President Obama offered only a change in approach in his long-awaited plan to press on with the war in Afghanistan.

His decision to approve of most of the troop surge requested by General Stanley McChrystal, with more finely tuned schemes for troop deployment in Afghanistan, is an only thinly veiled agreement to continue the Bush stay-the-course commitment, with vague variations.

Assurances that it will not be open-ended, and without the unrealistic Bush fantasies about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East, cannot obscure the fact that Obama came to a critical split in the road in Afghanistan and has basically chosen the path most traveled.

Faced with trying to prop up the corrupt and unreliable Karzai regime in Kabul, Obama had ample justification to seize the moment and redefine the American mission to what it originally was -- that is, cleaning out the festering terrorist presence in the region, which importantly includes Pakistan.

Obama could have cited, validly, the tremendous cost of such a large troop surge in the face of severe domestic economic woes at home as grounds to reverse eight years of radical foreign policy adventurism under the Bush administration. Instead, he is taking the same route Lyndon Johnson chose four decades ago in Vietnam.

Then, LBJ decided he could have both "guns and butter," escalating the war in Indochina and pursuing his Great Society program of social progress at the same time. In the end, he lost both, leaving history to judge him poorly. Obama is not yet all-in on the war as Johnson was, but he has now taken a step in the same perilous direction.

A central aspect of Obama's successful presidential campaign was his promise to bring about a clear change from Bush's reckless and over-extended foreign policy that went off the tracks early with his elected diversion into Iraq. This country is only now extracting itself from that folly and returning in part to the original pursuit of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

It is undeniable that included in that effort must be coping with the Taliban supporters of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in the region. But that task need not carry with it a continuation of Bush's nation-building objectives to the point that America's own economic security is severely jeopardized.

The immediate political benefit of Obama's new Afghanistan policy is that it surely will bring him strong support from Republicans in Congress who up to now have worked overtime to stymie him at every turn on his domestic legislative agenda.

But the price he will pay for it will be increased disgruntlement in his own Democratic ranks. It could well spill over from predictable liberal dismay over his Afghanistan decision onto his difficult task of maintaining party solidarity behind his critical push for health-care reform.

In a broader sense, Obama's almost mystical appeal to the millions of Americans who bought into his 2008 promise of "change we can believe in" risks being badly shaken by sending so many more American forces into Afghanistan. According to the polls, most Americans already think the war there isn't worth fighting.

The troop surge also is certain to haunt Obama's approaching trip to Oslo to received the Nobel Peace Prize, whose award was so widely met here and abroad with sentiments ranging from befuddlement to outrage. For a presidency sold on messages of hope, promise and straight talk, this decision offers little solace to the Obama faithful.

All through the Bush war years, Democrats in Congress deplored the conduct of a war that was being waged without a price tag, leaving the huge burden to future generations. Now even Democratic critics of the new troop surge are demanding that if it is to happen, new taxes should be assessed to pay for it.

Obama may in the end wish he had done what he said he would do as a candidate -- really change the Bush foreign policy that had so alienated allies around the world. In trying only to alter it at the margins, he could be betting his whole presidency.

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Afghanistan: A Missed Turning Point