Barack Obama last night set out a new strategy for Afghanistan that coupled a short-term escalation of the war with a promise that he will begin US troop withdrawals in July 2011, the first time that America has offered a timetable for a military pullout. Crucially, he offered no date for its completion, though White House officials optimistically expressed hope that the bulk of the troops could be out before the end of 2012 when the president faces re-election.
Obama, in a long-awaited speech at the West Point military academy at the end of 92-day review of Afghanistan policy, announced the biggest escalation since the US entered the war in 2001. He is to send 30,000 more troops to be deployed over the next seven to eight months, bringing the US total to 100,000, close to the number of Soviet troops in the country during its occupation in the 1980s. It is the biggest decision Obama has taken since becoming president.
He presented the troop surge as a necessary part of creating the conditions for eventual withdrawal. "As commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan," Obama said.
He added the caveat that withdrawal of all combat troops would depend on how the war is going at the time. "Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground," Obama said. The inclusion of a date for the start of withdrawal is aimed at winning over a US public increasingly skeptical about the war and fearful that the country is being sucked into a Vietnam-style morass.
Obama said the parallels with Vietnam were a false reading of history: Afghanistan has wide international support, the Taliban is not a broad-based popular insurgency and, unlike Vietnam, the US was attacked from Afghanistan and "remains a target for those same extremists plotting along its border"…
For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation’s resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours. What we have fought for – what we continue to fight for – is a better future for our children and grandchildren. And we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity…
This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue – nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership, nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time, if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse. It’s easy to forget that when this war began, we were united – bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again…
When I scanned the post speech comments, I saw they were all about his plan for Afghanistan. I didn’t see anything about these last comments, so I’m not sure they will get heard. I suppose tomorrow we will continue to "be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse." But at least he said it. He won’t be able to go after these things until he has some modicum of success dealing with our horrible messes – the economy, the wars, Health Care. No matter what, the Limbaugh’s, Becks, and Palins will rave on. The Republicans will remain a bloc of obstructionism. But maybe the mood of the country will finally lift some – and that will be enough to carry the day.
Right before Thanksgiving, I posted a hastily reconstructed graph with Presidential Approval on top and Unemployment fitted [sort of] to the same timeline below it. I’m reposting here:
I sat through a half hour of CNN pundits until the natter and babble began to affect my blood pressure. Each of them in turn fastened upon a feature that fit with their own idiosyncratic views and experience with some feature of the speech (I’m inclined to give David Gergen a probationary pass). I was reminded, not so much of blind men and the elephant, as apropos as the analogy is, as much as the story of Mike the famous headless chicken:
(http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.php)…an idea reinforced when I tuned in again this morning and heard from Senator McCain (who really should know better at this point).
Do they really presume to suggest that the President is daft, ignorant and premature? that Generals Petraeus and McChrystal can’t tell their rear ends from a hole in the ground and have misapprehended the whole situation? that Secretaries Gates and Clinton are mindless myrmidons who wouldn’t have raised objection to imprudent gamble with the lives of our soldiers?
What is the likelihood that the processes of the past 90 days did not involve conversation, consultation, discussion and survey of every single stakeholder in this issue both immediate and secondary? Unlike Senator McCain, I don’t have a gambling problem, but if were a betting man, I would put everything I could gather on the probability of that being exactly zero.
At last we have competence, not ideology, at the helm. Time to support our troops.