Tuesday, August 5, 2008
News / News Bites Obama -- Afghanistan's Next Victim?
Posted by Michael Miner on Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 7:46 PM
Barack Obama has made a campaign issue of his good judgment on the Middle East, and I'm beginning to wonder if that good judgment now has him exactly where John McCain wants him.
From the get-go Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq as the wrong war for the wrong reasons. McCain lined up behind his president. Now Obama wants to redeploy our Middle East forces. He wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times on July 14: "Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Irag is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won't have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq. As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan."
Famous last words -- "finish the job in Afghanistan." American and allied armies invaded soon after 9/11 and overthrew the Taliban in a few weeks, but it turned out the job wasn't finished. The Taliban leaked back in. Was the problem simply that we were two combat brigades short?
"The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan," Thomas Friedman wrote in the Times on July 30, "is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want." He approvingly quoted from a July Time cover story by Harvard professor and Kabul resident Rory Stewart: "A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge, and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining."
Friedman supported the Iraqi invasion in the beginning, though not for the reasons President Bush gave to the nation. Friedman sees the whole, vast Arab-Muslim world as a dysfunctional realm that has failed at modernity. Far more important than the assassination of Osama bin Laden, Friedman believes, is the creation of "islands of decent and consensual government" that offer young people an alternative to clerical nihilism. He thought Iraq could become such an island. He seems to think that again. "The reason the surge helped in Iraq," he said in his July 30 column, "is because Iraqis took the lead in confronting their own extremists -- the Shiites in their areas, the Sunnis in theirs. That is very good news."
So McCain, if he has his wits about him, can say this: "Thanks to the surge, whose effectiveness my opponent refuses to admit, the Iraqis now see a way forward to peace and democracy. If they are correct, Iraq will set an example for the entire Muslim world of a nation prosperous, pious, progressive, and free. This is an outcome my opponent was unable to imagine and cannot imagine yet. For some reason, he'd rather fight in Afghanistan, a primitive collection of clans and warlords on the fringes of Arabia that for centuries has defied every attempt to civilize and reform it, chewing up and spitting out every invading army that tried. Osama bin Laden is nowhere to be found in Afghanistan, and neither is the future of the Arab-Muslim world. My opponent is young and naive and doesn't understand any of this."
Maybe Obama does and maybe he doesn't, but as violence increases in Afghanistan the idea that it's the "good war" is being called into question even in precincts that might considered Obama's base. The leftist listserve Portside has just forwarded me a couple of articles that warn Obama to watch out. Conn Hallinan, a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, commented, "The initial invasion in 2001 was easy because the Taliban had alienated itself from the vast majority of Afghans. But the weight of occupation, and the rising number of civilian deaths, is shifting the resistance toward a war of national liberation. No foreign power has ever won that battle in Afghanistan."
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Hope and Change, my ass. This guy really is no different than any other politician on the scene. Whatever it takes to get elected--that's what he really Hopes for, and he'll Change what he says and does until he gets there.
Bush made a whopping big mistake. He went back to the Roman-colonial-Soviet Union power paradigm, which nobody gets out of easily and undamaged. He sent colonial troops into Afghanistan and especially Iraq military materiel and a hell of a lot of money. The enormous error of McCain is that he does not comprehend this even a little bit and will find new ways to perpetuate (for 100 year?). This is not about policy or position, but commitment and comprehension. Bush and mcCain following him have and have and will lead us toward us the position the Soviet Union found itself in 20 years ago. Yes, Obama does want to commit more troops to Afghanistan and that is stupid. But it is a more mistake, but it is 2 or 3 on the Richter Scale versus the 10 of Bush and McCain. I can't believe Michael Miner substitutes the small picture for the big one. I would rather have someone who makes a mistake out of lack of exerience, which we all do, than someone who errors because he sees the United States as the 21st Century version of the British or Soviet empires and colonialism as the answer to the world's problems.
When was the last time a president was elected because the public voted for the big picture over the small one? I didn't write to accuse or defend Obama but to think about how Afghanistan and Iraq might play out as a campaign issue.
Hm. As usual, you put your finger right on an important issue here. While I agree that the war in Iraq has (or at least had) little to do with the fight against terrorism, and that the more understandable war in Afghanistan is likely as unwin-able (just ask the Russians)... I don't disagree with Obama's plan. Like him, I may wish that our current leadership had exercised a more diplomatic and less violent approach to seeking justice for the 9/11 attacks, the fact is- we're in this war now. As such, we've asked Afghan citizens to take arms against their oppressors, thereby putting their own safety on the line. To just pack up and leave (as we did under Bush I), we put those people in danger by angry Taliban forces. Not only is this morally wrong, it also serves as a perfect formula to create more anti-American animosity and more terrorists interested in delivering unforgettable blows to our country. Obama didn't drive the bus off the cliff, but he also doesn't want to abandon the passengers. In this imperfect and messy situation, he's got my vote.
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