If you are surprised by, or disappointed in, President Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, then you probably weren’t paying attention during the campaign.
Before he was elected, Obama talked about Iraq being the wrong war, and how it caused us to take our eyes off the ball in Afghanistan. There was talk of ending the war in Iraq so that resources could be shifted back to a focus on Al Qeida and the Taliban.
Just as too many on the right were quick to call this kind of talk a “weakness,” too many on the left either heard this as support for their own anti-war sentiment, or they didn’t hear it at all. Deploring Hillary Clinton’s vote for the Iraq war, left-leaning hopefuls seized upon Obama as just the person to clean up the mess that had been made of the Middle East and our reputation around the world.
Unfortunately, cleaning up after George Bush doesn’t mean sweeping his mistakes under the rug and pretending they never happened. No matter how much we might want to. Damage has been done, and in Afghanistan, as in a lot of other places, that damage has been significant.
It started so well, too. After 9/11, with the support of much of the world, the United States went into Afghanistan and broke up the Taliban’s stranglehold over the region. An election was held, women and girls began to regain access to basic services, and Afghanistan looked like it was headed in the right direction.
But as recent hearings in the British Parliament have once again rehashed, the Bush Administration wasn’t really focused on Afghanistan in the first place. Almost immediately after 9/11, Condoleeza Rice and others began talking up an invasion of Iraq. As any young child comes to learn, if you are marching in one direction, and looking in another, you are bound to bump into something. Hard.
While all the American media attention was focused on the fiasco that was the Iraq war, the situation in Afghanistan quietly deteriorated. It’s taken a long time to get as bad as it has and it can no longer be ignored. Strict anti-war believers are not going to want to hear this either, but there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the President’s decision.
Intelligence – in all senses of the word. The Obama administration took time to come to this decision. There’s good reason to believe that he truly listened to his military advisors when it came to the needs and plans in Afghanistan and didn’t just go through generals until he got to one who told him what he wanted to hear. In eight years, there’s a lot of information about what worked and what didn’t in the conflict, including what worked for our British Allies. Armed with that knowledge, we should be able to better accomplish the progress that Iraq so rudely interrupted.
Big picture thinking – Early in his presidency, Obama linked Afghanistan and Pakistan as two sides of the same coin. (AfPak!) Pakistan is beginning to push back on the Taliban in their territory where the prior Pakistani leadership accepted a lot of money from the US and all too conveniently ignored the fact that Osama bin Laden was most certainly holed up there. Musharrif’s successor is in a position of needing to crack down on extremism in order to retain his hold on the country.
“The surge worked.” Part 1 - Iraq was as difficult as it was because Cheney and Rumsfeld were determined to do it on the cheap. Or, alternatively, to pay Haliburton and other profiteers rather than soldiers. Exactly the predicted mess ensued and continued until additional troops were sent over to do much of what should have been done years ago. Of course, Iraq and Afghanistan are different, but there’s reason to believe that if not for Iraq, Afghanistan would not be in the situation it is today.
“The surge worked.” Part 2 – Whether you believe that or not, American soldiers in Iraq are packing up their equipment and preparing to ship it to either the U.S. or Afghanistan. Many are heading home themselves. This frees up resources to attend to Afghanistan, where the focus should have been all along.
War is not the (only) answer - There is, at last, a realization that military solutions are not the tool in the kit. Diplomacy is not a dirty word and we no longer treat people we disagree with like recalcitrant children. There seems to be a far greater understanding this time around that the civilians of Afghanistan are key to success.
Gravitas – Like it or not, Obama gets a lot of international support for simply not being George Bush. You can bet that all the major players around the world, including bin Laden, understood the phrase “All hat and no cattle.” Whether the new vibe they are getting from the United States actually translates into boots in Afghanistan remains to be seen, but NATO’s not simply laughing us off anymore.
And finally:
Dick Cheney is wrong. Again. - A deadline is a threat not a weakness. Saying we'll hang around in Afghanistan until Kharzei and his countrymen feel like getting their act together benefits no one but Haliburton. If you don't set a target date, no one needs to take you seriously. Frankly, we tried it his way. It's the reason we now have to redo what was screwed up in the first place.
