Afghanistan--Mr. Obama's War

It’s now President Obama’s war. He cannot blame anything that happens from here on out on anyone else. Last night he officially put his brand on the thing. As far as he’s concerned, we seem to be starting all over again.
That isn’t what most Americans wanted to hear. It certainly isn’t what our European NATO allies wanted to hear. Many of those countries who actually have a couple of thousand troops in Afghanistan want them home again—soon.
Congress certainly wasn’t happy to hear it. Obama’s own party asked some of the nastiest questions. Why? What’s the game plan? Is this trip necessary? What about bringing the troops home again? And, again, why?
Everybody seems to want to know why our Secretary of Defense, Gates, is telling us there will be a reassessment of the situation in December, 2010, and Obama is telling us that we will definitely start pulling troops out the following July. Why bother with the reassessment if we’ve already decided what we are going to do?
Did Obama say anything new last night? Did he say anything he hadn’t already said during the Presidential campaign last year? Fewer troops for Iraq; more troops for Afghanistan. Yes, we’ve heard that. What’s the bottom line—what do WE get out of it?
Protection from Muslim radicals who want to bomb more targets in the US. That’s nice—but don’t those radicals now have all of their bases in Pakistan. Oh, but we’re going to assist Pakistan too. How? If Pakistan folds up and collapses or has a hostile government change, do we send troops in there like we did in Cambodia in 1970?
There’s a can of worms for you. Do nothing and risk watching Pakistan fall—do something and have a really serious war on our hands, with nukes possibly in play.
Admittedly, as I’ve said before, we have a tiger by the tail. NOBODY can predict the outcome if we let go or if we hang on. I’m so glad I don’t have to make this decision. It could so quickly become a no-win situation for us—and our troops over there.
I stopped to buy a pair of shoes this afternoon. The salesman—a bright man—and I got to talking about last night’s speech. He shook his head, thinking about all the nations that have tried to tackle Afghanistan, and wondered aloud if the only solution might be to go in full tilt and kill lots and lots of the people over there, Taliban and potential Taliban.
I reminded him (as I have my readers in previous blogs) that the only person to really subdue Afghanistan and its hostile sects was Genghis Khan. He did it with brute force. If a city of 100,000 became a problem, he slaughtered everyone in it.
The peace he left behind was that of the grave. I suggested we did not have the stomach for that—and that probably we are a better people for not having it. But neither of us could think of a workable alternative for pacifying Afghanistan and its mountains.
A surge that worked in Iraq with its highways, flatlands and clearly defined ethnic and religious groups we could play off against each other is one thing. Trackless mountains and tribal/religious relationships we don’t even understand are something else entirely.
I find myself feeling about Afghanistan the way I felt about Iraq—if we were going to go in at all, we should have hit hard, ruthlessly and fast; then we should have gotten out leaving so much destruction behind us that the maddest mullah of all would decide to go pick on somebody else next time. Not nice, politically incorrect, but historically a workable strategy.
Now all we have is a man who repeats himself, utterly lacks passion and conveys no conviction in his wooden tone, trying to articulate a policy no one really thinks will work. I fear that we may remember this speech the way we remember the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
That started out as Mr. Johnson’s war; then it became Mr. Nixon’s war—and we lost it. This one started out as Mr. Bush’s war; now it is Mr. Obama’s war. It looks even less winnable.