I am torn on the President’s speech on Afghanistan – or, more accurately, the policy on Afghanistan that the President announced in his speech at West Point last Tuesday evening. I really want it to work. I really want us to succeed in Afghanistan. I really think it is important that we succeed in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, I think it is most likely that the policy that the President announced will fail.
Much of the President’s policy is good. Getting the troops there quickly is good. It won’t be easy, though. There is a lot to do, logistics-wise, to get them there in just six months. That is why General McChrystal originally suggested that the extra troops should start showing up in March. But if they can get there earlier, good. The number of troops going is pretty good, too. It is not quite as many as General McChrystal said he needed to implement the strategy the President announced last March, but it is hopefully enough. (Whether additional NATO troops can make up the difference depends on what countries send the extra troops and what limitations their governments place on what they can do in Afghanistan. Given all of the limitations the German government places on its troops, more German troops wouldn’t be all that useful. More British troops would be great.)
But – and here is the big "but": I am very fearful that all of the good the President is doing by sending the additional troops and sending them quickly will be undone by the deadline he set for beginning to bring them home. There have been lots of comments on how this exit date will affect the Taliban or the Afghan government or even our efforts to get our NATO allies to send more troops.
For example, will the Taliban just lay low for 19 months and wait for us to start to pull out, at which point they will start up again? If the Afghan government knows we will be starting to leave in 19 months, will they decide they need to get their act together and start making reforms while we are still there to help – or will they figure they might as well accommodate the crooks, etc., because 19 months isn’t enough time to beat them, and if they can’t beat them, they are going to have to get along with them once we start to leave.
More important than any of these, however, is what the Afghan people will think. If they think we are here today but starting to leave in 19 months, are they going to be willing to take a stand against the Taliban? The Taliban does not have popular support. They are bad people, and the Afghanis would prefer to be done with them. A big part of the "surge" in Iraq was the people, such as those involved in the Sunni Awakening, deciding that they were tired of Al Qaeda. They were willing to fight back, and when President Bush announced the surge and demonstrated we were going to stay, they joined up. In fact, they joined up even before the extra soldiers arrived in Iraq. In some ways, it wasn’t that the soldiers that we sent to Iraq that made the difference. It was the determination and the assurance that we would be there that made the difference. It was not just a surge of soldiers. It was a surge of determination. The Iraqi people decided we could be relied on and so they joined up.
The problem with the surge in Afghanistan that President Obama announced is that he got things backward. He is getting the soldiers there quicker than requested but he lost the psychological impact of sending the soldiers, by telling everybody when they will begin to leave.
Some Administration spokespeople have said that, while the President announced when the soldiers would start to leave, the President has left open how quickly the troops will continue to leave thereafter. "Those variables – pace and end – will be dictated by conditions on the ground."
But I am afraid that what people heard was the date, not the qualification. Actually, the plan that President Obama announced is not all that different from the substance of the surge in Iraq. The surge in Iraq was never going to last forever. It was going to end; the soldiers were going to come home. But the way President Bush announced it, by emphasizing going in, instead when we would be leaving, gave an impression of determination. And we got Iraqis to believe in us and to sign up to fight Al Qaeda.
President Obama did the opposite. He emphasized the leaving and left unspoken the fact that we may stay longer. Much the same policy; totally different effect. One got us allies among the Iraqi people. The other, I fear, will not get us allies among the Afghani people.
Two final points: First, what is going to happen in Afghanistan? Nobody knows for sure, but here is what seems like a possible ending to me: Our troops go in. They have a fair amount of success because they are following a proper strategy, a counterinsurgency strategy. Once they start to leave, though, a momentum of leaving sets in. As the number of our troops drops, the Taliban’s efforts pick up speed. The situation worsens, but we can’t stop leaving. As we leave, the Taliban takes over large sections of the country. Within a year or two after we have gone, the Taliban controls the country. But we will say we tried; it was the Afghanis’ fault that the Taliban won. We did all we could.
Second, I disagree with the idea that Obama couldn’t do anything other than this because the public is turning/has turned against the war. This may be true of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party (i.e., in Howard Dean’s words, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party), but it’s not true of the American people as a whole. It is true that a large majority of the American people think the situation in Afghanistan is going badly. (A CBS poll said it was 69% to 23%.) But that doesn’t mean they want to give up. A USA/Gallup poll taken just before the President’s speech showed 47% of the people wanted to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan compared to 39% who wanted to reduce the number of troops. That’s not a sign of people giving up; that’s a sign of people wanting to succeed. And just think what those numbers would have been if the President was actually trying to sell his policy in Afghanistan like he has other policies. There is a majority in this country that wants to succeed in Afghanistan. We just need a president to lead them.
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