Like many across the country, we are left scratching our heads at President Barack Obama’s speech to the U.S. Military Academy cadets at West Point on Tuesday night during which he announced his intention to send an additional 30,000 troops
Like many across the country, we are left scratching our heads at President Barack Obama’s speech to the U.S. Military Academy cadets at West Point on Tuesday night during which he announced his intention to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan early next year.
It’s not that we necessarily disagree with the final decision, and we should not be surprised at the announcement since Obama did campaign on the idea that our conflict in Afghanistan was the “good war.”
What leaves us miffed this week is the lack of coherent principle behind the decision. In continuing his year-long tack to the political center in an ill-advised attempt to make everybody happy — “You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time,” Bob Marley once sang — Obama on Tuesday laid out his completely incoherent rationale for escalation.
If Obama is “convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan” and believes the region “is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida,” as he said Tuesday, then he should give his generals what they need, unhaltingly and unequivocally. No limits should be placed on funding, troops, or timelines. If we need to win at all costs, then we should truly double down and do whatever it takes to responsibly attain “victory” — whatever that word means these days.
“It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger, no hypothetical threat,” he said without a trace of irony just moments after promising that American troops will begin to come home in 18 months.
Huh? How can the situation be so dire, so necessary, so urgent as to require the investment of thousands of American lives and perhaps 30 billion more American dollars, but yet be abandoned so readily and so soon? Does that make any sense?
And doesn’t stressing the imminent danger in Afghanistan and the potential threat to our national security if we fail in our mission undermine his statement that, “The days of providing a blank check are over.” Really? Telling Afghan President Hamid Karzai that America simply cannot afford to allow the Taliban and al-Qaida to regain a foothold and initiate more terror attacks is a “blank check,” no matter what other pretty words Obama uses.
Conversely, if Obama supports identifying a timeframe for withdrawal, rejecting an open-ended escalation because “it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests,” then why are we investing more in Afghanistan at all? What do we really hope to achieve there? What can we hope to accomplish? What is victory? Will the Taliban and al-Qaida ever be truly extinguished?
If, as Obama said Tuesday, “America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan,” then why does his plan call for troops to start coming home in July 2011 but lack a definitive timetable or plan of action for the rest of the war’s execution? Did he really think the mere mention of an 18-month target would pacify millions of Americans who are against escalation and want him to bring the troops home now?
While Obama’s “dithering” (Dick Cheney’s word) on top U.S. and NATO Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request has no actual impact on the ground in the Middle East because none of the troops in question were going to be deployed until 2010 anyway, it does provide the American people with a window into Obama’s thinking.
Perhaps he was merely gathering intelligence to craft informed foreign policy, but more likely, he was holding his wet finger up in the air to measure the political winds. What do the American people want? What do the polls say? What will help Democrats maintain a majority in both houses of Congress? What will ensure Obama’s own re-election in 2012?
We fear these questions — rather than what is in this nation’s best short- and long-term interests or what is best for our brave men and women in uniform overseas — were weighed most heavily in Obama’s final decision.
Obama’s defenders on both sides of the political spectrum will say his approach is “pragmatic” and his reasoning “nuanced,” arguing that finding middle ground is the way Washington works, but there are some better words that describe his stance on Afghanistan: spineless, triangulating, politicized, weak, calculating and sadly typical.
There are some adjectives you certainly won’t hear in response to Obama’s speech: bold, trailblazing and principled. And don’t hold your breath waiting for someone to use the word that more than any other summed up Obama’s historic campaign for president that inspired a new generation of voters: Change.
Whether you voted for Obama or against him a year ago, he is our president now. And whether you support the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan or believe we should begin our withdrawal in earnest, we should all be able to agree that this new plan is just politics as usual.
Eleven months into Obama’s presidency and we are left wondering what, if anything, he truly believes in. Having sold out his base on a number of important domestic and international issues — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, civil liberties and torture come to mind — while continuing to infuriate the political right with massive spending programs like the stimulus and health care reform, Obama’s support in all quarters has been dropping precipitously in recent months.
The decision to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan is not going to help him, politically or otherwise.
At some point, Obama and his handlers will have to decide if he was elected to govern or if he’s governing to be re-elected, and they will have to stake out principled positions on a number of issues and convince the American people that the president actually stands for something.
Afghanistan would have been a good place to start. We could have seen our new president become a leader. But it looks like that will be just another missed opportunity. And that’s a shame.
