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It’s official: Afghanistan is now Obama’s baby
By
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
There
was never doubt the moment Gen. Stanley McChrystal flatly told President
Barack Obama last summer that the US must deploy up to 45,000 more
troops in Afghanistan that the president would heed his command.
The Pentagon had officially spoken through McChrystal. With the rare
exception of President John F. Kennedy’s pushback against the
generals during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, presidents listen
when the Pentagon speaks. It’s been a costly listen. Vietnam,
Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq and now Afghanistan has cost countless America
lives, squandered billions, frayed relations with the European allies
and reinforced the United States’ global reputation as a swaggering,
bombs-and-bullets-first bully. Afghanistan is no exception.
The apparent tussle between Obama and the Pentagon over a massive
new troop buildup was never anything more than a game of political
timing and numbers. It was simply bad politics to dump nearly 50,000
more troops in the country at a time when polls showed the American
public has overwhelmingly soured on the war, and the majority of
his base, liberal Democrats and progressives, scream for a withdrawal.
With the GOP counterinsurgency gathering a head of steam, Obama also
cast a nervous eye on the recent off-year elections. There was too
much uncertainty about how Democrats would fare in state elections.
A double-down on troops at a cost of billions more and the almost
certainty of bigger casualties demanded delay.
But there was no doubt that Obama would up the Afghan ante.
This has as much to do with the Pentagon’s relentless demand
to escalate as with his unshakeable belief that the war can actually
be won, no matter the cost.
Obama was willing to August stake the credibility of his administration
on that even before taking office. In his speech to the Veterans
of Foreign Wars at their convention, Obama sounded his “it’s
the right time, right place and right war” mantra line. “This
is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked
America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again.”
There are, of course, better options to fight terrorism than
a big, costly and controversial Afghan occupation. Vice President
Joe Biden, for one, urged a drastic scaleback of the troop commitment
in the country and to concentrate on targeted attacks against Al
Qaeda wherever it was found. Biden’s pitch for a less costly,
more rational approach to achieving Obama’s aims was for the
most part ignored.
Obama’s buzzwords are reforms and anti-corruption measures,
exit strategies, Afghan government, tight Afghan security forces
and NATO partnerships. This is part fawn hope and part political
script to sell the massive troop buildup to fight an unpopular war.
The United States hasn’t come anywhere close to achieving any
of these goals. Pouring 30,000 to 50,000 more troops into the country
won’t change that.
The war in Afghanistan is a near impossible war to wage, let
alone win, for reasons that go beyond simply finding a democratic
government and shoring up a stable, corruption-free government. It
blends religious fanaticism, medieval beliefs, territorial imperative
and deeply flawed political assumptions about terrorism into a nightmare
cauldron. Afghans, whether fighting the British a century ago and
later the Russians, waged the wars spurred by a rigid, uncompromising
Islamic fundamentalism that reached way beyond the tenets of traditional
Islam. God was always on their side.
Even if there were any validity to the fantasy that Afghanistan
could be cleared of the Taliban by military action alone, it would
hardly end the threat of terrorist attacks. Terrorist groups can
easily regroup in a host of other safe havens such as Somalia, Yemen,
Indonesia, the Sudan, Lebanon and Iran and continue to receive financial
backing through drugs, illicit arms sales and covert state government
backing. Then there are the terror targets themselves.
A study of suicide attacks by Robert Pape of the Chicago Project
in 2005 found that almost all terror attacks and targets are aimed
at getting the occupying forces to pull their troops out of a disputed
territory, whether it’s Iraq, the West Bank, Israel or Afghanistan.
A bigger U.S. occupation, far from diminishing the prospect of more
terror attacks, assures that there will be more of them, with U.S.
forces being in the terrorist bulls-eye.
Military analysts seem genuinely surprised that the U.S. buildup
hadn’t achieved the goal of reducing the influence and numbers
of Taliban fighters and supporters within Afghanistan and Pakistan
and, by extension, diminishing the threat of more terror attacks.
Yet, there is a direct inverse correlation between the military ramp-up
in rural areas and the ramp-up in support for the radicals. The obvious
conclusion is that thousands more U.S. troops will stir even greater
resistance.
Obama declares that he will finish the job in Afghanistan.
But 30,000 more troops won’t guarantee a finish, just a bigger
bill, more lives at risk and a potential political disaster. No matter,
though, as Obama’s made it official. Afghanistan is now his
baby.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming
book, “How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge” (Middle
Passage Press) was released in January.
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