Obama’s Exit Strategy
If actions speak louder than words, President Obama is cutting America free of George Bush’s wars and coming home.
For his bottom line Tuesday night was that all U.S. forces will be out of Iraq by mid-2011 and the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan will, on that date, begin to get smaller and smaller.
Yet the gap between the magnitude of the crisis he described and the action he is taking is the Grand Canyon.
Listing the stakes in Afghanistan, Obama might have been FDR in a fireside chat about America’s war against a Japanese empire that had just smashed the fleet at Pearl Harbor, seized the Philippines, Guam and Wake, and was moving on Midway.
Consider the apocalyptic rhetoric:
“(A)s commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest …”
“If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake …”
“For what is at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility, what’s at stake is the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.”
After that preamble, one might expect the announcement of massive U.S. air strikes on some rogue nation. Yet what was the action decided upon? “I … will send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”
To secure America and the world, not 5 percent of the Army and Marine Corps will be surged into Afghanistan for 18 months — then they will start home.
Let us put that in perspective.
During the Korean War, we had a third of a million men fighting. In 1969, we had half a million troops in Vietnam. But in Afghanistan, where the security of the world is at stake, Obama is topping out at 100,000 troops and will start drawing them down in July 2011.
“Of course, this burden is not ours alone to bear. This is not just America’s war,” said Obama. But if the burden is not ours alone to bear, where is everybody else?
Apparently, the Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Indians and Arabs do not believe their security is imperiled, because we are doing all the heavy lifting, economically and militarily.
The contradictions in Obama’s speech are jarring.
He says the new U.S. troops are to “train competent Afghan Security Forces and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help to create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.”
Thus, we are going to train the Afghan army and police so that, in 18 months, they can take over the fighting in a war where the security of the United States and the whole world is in the balance?
Moreover, the commitment is not open-ended, but conditional. “It will be clear to the Afghan government — and … the Afghan people — that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country. … The days of providing a blank check are over.”
Most Americans will agree the time is at hand for Afghans to take responsibility for their own country. But, if the stakes are what the president says, can we entrust a war to preserve our vital national interests and security to an Afghan army no one thinks will be able, in 18 months, to defeat a Taliban that has pushed a U.S.-NATO coalition to the brink of defeat?
At West Point, Obama did not hearken back to Gen. MacArthur’s dictum — “War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war, there is no substitute for victory” — but to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s, that we must maintain a balance between defense and domestic programs.
Obama was not citing the Eisenhower of Normandy but President Eisenhower, who ended Korea by truce, refused to intervene in Indochina, did nothing to halt Nikita Khrushchev’s crushing of the Hungarian revolution, ordered the British, French and Israelis out of Suez, and presided over eight years of peace and prosperity, while building up America’s might and getting in lots of golf at Burning Tree.
Not a bad president. Not a bad model.
How can we reconcile Obama’s end-times rhetoric about the stakes imperiled with an 18-month surge of just 30,000 troops?
Stanley McChrystal won the argument over troops. But Obama, in his heart, does not want to fight Bush’s “Long War.” He wants to end it. Obama is not LBJ plunging into the big muddy. He is Nixon coming out, while giving an embattled ally a fighting chance to save itself.
In four years, Nixon was out of Vietnam. In 18 months, Obama says we will be out of Iraq with a steadily diminishing presence in Afghanistan.
What we heard Tuesday night was the drum roll of an exit strategy.
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book Churchill, Hitler, and ‘The Unnecessary War,’ now available in paperback.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM
Mr. Buchanan, I sure hope you’re right.
Is Obama turning out to be more conservative in his foreign policy than was Bush?
He’s also sending our troops to fight side by side with the Afghan Army, the majority of whom use every lull in the fighting to indulge in opium and hashish. This war is pointless and cannot be won.
A bit of a confused article, but with some truth in it. Obama’s apocalyptic rhetoric certainly doesn’t jive with the rather puny effort we’re making in Afghanistan. We should be out of there, period. But we won’t be, and the July/11 “deadline” is no such thing. It’s etched in marshmallow unless Obama grows a pair of real ones and comes before the country to make a speech that begins, “On Tuesday, December 1, 2009, I made a mistake. I am here to rectify that mistake.”
Obama is punching the tar baby. The “18 months” will either slip or be meaningless. Obama chatted up AfPak to show he was a “tough guy” while criticizing the Iraq War. Now he has to ante up. Gates & Co have no earthly clue how it will turn out. It will only be worse than now; the difference is, with this “surge” it’s now Obama’s war. He’ll get the blame from the public as it gets worse; and his Chicago slickster, no military background will him little to no wiggle room.
The GOP challenger to Obama hasn’t yet come on the radar. Forget those who are auditioning now. Obama will wind up facing a lightning bolt candidate (much like he was) who nobody now sees.
This scheme poses the gravest threat to Obama’s presidency. Base demoralized and disappointed. Independents deeply skeptical and ready to blame him for any worsening of the situation. And the GOP ready to blame him if he goes against “the generals.” But the GOP establishment is compromised. That’s why, contra standard GOP practice of candidates by inheritance, there will be a change for an entrepreneurial candidate, unbound to AfPak, to rise up in 2011-12 to take the nomination from an absurd, exhausted and beleaguered establishment (typified by the ghoulish McCain and the absurd Lindsey Graham.)
I hope Buchanan is right and Justin Raimondo (who believes the Afghanistan surge is a ploy to escalate with Afghanistan) is wrong.
I don’t believe Obama himself really has many principles one way or the other, and in fact is more of a puppet being danced by his brain trust, which is influenced by all sorts of lobbies and money powers, as Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote:
“The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it. President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order. Essentially, Obama is irrelevant. President Obama can promise that he is going to bring the troops home, and the military lobby says, “No, you are going to send them to Afghanistan, and in the meantime start a war in Pakistan and maneuver Iran into a position that will provide an excuse for a war there, too. Wars are too profitable for us to let you stop them.” And the mere president has to say, “Yes, Sir!” ”
The Afghan surge is probably more of a holding pattern to see what develops in the midterm elections. If the Democrats are massacred because the anti-war base stays home in resentment of the surge, the withdrawal will proceed; but if the Dems have a respectable showing, I bet Obama will find some pretext to suspend the withdrawal per the orders of the money powers.
The pathetic irony is, facts on the ground in Afghanistan, which should have always been the determining factor, have almost nothing to do with the outcome either way.
Should have read: I hope Buchanan is right and Justin Raimondo (who believes the Afghanistan surge is a ploy to escalate with PAKISTAN) is wrong.
Very optimistic Pat. If it turns out to be true, and Obama can Capture/Kill Bin Laden, and prevent another terror attack on the continental U.S., he will be remembered well in the long term.
I agree that actions speak louder than words, but PJB seems confused as to which are Obama’s actions and which are his words. His words are the troop withdrawals which will allegedly take place three Friedman units in the future. His actions are the escalation which has taken place so far this year and is continuing as Obama speaks and we write. If that’s an exit strategy, I’d hate to see an entrance strategy. Obama is far more likely to get the US involved in one or two additional wars than he is to end the current ones.
If you take the time of McChrystal’s request, and add 18 months, it interferes with the 2010 election.
Let’s think of a way to postpone this… for a few months. Oh, never mind. The problem has solved itself.
Now, we just need to feel like we see some progress in Afghanistan before the 2010 elections.
And then, based on what is happening on the ground (the 2010 US elections), in 18 months we can decide whether to declare victory, or pull an Iraq-style “cooldown”.
And it is fortuitous that families of dead soldiers cannot sue us for preferring political gain to the welfare of our military.
“HE” did, after all, tell us that there were more considerations than just the recommendations of the generals in charge of prosecuting the war.
All you rabid ANTIWAR.COM folks keep your powder dry. Obama is going to need all you folk to get real vocal and excited, right after the 2010 elections. Maybe even leading up to the elections…
I wonder if in today’s Af/Pak arena “…war’s very object is victory,” or the profits that flow from “prolonged indecision?” If the profits were eliminated from war by nationalizing the defense industry, would war go the way of chattel slavery?
Right. Obama needs the antiwar.com folks, because the “dead soldiers” have Barney defending their interests. Or, blathering for more soldiers to their deaths. Depending on how you look at it.
War is easy from the keyboard.
The old lib trick, try to make up something ridiculous, and try to attribute it to me. But you can’t find anywhere that I advocated interventionalism, or for war to continue.
I served in the military.
Lie about something else.
I agree that actions speak louder than words, but PJB seems confused as to which are Obama’s actions and which are his words. His words are the troop withdrawals which will allegedly take place three Friedman units in the future. His actions are the escalation which has taken place so far this year and is continuing as Obama speaks and we write. If that’s an exit strategy, I’d hate to see an entrance strategy. Obama is far more likely to get the US involved in one or two additional wars than he is to end the current ones
withdrawals which will allegedly take place three Friedman units in the future. His actions are the escalation which has taken