Obama's Afghan Pipe Dream

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Nov. 24, 2009
All Rights Reserved.                    

        When President Barack Obama faces the nation next Wednesday, Dec. 3 in a prime time address to announce his plans for Afghanistan, he’ll try to sell his new plan as an exit strategy.  While minimizing the extent of the escalation, both in terms of money and troops, the White House message insists he plans to “finish the job.”  Barack’s plan expects to add between 32,000 to 35,000 additional U.S. troops, white NATO reduces overall forces.  When Barack campaigned for president in 2008, he often criticized the Iraq War and characterized Afghanistan as the real but forgotten war on terror.  Former President George W. Bush insisted that Iraq was the central front in the war on terror, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Sept. 11.  Honoring his promise upon taking office, Obama authorized an additional 21,000 troops for Afghanistan in March.

            Since deploying more troops, the U.S. military has witnessed a five-fold increase in U.S. casualty rates, in part caused by the Taliban Spring and Summer offensive.  Obama’s new strategy aims at reducing U.S. deaths and helping the recently reelected Karzai government gain more control of the country.  “I feel confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, then they will be supportive,” Barack said at Rose Garden press conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.  “It is my intention to finish the job,” referring to the war begun Oct. 7, 2001 as Operation Enduring Freedom in the wake of Sept. 11.  When Barack talks about finishing the job, he’s referring to finishing off elements of the Taliban and al-Qaida, both now fighting a bloody guerrilla war against U.S. and NATO forces.

            When al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden and Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar disappeared into the mountains around Tora Bora in Dec. 2001, the U.S. military lost its mission in Afghanistan.  Since then, al-Qaida and the Taliban have been fighting a classic guerrilla war, far more clever than Ho Chi Minh’s Vietcong that eventually forced U.S. capitulation in 1975.  Quoted at the Brandenburg Gate Nov. 9, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s collapse, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev said that 40,000 more U.S. troops would make little difference in Afghanistan.  Now Barack promises to “finish the job,” something the Soviet Red Army couldn’t do when they pulled the plug in Afghanistan Feb. 15, 1989.  Barack intends to “finish the job” but the Russians watched the Soviet Union collapse Dec. 26, 1991 in no small part because of the failed Afghan War.

            Barack wants to “finish the job” but the Soviet and Vietnam lesson proved that it’s difficult to defeat a nationalistic movement supported by a determined guerrilla war.  Before Obama makes the fatal mistake of his presidency, he needs to look at the big picture, especially the fiscal drain on the U.S. treasury from escalating the war, while, simultaneously, trying to launch a trillion-plus-dollar health care overhaul.  Barack’s reluctance to make a decision on Afghanistan over the last few months reflects strong political riptides, showing a lack of public support.  With most Americans reeling from hard financial times, polls show they have no stomach for escalating another war.  Barack hopes to sell his new plan as an exit strategy, hoping to buy more time and elicit public support.  His new “exit strategy” is actually no way out and promises to waste more lives and U.S. tax dollars.

            Defending the government of fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai is a tough sell.  Karzai’s recent promises to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to rein in corruption won’t change his deal-making with the Taliban, Afghan warlords and wealthy opium farmers.  Karazai signaled Nov. 20 he needs U.S. forces for at least another five more years.  Obama now insists that the new mission involves destroying remnants of al-Qaida’s and the Taliban’s power-base in Afghanistan.   “It is in our strategic interests, in our national security interest to make sure that al-Qaida and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively in those areas,” said Obama, making the same argument as Bush in Iraq. “We are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and destroy their networks,” something bound to meet stiff resistance as al-Qaida and Taliban go more stealth.

            Barack’s new plan amounts to a capitulation to the military industrial complex that isn’t ready to give up its profitable war efforts.  His promise to “finish the job” is based on pure speculation about how the military will fight a bloody guerrilla war.  While the U.S. military has no doubt learned something in Iraq about fighting a counterinsurgency, they’ve forgotten the lesson of Vietnam:  That it’s futile to fight a nationalistic movement with wide popular support.  Supporting a U.S. puppet regime lacking popular support promises stiff headwinds as Barack deploys a new troop surge over the next two years.  If Afghanistan wants to return the Taliban back to power, it’s not up to the U.S. to pick Afghan’s government.  If the Taliban threatens U.S. national security by supporting al-Qaida, then the military can take appropriate steps to deal with new threats as they emerge.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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