In declaring Tuesday that he would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, President Obama used a phrase clearly meant to imply that even as he deploys an additional 30,000 or so troops, he has finally figured out how to bring the eight-year-long conflict to an end.
But offering that reassuring if somewhat contradictory signal ”” that by adding troops he can speed the United States toward an exit ”” is just the first of a set of tricky messages Mr. Obama will have to deliver as he rolls out his strategy publicly.
Over the next week, he will deliver multiple messages to multiple audiences: voters at home, allies, the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the extremists who are the enemy. And as Mr. Obama’s own aides concede, the messages directed at some may undercut the messages sent to others.
Now that Obama has said he will finish the job, it will be interesting to see what he understands the “job” to be. The troop surge is for the political right and the “exit strategy” is for the left. Unfortunately, terrorists don’t respond according to our script and will have a say in how this plays out.
Perhaps since he is so at ease when apologizing for “U.S. imperilism” I may remain optimistic that his plan is to win?
It depends on what one means by “win” and are not very likely to win. We have to learn that countries must be free to govern themselves and that sometimes their interests will conflict with ours.
We went into Afghanistan 8 years ago to capture Bin Laden and shut down al Qaeda. We abandoned that mission to meddle in Iraq. The President, when campaigning, restated the original objective. If that remains the objective, then there is a clear meaning for the word “win”. It is possible (a) to know when we have “won” and (b) conduct a strategy to achieve that in a mercifully short period of time. If the objective has become something like creating a pro-American puppet government in Afghanistan, we are in there for a very long time.
Michael Ware, CNN Correspondent, has an interesting take on what it will take to “subdue” the Taliban in Afghanistan…
[blockquote] I lived in Afghanistan. I lived in Kandahar, the homeland, the heartland, the birthplace of the Taliban. I know that place, and there, there’s no such thing as a central government. There’s no federal tax or services. It’s about valley by valley by valley and village by village by village. That’s where power rests. If you have a dispute with your neighbor, you don’t go to the police. You go to the local warlord, and he answers to a warlord above him. They are the ones who control it. So if you can bring them on board, some of them are on the fence, some are now with the Taliban simply because that’s in their interests right now, then if one of those warlords says there will be no Taliban in my district, there will be no Taliban in his district.
MALVEAUX: Michael, what do the Afghan people think about this? Do they want us there?
WARE: Oh, well, certainly at first, certainly at first rooting the Taliban. Let’s not forget, the Taliban were welcomed when they first arrived because the chaos, after the Soviet invasion and America turned its back, that’s something the Afghan people have yet to forget, that that left them in this anarchy raping, pillaging, it’s unimaginable the anarchy that went on, Suzanne, and America left them to that fight. The Taliban rise up and in the religious cloak at war said we’ll bring you law and order, and they did. Now when that went too far, sure, the Americans removed them. There was some celebration, but at the end of the day ordinary Afghans are fiercely nationalist, and they see any foreigner as a foreigner. They see the Americans as foreign occupiers.
MALVEAUX: So they don’t trust us? Do they trust us?
WARE: No, no, they don’t at all. So many promises made. Where’s the delivery? Where’s the roads and where’s the electricity? Where’s the schools and the security? You have your tanks roll through my village in the day. You pass out lots of lovely leaflets. You talk to our elders, but who rules at night? And where will you be tomorrow when I’m attacked? No. They don’t trust you at all.[/blockquote]
There’s more, but you have to scroll way down the transcript to find it. [url=http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0911/24/sitroom.02.html]Situation Room transcript for 24 November 2009[/url].
3. Septuagenarian,
Obama did not say he was there to “win” as you put it. He said he is there to “finish the job”. This allows him a lot more wiggle room when defining why we are there and what the exit strategy will be. Personally, I hope as a byproduct of our efforts, we get Bin Laden and believe Obama has stated a similar desire. The addition of more troops will boost a sagging morale for the troops there now.
Just as he was with Iraq, Obama is INVESTED in failure and defeat. It is against his nature (and the many extreme left-wing people who support him) to WIN a war. He loudly proclaimed (along with Harry Reid) that the war in Iraq was lost. So, he will send troops over in dribbles to prevent the kind of “surge” that might accomplish victory.
The men & women serving over there feel hamstrung by limits placed on engagement. Why don’t we allow out men & women who offer up their lives for our freedom to actually try to win? No, instead we file charges against them for giving a known murderer (who hanged his victims bodies from a bridge and then set them on fire) a black eye. There is so much outrageous stuff going on, we should all boycott enlisting….and the Generals over there should resign in protest.
There are some PC Generals and officers here in the U.S. who should consider resigning over the Fort Hood terrorist act and those who looked the other way prior to it. Thank God for Senator Lieberman.