I spoke with a political consultant friend of mine today and we were talking about Afghanistan. He said, “Obama will announce his decision on the troop increase after Tuesday’s elections. He’s going to send the troops, but he doesn’t want the backlash from his decision to alienate the left before Tuesday.” So, is Obama waiting to announce his decision on Afghanistan until after the elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York? It’s tough to say; we can only speculate, but such political calculus seems to be consistent with Obama and his advisers from the Windy City.
To date, Obama has gotten a free pass from the anti-war left. Remember when he was the anti-war candidate for the Democratic Party and was going to end the war in Iraq? The Utopian promises made during the Democratic Primaries and 2008 General Election have been halted by the realities of governing in Washington. In fact in some ways, the presidential transition from George W. Bush to Barack H. Obama is a validation of the realist school of international relations theory. Realists view the state as a rational, unitary actor–in other words, states will make rational policy decisions based on their interests regardless of leadership–Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative. War termination is not easy. Keep in mind Richard Nixon ran in 1968 on a platform of reducing the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. To bastardize the words of Robert Burns: the best-laid plans of mice and men and presidents often go awry.
Still, will Obama’s luck with the anti-war left run out as it did for Lyndon Johnson? Waiting to announce his decision to increase troops levels in Afghanistan until after Tuesday’s Election is a wise political move if you’re Barack Obama. Unfortunately, it’s bad for the nation and even worse for the troops currently fighting in Afghanistan, who are spread dangerously thin. Obama will probably split the difference and increase troop levels by 20,000 or so. However, half-measures in Afghanistan won’t work. If you’re going to build nations, you can’t take a middle-of-the-road approach. As I’ve said before, the White House needs to either fully resource the war effort or withdraw all land forces and adopt the George Will strategy.
Actually, this has nothing to do with domestic politics. Rather, it’s all about local politics. Obama cannot publicly comment on what his policy will be in Afghanistan until the results of the election in Afghanistan are resolved and accepted by the population for better or worse. Any U.S. decisions, whether to increase troop levels or decrease them, will be seen by the local populace as interventionism, which is the last thing that is needed at the moment.
I agree with your point–to a degree. The outcome of the Afghan runoff is important with respect to the legitimacy of the Afghan government over the long haul. I agree that over time a corrupt regime in Kabul will be seen as a U.S. puppet and will become a powerful recruitment tool for the Taliban. However, there are established insurgents who need to be killed or captured, regardless of the runoff. The results of the election will have absolutely no impact on their decision-making calculus, because their objective is to restore Taliban rule–not to build a credible, representative government.
Moreover, to say that Obama’s decision “has nothing to do with domestic politics” is not entirely accurate. War is always a political decision. If you subscribe to Clausewitz’s definition of war, then it is simply an extension of politics by other means. Whenever a president sends troops into harm’s way, domestic political concerns are always a factor, particularly in a republic.
My point on Afghanistan, however, is that Obama and his team cited Afghanistan as the forgotten war throughout the 2008 election. They conducted their own major strategy review in the spring of this year. Now, we’re doing another strategy review. Government loves strategy reviews. Obviously, you want to make the right call, but it’s difficult to send more troops at any time. It will not be a popular decision and it’s very possible that he’s kicking the can down the road as long as he can. This is the biggest decision of his life and he’s very much of a middle-of-the-road guy. At some point a leader needs to make a decision. In the fog of war, you’ll never have all the information you’d like; there will always be uncertainty, but a decision needs to be made. That much is owed to the troops who’ve been fighting there for 8 years.