Obama stubborn about all the wrong things

I am simply fascinated at how stubborn Obama and his advisers are about health care "reform." They don't have the votes, largely because of divisions among the Democrats and Massachusetts sealed that deal for good. Yet he still wants to throw a hail-Mary pass by inviting Republicans to some kind of televised dog-and-pony show that they'll probably have to go to and which he will dominate.

Perhaps he is appealing to his left-wing base by continuing to beat that dead horse. One would wish he had chosen to appeal to that base on foreign policy, by doing the sensible thing and deciding not to get deeply involved in Afghanistan, where al-Qaida is not operating. Instead, his foreign policy looks like Bush III. Disastrous.

Real debate possible over Afghanistan

I think it's important that conservative columnist George Will has come out against the Afghan war, and making essentially the same recommendations I made back in December and subsequently, though I seriously doubt I had anything to do with his conclusions. I'm not sure just what kind of influence Will has anymore. The times I've met and talked with him -- a couple, we're hardly close friends -- he has been extremely cordial and interesting. But in today's rightward political world, I get the impression he's sort of a lone wolf, and would be happy to be considered such. He doesn't seem closely associated with the NR crowd any more, and he figured out long before most conservatives would admit it that the Iraq war was a huge mistake and that George W. was not very -- let's say informed or insightful to be kind. So he may not carry a lot of conservatives with him. But he's still got to have some influence.

Will's column may be, I hope, a harbinger that we just might have a serious debate about Afghanistan, perhaps even before Obama commits a lot more troops there. The polls show more Americans believing the war is not worth fighting than believing it is -- and 70 percent of Democrats ready to wind down the war. Obama may have taken office without owing much to the the Democratic establishment, but a president whose own party opposes his signature foreign-policy promise and initiative at such a level is in a ticklish position. We may see, as Congress returns, discover whether that rank-and-file opposition gets translated into a willingness among congresscritters to ask pertinent and impertinent questions.

Presidents can act almost unilaterally and without much oversight in foreign affairs, as Bush did so often, but while I can't imagine a serious threat to cut off funds, which Congress could do constitutionally if it wanted, I can imagine hearings, sharp questions to guys like Gates McChrystal and perhaps even Petraeus. After a period of dormancy the antiwar left is stirring a bit. Escalating the war could create a serious rift in the Democratic party, and it's tough to imagine, after 8 years already, that many Americans will approve of another 10 years, what McChrystal reportedly estimates it would take for Afghanistan to have a "proper" set of thugs and enforcers -- er, police and army security forces at our expense, in a country that has never had a strong central government and doesn't seem to want one.

There really ought to be a debate before another escalation, a debate that includes the serious option of ending military activity on the ground in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida isn't in Afghanistan now. Let's declare victory and get out.

Afghanistan not going well

Obama seems determined to try to prove he's a real player in the so-called "war on terror" by focusing on Afghanistan, but things are not going well there. As Anne Applebaum pointed out before the Aug. 20 presidential election, the important thing was that the result should appear legitimate. But that's not happening. Turnout was low, hardly any women voted, counting is going slowly, and there are credible allegations of election fraud by both the major candidates -- about 700 complaints an independent international monitoring body considers worthy of serious investigation. So far Karzai hasn't gotten the 50% he'll need to avoid a runoff. The government is still corrupt, no matter who wins.

Meanwhile Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, is turning in his report on strategy today, and while it hasn't been made public, the leaks so far suggest he'll call for a radical new strategy and (eventually) more U.S. troops. It's said he'll shift the emphasis from forays into Taliban strongholds to guarding cities and building up the Afghan government -- but it will be at least three years before Afghan security forces can handle the situation themselves. Meanwhile 51% of Americans and 70% of Democrats think the war isn't worth fighting. It's a potentially huge problem for Obama.

As I've written before, if the goal is to eliminate al-Qaida capabilities in Afghanistan, that's already done; al-Qaida is in Pakistan. So we should end military activities in Afghanistan and focus on an al-Qaida that had been notably weakened but may be stronger now in reaction to hyperactive US activity in the region. But Obama seems determined to prove he's tough in a country that is probably more challenging for outside forces than Iraq.

Get out of Afghanistan while the gettin's good

There are differences of course -- no two wars are alike -- but the potential parallels between Vietnam and our possibly-escalating war in Afghanistan are troubling enough to be a little eery. Whether you saw the VC as an indigenous resistance or the tool of the nation-state to the north, it was a force that was not about to go away and its leaders figured the U.S. would be eventually. Same with the Taliban, though it doesn't seem to have so obvious an outside support beyond havens in Pakistan (though elements of the Pakistani ISI may still be involved). The South Vietnamese government may not have been as hopeless as it was sometimes pictured, but it was shaky and corrupt, as is the Karzai regime. The drug trade didn't play a big role in financing the VC, as it is for the Taliban.

Most significantly, as this Register editorial points out, the core U.S. interest in Afghanistan is making sure al-Qaida, which is weaker but still likely has international ambitions, doesn't establish operating bases there. It doesn't have them now (most people believe), so we should make it known that whoever runs Afghanistan knows that if such bases come into existence we will blow them to smithereens, so please don't let them get established. Declare victory and get out.

I don't expect the U.S. to do that. Defense spoksemen say escalation isn't a sure thing -- McChrystal is due to issue recommendations in a few weeks -- so maybe there's hope. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Marines push into Helmand, Afghanistan

In what is being billed as a test of Obama's more assertive Afghan policy, 4,000 Marines and a contingent of Afghan soldiers have launched an offensive into Helmand Province, reportedly a stronghold for the Taliban and a place where lots of opium poppies are grown. First reports indicate little resistance. I'll be surprised if that isn't because the Taliban have simply moved elsewhere or are hiding in the hills. Guerrilla forces have known forever that you avoid direct battles with better-armed conventional armies, but move out to live to fight another day, catching them by surprise if and when they start to get complacent.

McKiernan in Afghanistan: Like Shinseki in Iraq?

I cross-posted this item on the Register's Orange Punch blog, and thought it might be of interest here as well:

When I first heard of the administration’s plans to replace Gen. David McKiernan in Afghanistan with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, my immediate reaction was that this was a similar situation to that of Gen. Eric Shinseki at the beginning of the Iraq invasion. Shinseki had said publicly that more U.S. troops would be needed than were in the plans (contrary to Rumsfeld’s desire for a leaner force) and Mc Kiernan has said publicly that more troops are going to be needed in Afghanistan than the Obama administration is inclined to make available. So McKiernan was fired for stating what might be obvious to some in the military and displeasing his civilian superiors? And like Shinseki he stands to be proven right?

I’m still not sure this is an incorrect assumption, but it may be more complicated than that.
It may seem strange, given that I have argued that the U.S. should pull all military forces out of Afghanistan unless there is evidence of al-Qaida establishing bases there, which at this point there isn’t, that I might sympathize with McKiernan. But given standard counter-insurgency doctrine, if there is to be a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan (which seems likely), it seems likely that more troops than are presently committed will be needed to have a prayer of success.

It’s complicated, however. Some have argued that McKiernan, though a competent soldier, thinks too conventionally to devise strategies to succeed in Afghanistan. Here is George Packer’s initial take at the New Yorker. Michael Yon, who has been on-scene in a number of conflicts, seems conflicted. Fred Kaplan at Slate says this move makes Afghanistan unqualifiedly Obama’s war. Here is Judah Grunstein’s take at World Politics Review (h/t Andrew). Michael Cohen questions the standard interpretation of the “surge” in Iraq, as I have.

McChrystal, with a background in special forces, is said to be more imaginative and daring than McKiernan, though being more daring could lead to more civilian casualties. In addition, McChrystal was in charge of Task Force 6-26 in Iraq, where people at Camp Nama were tortured. His role in the initial coverup of Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan is unclear. He is said to have sent a memo to Rumsfeld warning him that it might have been “friendly fire” but Rumsfeld denied having seen it.

There’s much more to learn, and of course we’ll know more in the aftermath of McChrystal’s appointment than we know now. But it does seem clear that this move makes it Obama’s war, for better or worse.