If you can wade through the snark here, you’ll find that Maureen Dowd has an insightful description of Obama — passive, scared, not in control, and ultimately weak. She writes:
He gives the impression of someone who would like to kid around with reporters for a minute, but knows he’s going to be peppered with on-the-record minutiae designed to feed the insatiable maw of blogs and Internet news . . . He’s an American who has climbed to the most rarefied stratosphere of American life, only to find that he has to make a major speech arguing that he loves his country. (A new CNN poll shows that a quarter of registered voters say Obama lacks patriotism.) He’s a man happily married to a strong professional woman who has to defend his wife, as he says, for being “feisty.” He must simultaneously defend himself for being too exotic and, because of recent moves, too conventional. (So conventional that he even refused to do a fist bump with a boy at a tutoring session for kids in Zanesville, Ohio.) . . .In this presidential race should be about how to fix the scary cascading crises in the country and the world. But as Obama offers himself as an avatar of modernity, the horizon fills with Swift boats against the current, and he is, Gatsby-like, “borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The 46-year-old is supposed to be the tonic for the culture wars of the 60s. In his patriotism speech, he said that “the anger and turmoil” of that generation had “never entirely drained away,” leaving our politics “trapped in these old, threadbare arguments.” But it’s Obama who seems trapped, sucked back into yesteryear.
But is Jay Gatsby really the model we want for a president? However idealized a vision of a candidate’s inner nobility (either misplaced or earned) supporters might have, presidents need to act, lead, set an example, and defend the country that they seek to govern. With Obama his supporters must feel like they have entered a never-ending episode of the Perils of Pauline: Look, he’s tied to the railroad tracks again! It hardly inspires confidence. Pity, perhaps. But even for those sympathetic to his cause that’s not a profile to which one can rally. And the fact that we’re at war makes it that much more difficult to get undecided voters to put their faith in him.
It’s really, really, really hard to see your point. You don’t deny that intelligence assets and material were diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. That Iraq became the overwhelming focus of the Bush administration at the expense of strategic issues elsewhere (Asia, South America?). That Iraq, while safe enough for smooth provincial elections, isn’t safe enough for the withdrawal of American combat troops. That Obama met with Odierno but has not changed the withdrawal timeline. That Afghanistan is now the central focus.
I’m hearing you say that the U.S. shouldn’t shift in focus from Iraq to Afghanistan because democrats criticized the Bush administration for focusing on Iraq. Instead, the U.S. should shift its focus to Afghanistan because Iraq is won, though troops can’t be pulled out, and Afghanistan is now a separate, new war that has nothing to do with what has happened for the last seven years.
It’s all semantics and nonsense.
Self-criticism wins again.
“Perseverance in Iraq lead to victory”
And we defeated,Sadam,AQ in Iraq,the Shiite insurgents,the Sunni insurgents,
So our 1400000 troops,what do they do all day? Play beach volleyball?
Let’s leave,we won.
Let’s face it; we won in Iraq. The problem is, liberals can’t recognize the end of a conflict unless there an American dangling from a helicopter skid on the last flight out of town. All it ever took was perserverance, either in Iraq or Afghanistan. Bush had it, Obama doesn’t. That’s why the only successes Obama will have will be when he rides along on Bush’s policies. It’ll be a great four years… I figure they’ll keep blaming Bush for at least the next three. Derrangement dies hard.
#1, #3 – Unfortunately, Odierno and Petraeus and the officers they command aren’t able to move their troops around like a five-year-old playing with chessmen. Once taken off the board, a US division will need a long time, a lot of money, and even more political capital before it can be put back in place, and the place it’s returned to will never really be the place it left behind. Good for el Presidente if the one campaign promise he sticks to is to withdraw from Iraq carefully.
“Semantics and nonsense” is how any complex subject appears to someone who knows next to nothing about it – whether it’s a home mortgage, a medical diagnosis, an experiment in particle physics, or a military-political overview. Mr Greenwald states his arguments simply and clearly. Though they don’t really need to be re-stated, and though any attempt at clarification risks opening up new complications, I’ll take the risk: The objectives in Afghanistan now and going forward can’t be the same as they were in 2001, because the most urgent 2001 objectives were achieved. Preventing a return to pre-2001 conditions and molding present conditions more to our liking are very different, longer-term tasks, and have been ever since AQ was ejected and the Taliban regime brought down. From that point forward, dealing with Saddam and with post-Saddam Iraq moved higher on the urgency list – at least on the real world urgency list, if not on the self-serving leftwing rhetorical urgency list.
Got it? Oh… Well I didn’t really think you would…
As the well-known saw has it, “Amateurs study tactics but professionals study logistics”. And a professional strategist, looking at Afghanistan, would be hard pressed to say how the United States could logistically support a significantly larger force than the one we already have in place. Adding 30,000 men would just about reach the limits of our lines of communications.
At the same time, it is not clear what a significantly larger military presence would do, other than provide a target rich environment for the Taliban and opportunities for our forces to further alienate the Afghan population. With the addition of 30,000 troops, assuming that they are the right types of troops, we will have more than sufficient forces in place; what we need is a sufficient strategy, one that does more to isolate the Taliban and al Qaeda, provide security and prosperity for the Afghan people, and allow Afghan military and police forces to take over a greater burden of creating and maintaining security in country. That will, on the whole, require much more emphasis on stabilization and development than on brute military force. Ironic, isn’t it, that the Obama Administration seems poised to do what it (falsely) accused the Bush Administration of doing: relying too much on military solutions.
#5,
So the reason that 140000 soldiers remain in Iraq is that it would be difficult to have them return if they left???? But what do they do all day;and what does it cost to keep them there???
No, #7 – moving them at all is a complex undertaking. Also, try not to take everything I write so literally. I’m just an armchair general procrastinating on a Saturday afternoon.
As I recall, 16 months was the time frame for moving ca. 150k troops out efficiently, but without much regard for the situation left behind. If we had attempted it under 2006 Iraqi civil war conditions, it could have gotten very ugly, for ourselves but even more for the Iraqis. Even now, there’s always the risk that a “precipitous withdrawal” would turn the clock back on the overall situation. That’s not an indictment of the Iraqis or an admission of defeat. To a large extent it’s just a judgment of human nature: Those who hate us will be encouraged by our departure. The less they have to work with, and the more they have to work against (i.e., Iraqi normalcy and confident security forces), the better.
Withdrawing carefully takes thought, time and expense, and the more quickly you intend to move troops, the more expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous. Moving them and then having to move some, all, or more of them back (i.e., because things fell apart in some intolerable way), or having to hold up the process, or having to transform an orderly withdrawal into a retreat to and through the main transportation bottlenecks could be destructive as well as expensive.
As for what 140k troops are doing all day (I’m not checking your number), a lot of them are probably doing pretty much what they’d be doing if they were all in the US (except with narrower recreational options). Many of the others are training, logistically supporting, and back-stopping Iraqis. The desire to wrap these and other missions up intelligently, maintaining flexibility and margins for error, slows the process down further.
“No, #7 – moving them at all is a complex undertaking. Also, try not to take everything I write so literally. I’m just an armchair general procrastinating on a Saturday afternoon.”
See my comments above about amateurs studying tactics and professionals studying logistics. When and if our forces leave Iraq, it will be a process that takes months to complete, because we have to roll up all of our bases and supply depots as well as removing the troops and their equipment. Just getting the munitions out of Iraq will be a logistic nightmare. Removing the munitions accumulated during Operation Desert Storm took the better part of a year–and that was from friendly Saudi Arabia and Dubai.
Abe Greenwald still does not understand Afghanistan and still is unable to explain what we are doing there.
First of all, Afghanistan is not a more hopeful country today than it was in 2001. In 2001 it was dominated by the ferocious Taliban, who were hosting Osama bin Laden, who financed and inspired the perpetrators of 9/11.
But then a few US special forces, swooped down on the country. Within two months they killed tens of thousands of Taliban, drove them out of Kabul, and made OBL an outlaw, hiding in Pakistan, afraid to make a telephone call.
What is the situation today? The Taliban are back. They have learned to effectively counter 60,000 US and NATO troops. They control much if not most of the countryside. The govt which we set up has proved corrupt and ineffective and ungrateful. It has the loyalty of assorted war lords, but not of the general population. It protects opium cultivation, the cash crop sustaining the Taliban.
We have discovered that our 2001 optimism, that Afghanistan is a cinch, is gone. Our spectacular success of 2002 proved ephemeral. Afghanistan is an endless war. Even if were to reinforce massively, amd drive the Taliban back down into their holes, few people now doubt that they will stay there, that they won’t come back as they did after 2002, that we will come back again and again, that we have to fight there for generations.
So what, says, Abe Greenwald; some fights just require tenacity. That’s how it was in Malasia, Korea, Israel.
Right, but there we had a strategic stake. There, there were and are vital national interests at stake, there if we lose, we lose big time. What are our vital national interests in Afghanistan?
Greenwald says, Afghanistan must not become a terrorist haven again.
Why not? Why is it okay for Pakistan’s New Frontier region to be a terrorist haven, and Yemen, and Somalia, etc. but not Afghanistan? What difference does it make if al Qaeda operates out of Afghanistan instead of any of those places? Actually we are better off with al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Islamabad won’t allow our unrestrained pursuit of terrorists in Pakistan, whereas, if they are in Afghanistan, there is no one to object to our bluntest pounding.
Greenwald endlessly demands reinforcing Afghanistan, without explaining why that is necessary, without offering a sound reason. For shame.
Actually, there may be a justification for his position. I am not sure yet, but conceivably the strategic necessity for remaining in Afghanistan is Pakistan. Pakistan has nukes, it is an unstable country responsible for most of the nuclear proliferation today. It has a highly politicized army with unfathomable loyalties.
One might argue that we don’t need Pakistan to bring Afghanistan under control. It is the other way around. We may need Afghanistan for a foothold and base wherewith to tackle Pakistan, if it has to be brought under control.
The most immediate American interest was served by the quick toppling of the Taliban government and by putting al Qaeda on the run.
Of course, there was the matter of your lying, incompetent, floor-crawling drunk of a Republican war criminal and fake former president who decided that he’d ignore the pleas of his commanders on the ground and let Bin Laden go. Hmm. Whose interest did that serve? Maybe the dual critizen traitor Bund can answer that question.
Isn’t that cute.
Little Jonni Fartland’s come in from mewling and puking in his sandbox with all the other “special” children…
… and decided to do it in front of the adults.
Franglo,
you obviously cant see past the top of your head. It is indeed a myth about George W. Bush traded a successful campaign in Afghanistan for a neoconservative fantasy in Iraq. Iraq is a success story and NATO doesn’t need any more troops than General Petraeus has recommended for Afghanistan. Your Anointed One is NOT going to withdraw all American forces from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. He is continuing with the same policy that President Bush maintained. Likewise, it was always a fantasy that the “war on terrorism”–a war you and your ilk don’t believe exists–is centered in afghanistan.