On the morning that General McChrystal’s recommendation wound up on the front page of the Washington Post, an impressive panel of advocates for a robust effort in Afghanistan appeared at the Foreign Policy Initiative conference in Washington D.C. Congressman Mark Kirk (who is also a commander serving in the Naval Reserve as an intelligence officer and who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and Bosnia); Zalmay Khalilzad, former ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the UN; and Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt (Ret.) each made the case for why the president should follow McChrystal’s advice and why—if we are to prevail in the global war against Islamic fundamentalists—we have no choice in the matter.

Kirk acknowledged the loss of popular support for the war effort but argued that, with Republican and some Democrat support, funding for the troops necessary to implement McChrystal’s strategy should be obtainable. Ambassador Khalilzad explained, as did each of the others, that only the president can make the case to the American people. The loss of popular support, he maintained, stems from the belief that “the path we are on cannot achieve our stated objectives.” But failure to implement a winning strategy, he contends, would be a “major victory for the Taliban and for extremists,” and the “damage to U.S. prestige and credibility” would be immense, analogous to the Soviets’ defeat in the 1990s. He argued that, to date, we have not “fought this war with full capacity,” which is what McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy offers to remedy.

Kimmitt reiterated that the debate is not really about “stuff”—that is, funding and troops. Rather, it is about whether the American people will provide the necessary political support to avoid defeat in a “war of exhaustion”—the same fate that befell the British Empire and the Soviets in Afghanistan. He emphasized that the “central voice is the only voice that matters—the president’s” and expressed concern about the president’s latest comments suggesting that we needed to “narrow the mission” and that 21,000 previously deployed troops were there just to secure the election (the first time the troops’ mission was so described).

In the question-and-answer session, all three panelists expressed concerns about the president’s willingness to use political capital, a large amount of which Kirk noted has been “burnt” on health care. Kimmitt was most blunt, declaring that there is no victory without a full counterinsurgency. And if McChrystal’s recommendation is rejected? He soberly noted that “it is always the commander’s responsibility to resign if he loses the confidence of the commander in chief,” quickly adding, “I don’t think we are going to get to that.” The ambassador made the case that “popular support that is evaporating is condition based,” and that if the president does the “right thing,” the American people will give him time to succeed. I asked the general if the fact that McChrystal’s recommendation wound up on the Post’s front page is a sign of growing frustration with the president and what the downside is of a prolonged decision-making process. He gave a politic reply, noting that the Iraq-surge recommendation and approval took a few months and that a deliberative process, with a “firming up” of congressional support, is important. He added that we “don’t want a rush to failure.”

The bottom line: all three concur with McChrystal’s recommendation and with the view that a properly implemented counterinsurgency strategy is essential and has the potential to succeed. But to varying degrees or another, they all raised a red flag: this works only if Obama is ready to go up against the Left in his own party and defend America’s long-term strategic interests. It is not yet clear that he is.

del.icio.us

Google

Facebook

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 4:18 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.