Wednesday, 2 December 2009

NB - I am sure you all remember that President Franklin Roosevelt, six
months before the troops hit the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, announced to
Nazi Germany our timetable for "exiting" World War II. Similarly, in the
months preceding the Inchon landings in Korea, President Harry Truman
announced his "exit strategy" to the North Korean communists.


 If you can't remember those events, it is because they did not happen!

Below, Michael Rubin explains why the just announced (after a three month
delay) why the Obama strategy in Afghanistan will fail. 

Please read. Our servicemen and women, our tax dollars, and our future security 
are going to be put in dire jeopardy because of it. 

And PLEASE FORWARD.

Announcing the results of his administration's first policy review on
Afghanistan more than eight months ago, President Barack Obama declared, "I
want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused
goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan,
and to prevent their return to either country in the future." To achieve
those goals, the president explained, "we need a stronger, smarter and
comprehensive strategy." Unfortunately, the strategy Obama announced tonight
will not achieve it.

On Aug. 30, 2009 Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in
Afghanistan, issued a report advocating, among other items, a surge of
40,000 troops into Afghanistan. Over subsequent months, this number became a
political football. Both Vice President Joseph Biden and Gen. Karl
Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, advocated fewer troops. After
lengthy deliberation, Obama on Tuesday night agreed to send 30,000
additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total U.S. commitment to over
100,000 troops. NATO, the administration hopes, will contribute enough to
address the shortfall in McChrystal's request.

McChrystal is a veteran counterinsurgency expert. He made his request based
not on politics, but a calculation of what it would take to win in
Afghanistan. Obama has however refused to separate politics from national
security. The problem is not troop numbers. When he declared on Tuesday,
"These additional American and international troops will allow us to
accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to
begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011," the
president has undercut the McChrystal plan and made success difficult to
achieve.

There should be nothing wrong with an open-ended commitment to victory. In
late 2006 and early 2007, when the Bush administration put the finishing
touches on the strategy that would become the Iraq surge, Obama and many of
his top aides questioned its wisdom. On July 19, 2007, for example, Obama
declared, "Here's what we know. The surge has not worked." That a year later
Obama scrubbed his criticism from his campaign website suggests that today
he recognizes the positive impact of George W. Bush's decision. What Obama
fails to understand, however, is that the surge is not only a military
strategy, but a psychological one as well.

Iraq's surge succeeded because Bush convinced Iraqis that he would not
subvert his commitment to victory to politics. Bush's actions showed
insurgents had misjudged the U.S. and that Bin Laden was wrong: The U.S. was
no paper tiger. Iraqis, no more attracted to al-Qaida's extreme vision than
ordinary Afghans are to the Taliban, believed America to be strong. Rather
than make accommodations to the terrorists, Iraqis could fight them. The
Sunni tribesmen believed that the U.S. would guard their back, and let
neither al-Qaida nor Iranian proxies run roughshod over them. For Iraqis and
Afghans, it is an easy decision to ally with militarily superior forces led
by a commander-in-chief with a clear and demonstrable will to victory.
Obama is not Bush. By declaring his commitment finite, he removes the
psychological force from his surge. NATO allies, who, because of limits they
place on their troops' activities, are hardly dependable on the best days,
will understand that absent U.S. commitment, furthering their own
commitments is silly. Pakistan will bolster its support for the Taliban. In
Islamabad's calculation, militant Islam is a lesser evil than Pashtun
nationalism. If Obama is preparing to cut-and-run--which, fairly or
unfairly, is how Pakistani generals will read his speech--then strengthening
links to the Taliban will make Pakistan the dominant player in post-surge,
post-withdrawal Afghanistan. The Taliban, too, will understand that, at
best, they need only lay low, perhaps bloodying U.S. troops enough to keep
the Afghanistan war unpopular among the Hollywood, university and media sets
Obama cares about.

Obama is also wrong to believe that his surge will buy enough time to inject
stability into Afghanistan's state or society. His inability to commit to
the country's future will lead President Hamid Karzai to resist U.S. demands
for reform. Obama's civilian "dream team" has turned into a nightmare.
Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke's longing for the spotlight--and desire to
create a High Commissioner to administer the country--has made the mercurial
Karzai even more resistant to advice.

Victory in Afghanistan is crucial. Those who say occupation sparks
insurgency misunderstand what is at stake. Afghans dislike occupation, but
they place a higher priority on security. Security brings tolerance of the
U.S. presence, and stability and a responsive government enables withdrawal.
To cede the Taliban a safe haven, either now or post-surge, is unacceptable.
Absent a stable government and a more capable Afghan National Army, the
Taliban will fill the vacuum as they did from 1994 to 2001. The Taliban and
their al-Qaida allies remain ideologically committed to the destruction of
Western society. Not only will failure in Afghanistan mean a renewed threat
to Americans across the globe, but it will also enable Islamists to convince
more and more people that, having defeated two superpowers, they are the
wave of the future. Unless Obama convinces the Taliban that his commitment
to victory is unwavering, prepare for a dozen new Afghanistans.

Michael Rubin <http://www.michaelrubin.org> , a senior lecturer at the Naval
Postgraduate School, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute.
 

Posted by Britannia Radio at 17:38