Spencer Ackerman: Obama Faces Rising Anxiety on Afghanistan

[laststeamtrain]

Obama Faces Rising Anxiety on Afghanistan
Holbrooke Staff Announcements Overshadowed by Larger Questions About Eight-Year War
By Spencer Ackerman 8/12/09

It was supposed to be an event detailing how thoroughly the Obama administration was preparing to handle the non-military challenges of the Afghanistan war. Richard Holbrooke, the administration’s powerful special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, introduced ten of his key deputies from across the government to an overflow audience Wednesday morning at Washington’s ornate St. Regis Hotel. Holbrooke pledged to the crowd of journalists, think tank experts and former officials that his team would lead an unparalleled interagency civilian effort to assist their Afghan and Pakistani counterparts address critical shortfalls in governance, economic development, communications, agriculture, finance and diplomacy.

But to a large degree, Holbrooke’s interlocutors wanted to know about the wisdom of the entire eight-year war in Afghanistan — and President Obama’s definitions of success for a conflict he may decide to escalate. Could the United States’ interests be satisfied by “a weak state” in Afghanistan, the integration of former Taliban fighters to the Afghan government and military strikes on specific al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan, asked John Podesta, the president of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, and the moderator of Wednesday’s event with Holbrooke. Would that be an “acceptable endstate?”

Holbrooke’s answer suggested an unresolved tension at the level of strategy. He said that it was important to be “clear about what our national interests are,” and that the continued relationships between al-Qaeda and the various Afghan and Pakistani insurgent groups merited ongoing military operations in Afghanistan and more. “The military struggle with U.S. troops is not an open-ended event, but our civilian assistance will continue,” the special envoy said. But he added that defining ultimate success would require applying a “Supreme Court test,” a reference to a line by Justice Potter Stewart about identifying pornography. “We’ll know it when we see it,” Holbrooke said.

That’s what’s worried some in Washington recently. Over the past two weeks, a previously muted Afghanistan debate has intensified across official Washington, fueled by the blogosphere. What, for months, have been questions and concerns largely restricted to progressive blogs have begun to roil establishment circles. Now that Afghanistan is once again the primary theater of conflict for the United States, the political consensus that has existed over the war since 9/11 is showing early signs of erosion over unclear goals, increased U.S. resources, and new concern that the counterinsurgency strategy embraced by the administration commits the U.S. too deeply to peripheral tasks.

Obama administration officials acknowledge a new wariness. At Wednesday’s event, Holbrooke told The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss that “we all feel the impatience and pressure of the American public and Congress which legitimately wants to see progress,” calling such concerns “legitimate.” A Defense Department official who requested anonymity said, that to some degree, that wariness is shared by the Obama administration. “As the new team has settled in and has had more time to spend time out in the theater and get reports back, both civilian and military, the depth of the challenge is sinking in even more,” the official said.

On the campaign trail, Obama faced little criticism from fellow Democrats and progressives when he called Afghanistan the central front in the struggle against al-Qaeda and pledged to increase U.S. troops there, a position adopted by his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz). During George W. Bush’s second term, drawing focus back to Afghanistan became a rhetorical technique employed by Democratic politicians arguing for withdrawal from Iraq. The result was to treat Afghanistan less as a war — with attendant challenges that would prove to be controversial when implemented — than as a debating point.

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http://washingtonindependent.com/54840/obama-faces-rising-anxiety-on-afghanistan

[aquart]

1. So he should.

He needed to tout Afghanistan as the "right" war in order not to look wussy for winding down Iraq. (Are we out of there yet?) Or he couldn't have gotten elected.

Now he has to realize this is NOT our problem. It is Russia's problem. It is China's problem. It is Iran's problem. It is India's problem. But it ain't OUR problem. Let them spend THEIR money on it.

We are NEVER going to control the Caspian Basin oil. That is a capitalist wet dream that needs to be wiped up. We have wrecked our nation in pursuit of it. Let it go. It was never going to benefit but a very few of us, the rest were going to get rooked anyway.

Time to come home and find a way to rebuild America.