Bad Choices- Hendrik Hertzberg

[BREMPRO]

"There are no good options for the United States in Afghanistan. That has been the conventional wisdom for some years now, and this time the conventional wisdom—the reigning cliché—happens to be true. President Obama did not pretend otherwise in his address at West Point last week. His grimly businesslike speech was a gritty, almost masochistic exercise in the taking of responsibility. What he had to say did not please everyone; indeed, it pleased no one. Given the situation bequeathed to him and to the nation, pleasure was not an option. His speech was a sombre appeal to reason, not a rousing call to arms. If his argument was less than fully persuasive, that was in the nature of the choices before him. There is no such thing as an airtight argument for a bad choice—not if the argument is made with a modicum of honesty."

<snip>

"Obama did the best he could to make a positive case for the path he has chosen, but—chillingly, bleakly—the principal virtue of his choice remains the vices of the others. Withdrawal, beginning at once? The political and diplomatic damage to Obama would be severe: a probable Pentagon revolt; the anger of NATO allies who have risked their soldiers’ lives (and their leaders’ political standing) on our behalf; the near-certainty that a large-scale terrorist attack, whether or not it had anything to do with Afghanistan, would be met at home not with 9/11 solidarity but with savage, politically lethal scapegoating. Even so, if “success,” however narrowly defined, is truly an outright impossibility, then withdrawal may still be the most responsible choice. But it is not yet obvious that a better result is out of the question. “To abandon this area now,” the President said, “would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on Al Qaeda and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.” The consequences could also include a second Taliban emirate, a long, bloody civil war, and a sharp, destabilizing increase in Islamist violence, not only in Pakistan but also in India and elsewhere. The status quo? To “muddle through and permit a slow deterioration,” the President said, “would ultimately prove more costly and prolong our stay in Afghanistan, because we would never be able to generate the conditions needed to train Afghan security forces and give them the space to take over.” Or a full-scale counter-insurgency war—in the President’s words, a “dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort, one that would commit us to a nation-building project of up to a decade”? That, too, must be rejected, “because it sets goals that are beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost and what we need to achieve to secure our interests.” Such a war—such a project—would be hugely out of proportion to whatever marginal security gains it might yield. And it wouldn’t just be beyond “a reasonable cost.” It would be beyond our political, institutional, and material capacity, and therefore impossible.

"A dismal process of elimination has left the President to design a strategy that he believes is the only one that offers a chance, in his words, “to bring this war to a successful conclusion.” Or, at least, a bearable one. Deliver a hard punch to the Taliban, break its momentum, and welcome its defectors; throw a bucket of cold water on the hapless and corrupt central government; carve out space and time for projects of civilian betterment and the development of Afghan forces that are capable of maintaining some semblance of security; forge “an effective partnership with Pakistan”—to list the elements of Obama’s strategy is to recognize its difficulty. It is full of internal tensions, most prominently between the buildup of troops and the eighteen-month timeline for beginning their withdrawal. (To the extent that the troop surge weakens the enemy while the timeline focusses minds in Kabul and Islamabad, however, that tension could be a creative one.) The plan does not, of course, guarantee success. The best that can be claimed for it is that it does not guarantee failure, as, in one form or another, the alternatives almost certainly do."

<snip>

"The botched war in Afghanistan, like the economic crisis and the broken health-care system, is an inheritance from which Obama is trying to extricate the country. In each case, the institutional, historical, and political constraints under which a President must operate mean that the solutions—or, if there are no solutions, the ameliorations—are doomed to be nearly as messy as the problems. If there is no Obama Doctrine, there is an Obama approach—undergirded by humane values but also by a respect for reality. The most telling signpost in Obama’s speech may have been neither his call for more troops nor his timeline for removing them but his use of a quotation from another President who inherited a seemingly intractable war: “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.” That was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in one of the homelier passages from his canonical farewell address, delivered the year Barack Obama was born. President Eisenhower’s point was that a nation’s security is all of a piece—that military actions do not inhabit a separate universe but must be weighed on the same scale, and be subject to the same judgments, as a nation’s other vital concerns. That seems to be President Obama’s point as well."

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/12/14/091214taco_talk_hertzberg

[truedelphi]

1. I have been mostly ignoring what Obama is saying

Other than to keep myself informed as what he plans to do. Of course, through DU, I hear snippets of what he said, and again and again the refrain of how he has "agonized" over the choice.


But of far greater interest to me has been what the Generals are saying - and they were out in full force testifying before the Senate. C Span happened to run the video of it most of last night.

I can well remember the enthusiasm our nation initially happened to have back when the Buddhist priests were burning themselves alive to protest the Communist forces infiltrating South Vietnam and persecuting anyone of an overly religious stance.

At that point in time, Vietnam was the clean slate, and I can remember all of it, even though I was only eleven or twelve, and I remember how enthused we were as a nation.

We could provide "Advisers" -- we could help build schools and water sanitation facilities. And thus we could also help the people of Vietnam secure a "Stable government."

Watching the Generals answer the Senators' questions last evening, this clean slate of a virgin country that we once again can assist - that clean slate came in focus.

The words that were spoken were all so mighty and glorious and proud - why we practically OWE those service people who have so gallantly gone off on previous tours more war so they can continue to be patriotic. (Can anyone in America be a patriot unless they are fighting a war!?!) I heard not a single word about the fact that these glorious patriots are now in the third, fourth, fifth or even sixth tour of duty.

Nor did I hear cautions that should absolutely be demanded of the military in terms of the domestic security of this nation. (Even Nixon was careful to make sure that enough soldiers were on hand at all times for emergencies here. But when the beleaguered middle class, already jobless and homeless, finally takes to the streets, will the military be unable to defend the mayor's offices, the State Capitals, and Washington DC itself?)

No General mentioned how THERE IS NO MONEY FOR THIS QUAGMIRE. At the time of Vietnam, due to the careful expansion of our economy over the fifties and sixties (in large part because Dwight Eisenhower refused the Generals any wars) this nation had enough money so that the war could be fought. Of course, the budgetary decisions ended up costing so much that a huge recession came about in the late seventies.

So once again the drum beat sounds, a nation readies its forces.

Beware, oh citizens of Afghanistan. The MIC is after you and your children, although all of this is painted with such rhetoric that no one can any longer remember the little girl, with arms outstretched, running down a dusty road in Vietnam, her body torched by napalm, her country's soul (And ours as well) in blistery ruins.

[BREMPRO]

2. you make some good points, but did you even read the editorial?

I saw no evidence that you read it in your response. There is a reason we have civilian control over the military- the generals advise along with many others at the table and the reports of the deliberations showed a process that was very thorough. The point is that Obama had no good choices and the war has been neglected for 8 years and deteriorated into a different conflict. He chose the one that he determined had the best chance to get us out of Afghanistan responsibly. This is not Vietnam and the scenario of spontaneous anarchy on Main street is not even in the realm of the possible- unless the astroturf teabaggers and decide to create it.

[truedelphi]

3. I thought that the editorial was an effort to give a decent "spin"

To this man's never ending waffling.

Paraphrasing Obama without the spin this article provides, here is my take on his enthusiasm for a new war:

We have to go into Afghanistan, and let's coach that statement with another statement from Eisenhower**. We have to go into Afghanistan but we will be out in eighteen months.

"We have to go into Afghanistan, and although anyone looking into a history of recent American-fought wars knows that all such wars end up endless (mostly due to the nature of the MIC that Eisenhower warned of,**) as I am Obama the new God of all, my war will be different. It will not be endless, although I can be talked out of my eighteen month 'time line.'

"My war will not provide the sad statistics of Vietnam -- 55K Americans killed in the line of duty, one to three million Vietnamese killed, six million Vietnamese left homeless, nor will my war in Afghanistan look like the one in Iraq -- 4400 and counting dead American soldiers, one million dead civilians, four million and counting refugees.

"No I am Obama and somehow my war will be different. Because I say it will."

Obama on Afghanistan ranks right up there with his illogic he provided on Health Care Reform: "We all know that Single Payer Universal Health Care is the most effective and best solution. But since it is not possible, as we already have a system and WE MUST work within that system, then Blah Blah Blah" Inother words, although the system is broken, we cannot scrap the system. WTF? IF it is broken, we scrap it. Other wise why bother with reform?

** Eisenhower's remark is this one - “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.”