There was a stark moment of realization that took place over a year ago when Candidate Obama was wiping the floor with Candidate McCain. Deftly using the war in Afghanistan as a way of bolstering his own lack of foreign policy experience, he spelled out what he was going to do. That's what makes this recent dithering so difficult to accept.
When you see things like this:
For nearly a week, I have been thinking about a comment my friend and fellow civil-military relations specialist Eliot Cohen made in a Washington Post story about President Obama struggling to come to terms with his role as "commander-in-chief." I am quoted in the story, too, but the part that really gripped me was this quote from Cohen:
With this decision, he's really going to own this war, and he's going to be sending young men and women to their deaths. And when that realization sets in, it's a very grim thing. He may have known it intellectually before, but what I think is happening is he's learning it viscerally."
Cohen's larger point, and the general thrust of the article, is spot-on. Throughout the painfully long and awkward Afghan Strategy Review 2.0 -- with all of the back-stabbing leaks and blame-throwing -- it is increasingly clear that the president is visibly wrestling with his commander-in-chief duties, and doing so at a gut level (vice an abstract intellectual level) for the first time.
I also think that Cohen captures accurately the president's own thinking about the gravity of the choice before him: with his decision, Obama will acknowledge that he "owns this war." I have probably said something similar myself in commentary about the strategy review process. But the more I think about it, the more I think that this insight is misleading in a fundamental way. Obama may well think that he does not yet own the Afghan war and will only own it once he finally decides this issue. But in truth he has "owned" the war for many months now, and it is a dangerous conceit for the president or his team to think otherwise.
That's where some try to walk it back and say that President Obama hasn't owned the Afghanistan war for as long as he has, in fact, owned it. This stark exchange last month with Senator John McCain highlights the dithering:
President Obama met with House and Senate leaders of both parties at the White House yesterday to discuss the future of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, and there was at least one pointed exchange. Inside the State Dining Room, where the meeting was held, Mr. Obama's Republican opponent in last year's presidential race, Sen. John McCain, told the president that he should not move at a "leisurely pace" on a decision over whether to increase U.S. troops in the region, according to people in the room. That comment later drew a sharp response from the president. Mr. Obama said no one felt more urgency than he did about the war, and there would not be nothing leisurely about it. McCain has been a very public advocate to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, an approach advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top military commander in the country. For the most part, House and Senate leaders emerged from the nearly 90-minute conversation with Mr. Obama offering praise for his candor and interest in listening. But politically speaking, all sides appeared to exit where they entered, with Republicans pushing him to follow his military commanders and Democrats saying he should not be rushed.
That meeting took place on October 6 and today is November 18. Nothing has been decided, much has been leaked, and the dithering continues. This is a President who fails to understand what it is he owns and doesn't own. He doesn't own Iraq, but he does own Afghanistan. He really took ownership on the day that General David McKiernan was fired. He had de facto ownership on Inauguration Day, of course. But, terms of the way forward and in terms of in the American political arena, he owned Afghanistan after this exchange in the first debate between himself and the hapless Senator John McCain:
[Jim] LEHRER: ...And it goes to you, Senator Obama, and it’s a — it picks up on a point that’s already been made. Do you think more troops — more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan, how many, and when?
OBAMA: Yes, I think we need more troops. I’ve been saying that for over a year now.
And I think that we have to do it as quickly as possible, because it’s been acknowledged by the commanders on the ground the situation is getting worse, not better.
We had the highest fatalities among U.S. troops this past year than at any time since 2002. And we are seeing a major offensive taking place — Al Qaida and Taliban crossing the border and attacking our troops in a brazen fashion. They are feeling emboldened.
And we cannot separate Afghanistan from Iraq, because what our commanders have said is we don’t have the troops right now to deal with Afghanistan.
So I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan. Now, keep in mind that we have four times the number of troops in Iraq, where nobody had anything to do with 9/11 before we went in, where, in fact, there was no Al Qaida before we went in, but we have four times more troops there than we do in Afghanistan.
And that is a strategic mistake, because every intelligence agency will acknowledge that Al Qaida is the greatest threat against the United States and that Secretary of Defense Gates acknowledged the central front — that the place where we have to deal with these folks is going to be in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
So here’s what we have to do comprehensively, though. It’s not just more troops. We have to press the Afghan government to make certain that they are actually working for their people. And I’ve said this to President Karzai.
Number two, we’ve got to deal with a growing poppy trade that has exploded over the last several years.
Number three, we’ve got to deal with Pakistan, because Al Qaida and the Taliban have safe havens in Pakistan, across the border in the northwest regions, and although, you know, under George Bush, with the support of Senator McCain, we’ve been giving them $10 billion over the last seven years, they have not done what needs to be done to get rid of those safe havens.
And until we do, Americans here at home are not going to be safe.
LEHRER:Afghanistan, Senator McCain?
MCCAIN: First of all, I won’t repeat the mistake that I regret enormously, and that is, after we were able to help the Afghan freedom fighters and drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, we basically washed our hands of the region.
And the result over time was the Taliban, Al Qaida, and a lot of the difficulties we are facing today. So we can’t ignore those lessons of history.
Now, on this issue of aiding Pakistan, if you’re going to aim a gun at somebody, George Shultz, our great secretary of state, told me once, you’d better be prepared to pull the trigger.
I’m not prepared at this time to cut off aid to Pakistan. So I’m not prepared to threaten it, as Senator Obama apparently wants to do, as he has said that he would announce military strikes into Pakistan.
We’ve got to get the support of the people of — of Pakistan. He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan.
Now, you don’t do that. You don’t say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.
Now, the new president of Pakistan, Kardari (sic), has got his hands full. And this area on the border has not been governed since the days of Alexander the Great.
I’ve been to Waziristan. I can see how tough that terrain is. It’s ruled by a handful of tribes.
And, yes, Senator Obama calls for more troops, but what he doesn’t understand, it’s got to be a new strategy, the same strategy that he condemned in Iraq. It’s going to have to be employed in Afghanistan.
And we’re going to have to help the Pakistanis go into these areas and obtain the allegiance of the people. And it’s going to be tough. They’ve intermarried with Al Qaida and the Taliban. And it’s going to be tough. But we have to get the cooperation of the people in those areas.
And the Pakistanis are going to have to understand that that bombing in the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was a signal from the terrorists that they don’t want that government to cooperate with us in combating the Taliban and jihadist elements.
So we’ve got a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. But I’m confident, now that General Petraeus is in the new position of command, that we will employ a strategy which not only means additional troops — and, by the way, there have been 20,000 additional troops, from 32,000 to 53,000, and there needs to be more.
So it’s not just the addition of troops that matters. It’s a strategy that will succeed. And Pakistan is a very important element in this. And I know how to work with him. And I guarantee you I would not publicly state that I’m going to attack them.
Now, how many people are willing to admit that President Obama has, essentially, become John McCain? He certainly won't stand for anyone who isn't an ass kisser. If we had known then that a President and not a Candidate Obama would adopt the "surge" strategy endorsed by General Petraeus and Senator McCain, and let the generals pour more troops into the region, who would have supported such a thing without a clear exit strategy and a willingness to let a political settlement happen?
I don't think anyone was paying enough attention to the fact that President Obama knew over a year ago that Afghan corruption and the Pakistani safe havens were insurmountable challenges. Were people expecting him to keep Secretary Gates and General Petraeus in place? Instead of admitting then what we've known for a long time, he deftly boxed out Senator McCain and delivered a stunning knockout (even though, at the time, it wasn't one). You can tell that all McCain wanted to say was, "you're lying, and you're going to end up doing it my way anyway."
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