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McChrystal undermined
The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | December 2, 2009 | Melanie Phillips

Posted on 12/04/2009 2:04:24 AM PST by Schnucki

After a full three months of damaging dither, Obama has finally announced his strategy for Afghanistan. It is nothing less than surrender dressed up in deepest, blood-boltered hypocrisy. The media have reported the headline announcement of an extra 30,000 troops as if he has finally junked his anti-war persona and turned into George W Bush reborn. Even some hawks who should know better are purring that he has finally done the right thing in committing America more fully to fighting and winning the war in Afghanistan. Are they all nuts? This is nothing of the kind. Obama’s speech amounted to announcing an 18-month timetable for withdrawal – and the extra troops are being thrown in to mask the fact that he is running up the white flag.

After all, what kind of military strategist has ever announced the date of the end of a war – a ‘conclusion’, note, not ‘victory’, heaven forbid -- even while he is sending more troops? A more calculated way to undermine your own side than announcing to the enemy that you will not stay the course until victory is achieved can scarcely be imagined. Quite obviously all the Taleban have to do now is write the date carefully in their 2011 diaries and sit it out until the coalition departs, while all the time blowing up the occasional American and British soldier for good measure.

What this means in all its sordid reality is that the American President is cynically offering up American soldiers’ lives as a fig leaf to disguise the fact that he is giving up and getting out. Obama has now compromised the safety of every single American and British soldier, given not just the Taleban but every watching jihadi a terrific shot in the arm and undermined the very difficult

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Politics
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; dithering; mcchrystal; obama; oef; oefsurge

1 posted on 12/04/2009 2:04:25 AM PST by Schnucki
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To: Schnucki
I posted my thoughts on this speech some days ago by way of a vanity:

Trying to Thread the Needle, Obama Falls between Two Stools.

After dithering for nearly 100 days, longer than was required for the initial successful invasion of Afghanistan, Obama typically exploited a photo opportunity at West Point to stage-manage the disclosure of his decision to support his hand-picked general's request for troops, but only to the extent of 75%. In doing so, Obama has antagonized the base of his party who are already upset that he is not fulfilled his pledges to openly integrate the Army with homosexuals, close Gitmo, and pull the troops out of Iraq. Rather than ending the war in Afghanistan, he has now in their view doubled down on the number of troops and extended the war for at least 18 more months.

While dismaying the base of his own party, Obama has given the right, who will not vote for him under any circumstances anyway, half a loaf and has done so grudgingly. He has disappointed the right in three very significant particulars: he has failed to provide all the troops needed; he has imposed an arbitrary time limit; he has failed intelligibly to articulate a definition of victory or a strategy to gain it.

He Has Failed to Provide All the Troops Needed.

A cursory view of the map shows that huge swathes of Afghanistan are currently under the control of the Taliban or are substantially dominated by the Taliban. Even more of Afghanistan is owned by the Taliban at night. From the Northeast to the South of the country, that is along its vast and rugged Himalayan mountain border with Pakistan, the Taliban dominates by virtue of one tribal manifestation or another . All of these territories provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda. The Pashtuns around Kandahar in the south of the country are militantly opposed to the Karzai regime in Kabul.

In examining these geographical and political realities, it is worth noting in passing that the post-speech coverage and analysis on CNN far exceeded in quality the coverage on Fox. Michael Weir in particular provided a sobering analysis of the daunting odds imposed upon us by this geography. He is convinced that many times the number of soldiers being committed by Obama will be required to prevail. Not the least of the problems in Afghanistan are the sanctuaries in Pakistan and the not so clandestine support of many strata of Pakistan Society for the insurgency. The mountain fastness which makes up the Pakistan border provides innumerable avenues for Taliban and Al Qaeda to infiltrate and exfiltrate into and out of Afghanistan. The geography presents an ideal arena to mount a guerrilla.

In fairness to Obama, it should be duly noted that Obama's general, Gen. McChrystal, has said that these 30,000 will be a sufficient troop force. But in fairness to history, it is also important to note that Gen. McChrystal originally wanted many more troops. I just simply find this limited surge not to be formidable enough in view of the geography, the tribalism, the corruption, the antipathy to America and all foreigners, the history of eight years of failure, and the success of Pakistan-based guerrillas exploiting the border.

I fear that it is the enemy who can control troop levels by raising or lowering the pace of its incursions across the border from Pakistan. That gives the enemy the option of flooding the zone. While it is certainly possible for Obama to increase his troop commitment, logistic, economic and especially political, considerations constrain that option considerably. In this respect, one is compelled to make an analogy to Vietnam where the North Vietnamese were ultimately able to manage the flow down the Ho Chi Minh Trail at a sufficient rate to demoralize the American home front.

He Has Imposed An Arbitrary Time Limit.

This is a blunder which is obvious even to an armchair strategist like me. It demoralizes our troops, it encourages our enemies, it discloses our intentions to the enemy, it empowers him, it gives the enemy the option of waiting us out. It demoralizes the Karzai regime and it discourages potential allies among the tribes from attaching themselves to a force which they know will not be there in 18 months and, upon departure, will abandon them utterly to the brutal retaliations of the Taliban. Does anyone really doubt that every apparatchik, police chief and Army colonel in the Karzai government is now actively negotiating to cut any deal he can to survive in post-America Afghanistan?

The buildup will not even commence until many of the 18 months have run. The image is almost comic were it not so dangerous; we can easily foresee American troops entering Afghanistan to serve their tour bumping into troops leaving because the force is being withdrawn. We will have a surge but in which direction? It smacks of opera bouffe.

The time limit has been justified by Obama supporters as a wake-up call to Karzai to clean the corruption out of his regime. That rationalization is not persuasive. To announce a time limit is such an obvious blunder that one can only conclude that Obama made this statement to appease the base of the Democratic Party and as it is shameful political act for the commander-in-chief to expose his troops to added risk to protect his personal popularity. In this Dick Cheney is indisputably correct.

He Has Failed To Articulate an Intelligible Definition of Victory or a Strategy to Gain It.

Obama has articulated a definition of victory but it is not intelligible. No one hearing his words can be sure that we are not in fact embarking on nation building. If we are, it is clear that he is not providing the assets necessary to attain that war aim. He has certainly not allocated sufficient time to attain it. One minute he sounds as though he wants to nation build and the next he emphatically denies it. The problem is conceptual, he has failed to call for victory. This administration persists in the delusion that it can change reality by changing the language. So it enjoins the use of the word "terrorism" and resorts to Orwellian euphemisms, "adverse human events." Now in Afghanistan the administration will not call for " victory" but it wants to get the "job done." Obama's leftism is showing. He is the commander-in-chief whose job it is to order men and women into harm's way where they will be maimed and killed. As he himself rather blithely acknowledges, elementary morality demands that the commander-in-chief articulate a compelling need for that order. He has not.

Most importantly, Obama has failed to articulate a strategy for victory. What do we do about the incursions from Pakistan? There is no articulated solution. So long as we are waging war on the wrong side of an open border, we cannot as a democracy sustain the casualties necessary to staunch the flow by fighting battles of attrition. As noted above, the enemy can and will flood the zone and the enemy will cheerfully trade casualties with us even at a disadvantageous kill ratio. It worked in Vietnam where we killed the Vietcong at a rate of 10 to 1, and it very nearly succeeded in Iraq. Obama has put our forces in place where they are vulnerable to virtually unlimited cross-border incursions but they are saddled with absurd and potentially lethal rules of engagement. Obama has put our troops in harm's way and then rendered them naked in the presence of their enemies.

If the strategy is to build up Afghan military and police forces to provide that nation its own protection, is it realistic to believe that we will accomplish in 18 months what we failed to accomplish in eight years?

Narcissism On Parade

When the speech is stripped away of its filigrees it is essentially more of the same, altered only by a surge which is not a surge because it is limited in time. The essential problems of infiltration and Afghanistan are indeed addressed in stentorian tones hot off the Teleprompter but they are not solved. The president made several assertions which he did not prove and are very likely not true. He asserted essentially that it is necessary to fight a ground war in Afghanistan to prevent Al Qaeda from planning and preparing for another strike on the home because that is where the strike on 9/11 was planned and prepared. This is a dubious proposition. It is inconceivable that Al Qaeda cannot scrape up the godforsaken corners of the Muslim world a few more fanatics to strike our homeland as they did on 9/11. Al Qaeda can do that just as well from Egypt or Sudan, Pakistan or even Iraq as they could from Afganistan. American boots ground serving as an Army of occupation simply does not ensure that Al Qaeda cannot mount terrorist attacks.

The expressed war aim- to prevent Al Qaeda from mounting more attacks on our homeland-does not really enhance our national security if Al Qaeda can just as easily plan and launch such attacks from other venues. Thus the entire justification for the surge and for the whole war is rendered feckless.

One cannot leave the speech without noting a particular irony. Obama was at pains to claim credit for himself for changing the perception in the Muslim world of America by virtue of his incessant apologies and mia culpas for America's alleged misdeeds. The accelerating number of casualties in Afghanistan belie that claim. Does Obama believe we would be sustaining fewer casualties if he had actually closed Guantánamo Bay? To believe that one must have an utterly naïve understanding of the tribal mentality which has motivated the likes of the Taliban since Alexander The Great and the fanaticism which has motivated aggressive Islam since Mohammed went to the mountain. The irony is that the need for the surge is evidence of the utter failure of Obama's groveling diplomatic overtures.

The speech is incoherent because the policy is a craven attempt to appease two mutually exclusive constituencies. He tried to appease his left wing base while trying avoid appearing before the world as the author of failure in Afghanistan. He failed to thread that needle. Alas, Obama will not pay the price alone. The wages of narcissism in a Commander in Chief are too often casualties on the field.


2 posted on 12/04/2009 2:18:02 AM PST by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: nathanbedford

Mumma mea! Compare his March speech with his West Point speech and you will see they were essentially the same, if so why all the delay and dithering? I was expecting some brilliantly nuanced surgical plan, instead we get LBJ lite. Democrats simply don’t have the moral fabric to wage war....


3 posted on 12/04/2009 2:33:31 AM PST by databoss (Netanyahu will play Obama like a fiddle....)
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To: Schnucki
Seems as if the rest of the world realizes that the big "O" is weak, and certainly not a leader.

I wonder how long it will be until the Muslim terrorist take advantage of his weakness?

Let's face it folks, Marxist like Obama use force best against citizens with opposing views, political opponents, especially if they were previously disarmed.

4 posted on 12/04/2009 2:37:20 AM PST by Texas Jack
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To: databoss
Sometime before posting the vanity reaction to the president's speech, I posted this reply in which I tried to anticipate his motivations. I heard nothing in the speech which leads me to the amend the reply which I think goes to explain Obama's dithering-he was confronted with a military problem but his considerations were mostly political and personal:

How does Obama see the war in Afghanistan?

In analyzing and in criticizing-indeed, in understanding his motivation- the commander in chief's handling of the war in Afghanistan we ought to make sure we understand Obama's own calculus.

For the first time in the history of the Republic it is not unthinkable that we have a commander-in-chief who does not consciously pursue a policy which he believes to be in the best interest of the United States of America. The first time in the history of the Republic we may have a commander-in-chief who does not want the Republic to prosper with the operating system, the constitutional system, that he inherited from generations of presidents before him. In fact we have a distinct possibility that the commander-in-chief regards changing the governing system in America to be the highest priority and he views the war in Afghanistan in the context of advancing or retarding the change in our governing system he seeks.

There is a second calculus to consider. If Obama is as narcissistic as many claim, the first question Obama will ask himself concerning pursuing the war in Afghanistan will come long before he asks himself what is in the country's national interest and even before he asks himself how this might advance or retard the revolution he seeks, he will ask himself how does this reflect on the image of Barak Obama? If Obama is truly a narcissist this equation is one which he cannot put aside because he is psychologically compelled to look at the world through the prism of his own solipsism. I for one cannot judge whether he is such a narcissist but it is plain that the evidence mounts daily which increasingly confirms the judgment which must be drawn from his biography, his associations, and his own pronouncements that he is a man driven by his own ego.

So when the president of the United States decides whether to surge or not to surge in Afghanistan the dismaying reality is that the interests of the country will be counted no better than third place. Small wonder that the president has not talked to his field general but once. For Obama the decision is not a military one but an ideological one, or a psychological one. If Obama decides to surge it will be to advance Barack Obama or at least to avoid damage to the public image of Barak Obama for a military fiasco. If he elects not to surge the motivation will be that he must maintain his image with his home base.

This is a helluva way to wage war and a disgraceful way to sacrifice American lives.


5 posted on 12/04/2009 2:54:35 AM PST by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: Schnucki

My first thought when he announced July 2011? Just in time for 2012 campaign.

We will not fight to a victory, only to a draw. This surge of 30,000 troops over 12 months(?!) is nothing more than a face saving mission for a man who made Afghanistan the “good” war.

He is a fraud. Today I hear he’s going on a jobs tour. Next week it’s Copenhagen. How many days has he actually spent working! I’ve never seen a president taking to the road as much as he does. Does this mean someone else is running the government? Does he have his own Dick Cheney in the White House—it isn’t Biden. So who is it? Emmanuel? Axelrod? Jarret? SEIU Andy Stern? or Michelle?


6 posted on 12/04/2009 4:11:28 AM PST by samsmom
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To: nathanbedford

If the R’s manage to take back either house of Congress in the mid-terms, I can see a standing committee on the conduct of the War in Afghanistan that would be similar to the one that A. Lincoln had to deal with during the Civil War. Would make for some interesting political theater, and there may even be some opportunity to check the worst impulses of this administration.


7 posted on 12/04/2009 7:44:21 AM PST by Tallguy ("The sh- t's chess, it ain't checkers!" -- Alonzo (Denzel Washington) in "Training Day")
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To: samsmom
Does this mean someone else is running the government?

Don't worry, Obama's czars are minding the store while the president globe-trots. The fact that they are totally unaccountable to anybody but Obama should make us all sleep well at night.

8 posted on 12/04/2009 7:46:53 AM PST by Tallguy ("The sh- t's chess, it ain't checkers!" -- Alonzo (Denzel Washington) in "Training Day")
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To: nathanbedford

Sadly, this is our CinC...is he a narcissist? Maybe, clueless incompetent with your aforementioned 'radical agenda' is more likely...


9 posted on 12/04/2009 3:55:05 PM PST by databoss
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