Obama Struggles with Afghanistan

the American left since the Vietnam years has not wanted to see America victorious in war. They think it makes us look chauvinistic and proud about our nation when we should be, as Obama often has been, apologetic for its sins.

--Michael Barone

I think the left is unambiguously anti-military. But most of all, the left doesn’t want Afghanistan to be Obama’s Vietnam, and bring him down the way Vietnam brought down the last great Democratic domestic policy reformer, Lyndon Johnson. The left wants out now, before things in Afghanistan get any worse.

Les Gelb’s piece in the Wall Street Journal tells us how serious the Afghanistan war issue has become within Obama’s administration. Gelb, the former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the ultimate foreign policy insider. What he writes is what people, probably especially Richard Holbrooke, the frustrated Secretary of State wannabe [picture, click to enlarge] in charge of Obama’s Afghanistan policy, are telling the President. Read Gelb with interest.

Here’s what Gelb (Holbrooke) says:

➢ I'm lost on . . . Obama's Afghanistan policy. . . eight months ago, Mr. Obama pledged to "defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan by transforming that country's political and economic infrastructure, training Afghan forces and adding 21,000 U.S. forces for starters. He proclaimed Afghanistan's strategic centrality to prevent Muslim extremism from taking over Pakistan. . .And a mere three weeks ago, he punctuated his commitments by proclaiming that Afghanistan is a "war of necessity," not one of choice.

➢ [Yet now] Obama [says,] "I'm going to take a very deliberate process . . . one of the things that I'm absolutely clear about is you have to get the strategy right and then make a determination about resources." . . Are we now to understand that he made all those previous declarations and decisions without a strategy he was committed to?

➢ Obama can't simply walk away from the war. A lot of Democrats don't seem to fathom this. At a minimum, the president has got to give Afghan allies a fighting chance to hold their own and prepare the ground to blunt the Taliban and al Qaeda. That will take time.

➢ The U.S. now faces many very serious troubles abroad. These were all born before the Obama presidency. The president's failure in Afghanistan would be America's failure, and we cannot allow this to happen. Defeat for America in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be avoided only if Democrats acknowledge that the Afghans need major help . . .

As I have written, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are central to American foreign policy today. Afghanistan is least important of the three. But Afghanistan sits between the two nuclear/near-nuclear Islamic powder kegs, we are there, and we need to stay, help, and do well. Republicans should support centerist Democrat efforts to help Afghanistan, and combat the left's push to get out.