AFGHANISTAN

The word in the media is that Obama has decided to send about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He will make a speech to the nation on December 1 [next Tuesday] announcing the decision. It is not difficult to figure out what he will say. He will lay down, firm, inflexible markers of success. He will say that if the Kharzai regime has not made major advances in combating corruption and establishing a legitimate government in six months, he will begin the withdrawal of American troops. He will say that in any case, he is prepaqred to commit troops for only five years, after which they must be totally withdrawn. And he will say that the focus of the mission of the troops will be on counteracting Al Qaida, not on fighting the Taliban.

And he will mean every word of it.

So Kharzai will make some head fakes in the direction of dealing with corruption. [Will he really put his brother in prison? I doubt it.] The Taliban will continue to expand their sphere of influence. [Just today there are reports that they have opened operations in an area of Afghanistan that the Americans had thought was secure.] And inevitably, American casualties will rise.

But the blood of these men and women will be on Obama's hands, not on Bush's hands, for with the escalation, the war will become Obama's war. Six months from now, no real progress will have been made, but there will be some Potemkin Village successes to which the generals will point. What is more, when they ask for more troops, to protect those already there, how will Obama say no? After all, it will be he who chose to send them there.

This is wrong, wrong wrong. It is a mistake of monumental proportions. And all the deliberateness of decision making, all the lines drawn in the sand, all the time lines and deadlines and inflexible conditions will not make it anything but a mistake.

I have seen this movie before, and the sequel was Richard Nixon.

MIXED SIGNALS

On Wednesday, I watched the Fort Hood ceremonies, including Obama's speech. It was moving, beautifully crafted, a splendid performance. But as I listened, a thought I saw something that sent a cold chill up my spine -- a gifted, dedicated man who had run as a candidate committed to domestic change and progress, but who was becoming transformed into a war-time president by the pressure of events. I was very fearful that the terrible burden of being responsible for sending men and women into combat had changed him. I do not for a moment think he wants to be a wartime president, as George W. Bush clearly did, but he may think that he has no alternative.

Then, today, I read reports that Obama has rejected all four alternatives for Afghanistan as presented by his advisers, and demands to know what the "off ramps' are for our involvement there -- this coming on the day that Ambassador Eikenberry's extremely negative report was leaked to the press.

There is really nothing at this point for us to do but wait and see how it comes out. I continue to believe that his presidency hangs in the balance.

PROPORTIONALITY

I am often struck by the disproportion between the significance of the major issues of public importance about which I pontificate knowingly in this blog, and the insignificance of the personal matters about which I anguish privately. Right now, three things are weighing on my mind: the fate of the health care reform bill, the war in Afghanistan, and the health of my cat, Murray, whom we took yesterday to the emergency room of the North Carolina State University Veterinary School with a life-threatening diebetic attack that has mushroomed into something much worse. I am not crazy. I acknowledge that by any measure to which I could give rational assent, either of the first two issues is to the third as a galaxy is to a dust mote. And yet, in the emotional balance of my life, the third far outweighs either or both of the first two. If Murray pulls through, we will need to care for him for the rest of what I hope will be a long life, giving him twice a day subcutaneous insulin shots and watching carefully to be sure that he does not become hypoglycemic from too much insulin. Murray has been sick for several days, and yesterday, even though it was a Sunday, I called the emergency service of our vet and took him in to be seen. The vet offered the opinion that if I had not chosen to take him in, he might not have lasted through the night! When she said that, I experienced not relief but what can only be called a retroactive shock that left me wrung through.

Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham is calling the House bill Dead on Arrival, Joe Lieberman is renewing his threat to filibuster the bill in the Senate, and new reports suggest Obama is leaning toward the disastrous decision to send 38,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. I know that if I have any self-respect as a blogger, it is those matters about which I should be writing. But the truth is that the uncertainty about Murray's fate completely eclipses health care and Afghanistan in my mind. I suppose one explanation for this distorted sense of priorities is that while there is absolutely nothing I can do that will make a discernible difference to either the health care bill or Afghanistan, what I do will make all the difference to Murray's future.

Murray, by the way, is name after the dog on the old Paul Rieser/Helen Hunt television comedy, "Mad About You."

MORE BAD METAPHORS

Now that the elections are behind us, my grandchildren's pictures have been posted, and other such matters have been blogged about, it is necessary to return to the really important issue that pends: the situation in Afghanistan. There are reports from unnamed sources [as always] that Obama is considering changing the mission to the training of Afghan security forces and sending ten to fifteen thousand additional troops in pursuit of that mission.

This is madness, folly, a terrible waste of lives and resources. If he chooses this course of action, I would be willing to bet my entire modest savings that the following sequence of events will unfold: First, the troops will be sent and the mission will be changed. Then the Taliban [or other parties] will mount attacks on the training bases, and U.S. service men and women will lose their lives. In response, the generals in the field will state [publicly, since the tradition of civilian control of the military seems to have died away] that they need more troops to protect those engaged in the training. Obama, having chosen to send those trainers, will believe that he has no choice but to comply. How can he not give the troops he has sent in harm's way whatever they need to be protected while they do the job he sent them to do? A year from now, very little will have changed in Afghanistan, despite much brave talk about "benchmarks" and "metrics" of "success." But there will be 100,000 American troops there, not 68,000. And from then on, no matter what he says or hopes or dreams, Obama's presidency will be about Afghanistan.

This training mission is repeatedly described as "giving the Afghan forces the tools they need to maintain security." Think for a moment about that metaphor -- "the tools they need." We are to suppose that the Afghans are trying to clear a forest with axes, which is very difficult, so we will send them chain saws, which will make things go better. Or, they are communicating with one another by dixie cups attached to strings, and we will give them field radios, which will improve their ability to talk to oneanother.

Now the people the Afghan government forces are supposed to fight have a good deal less in the way of sophisticated equipment, and they have had the benefit of little or no formal training. Yet they regularly defeat the government forces, even when those forces are supported by U.S. air power and artillary ["tools" that the Taliban totally lack.] How can that be? Put this way, the question virtually answers itself. The Taliban [or the Iraqi militants, or the American Colonials, for that matter] have chosen to fight, and they have got their hands on enough weapons to do great harm. The Afghan forces are hired guns, not terribly enthusiastic about getting killed in the service of a corrupt government and an occupying great power. All the traning manuals written by American generals with Ph. D.'s cannot change these facts.

Now, it is no doubt true that with sufficient force, America can rule Afghanistan, either directly, or through a puppet government in Kabul. But experience teaches that to accomplish this dubious end, we would have to: (a) commit vastly more troops, (b) stay for as long as we want Afghanistan to be ruled, and (c) be willing to kill as many Afghan men, women, and children as it takes to oppress them successfully.

I know that Obama did not have a typical African-American upbringing, but surely he is familiar with the story about Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.

DO WE WANT AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENT?

David Brooks writes a column today in the NY TIMES puzzling over whether Obama has the "determination" required of a "war president." [Am I the only person who thinks that Brooks looks like one of those fat-faced smug little boys, all dressed up in a suit and being fussed over by his mother, who is being pushed forward to ask the four questions at a seder?] The subject, of course, is Afghanistan, and Brooks longs for a Churchill [whom he references] who will doggedly pursue wars to "victory." As columnists often do, he attributes these thoughts to unnamed "military experts," but the opinions are transparently his. [Brooks, of course, like almost everyone else pontificating about matters of war and peace, has never spent a day in uniform, and wouldn't know which end of a rifle to put the ammunition in, but that does not stop him from speaking with calm self-assurance about sending other people into harm's way.]

This set me thinking about what the so often invoked Founding Fathers wanted in a president. By a delicious irony, Obama actually comes very close to what those slave owners had in mind -- someone who seeks to work cooperatively with Congress, who takes a limited and modest view of the title "Commander in Chief," who shuns "entangling alliances" and focuses his energies on the domestic needs of the country. Brooks acknowledges condescendingly that Obama is "intellectually sophisticated" and "is capable of processing complicated arguments and weighing nuanced evidence." But, Brooks says, what really matters is whether Obama possesses "tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity anjd confusion."

Now, let us think. What recent president exhibited that trait, so much more important, accoridng to Brooks, than mere intellectual sophistication and the ability to weigh nuanced evidence? Ah yes, I remember -- George W. Bush.

If it weren't for the crossword puzzle and Frank Rich, I would cancel my subscription.

THE CIA AND LOUIS XIV

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, France was far and away the richest and most powerful nation in Europe. French replaced Latin as the language of diplomacy and Versailles served as the archetypal McMansion to which lesser monarchs could only aspire. During that time, France meddled endlessly in the conflicts that were continually breaking out in Europe, secretly underwriting one side or the other, and sometimes funneling funds to both sides in order to maximize its influence.

Since the end of World War II, The United States has assumed the role of Meddler in Chief. So it did not surprise me to learn yesterday that America, through the CIA, has been underwriting Hamid Karzai's drug kingpin and Taliban supplier brother. Louis XIV would be proud.

This revelation has sparked a good deal of moral outrage, which at the moment is a politically useful thing. But the fault of America's Afghan policy does not consist in the fact that we have made a pact with the devil. Inasmuch as we have assumed the devil's role in much of the world, whom else would we throw in with? The fundamental problem of our Afghan adventure is that it has no recognizable or plausible purpose, and serves only to waste lives and resources without end.

The Bourbon meddling was equally without point. In the end, it bankrupted the monarchy, and we all know how that story ended. Do you have your knitting, Madame DeFarge?

OBAMA'S VIET NAM

Those among you who read this blog faithfully may have noticed that every morning, President Obama checks it for advice, just after kissing his daughters goodby and sending them off to school, and before his daily national security briefing. The time has come, therefore, for me to advise him on this whole Afghanistan thing. Let us be clear: I know next to nothing about the region in which Afghanistan is located. I have, to be sure, read Kipling's great novel, KIM, and I have even seen the movie, several times [I love the part where Kim is being trained for the Great Game, and has to memorize a table full of objects in no time at all.] Needless to say, I do not read, write, speak, or understand any of the languages of the region, and my grasp of the history of the area is sketchy, to put matters as delicately as I can. In short, I am as well prepared to pontificate on the subject of America's Afghan policy as perhaps 432 of the members of the House of Representatives, at least 96 of the senators, and all of the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls. So here goes.

Afghanistan threatens to be Obama's Viet Nam. The reference, of course, is to Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, when he ascended to the presidency upon John Kennedy's assassination, had dreams of being a domestic affairs president in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Kennedy had sent "advisors" to Viet Nam to pick up the slack from the collapsing French Empire, but it was not too late, in 1963-64, to shut the whole escapade down and back off. Tragically, Johnson was intimidated by the Ivy League whiz kids [MacNamara, Bundy, et al.], who suckered him into a bigger commitment that then produced the downfall of his presidency and the death of fifty thousand Americans and several million Viet Namese.

We are way deeper into Afghanistan than we were into Viet Nam in 1963, of course, but the principle is the same. It would perhaps help if Obama had a bit of the Old South in him, and remembered Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.

Let us recall that this country essentially created the Taliban during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, arming them with everything up to, and especially including, Stinger ground-to-air missiles with which to shoot down the Russian attack helicopters that were devastating the resistance forces.

Joe Biden. God bless 'im, has apparently weighed in with a strong dissent from the proposal to expand American forces, and even George Will, one of my very least favorite human beings, has called for us to get out.

If Obama pulls put of Afghanistan, he will be beat up on by the Republicans for a while, but the public, which couldn't find the country on the map with a seeing eye dog, will forget about it soon enough. If Obama gets suckered into accepting the myth that just one more troop increase, just one more surge, will do the trick and stabilize the country, then his presidency will be held hostage to the vagaries of internal Afghanistan politics, and all our brave hopes for him will be dashed. What can we do? Not a thing. This is not, unlike health care, an issue on which mobilized public opinion will in the short run make any difference. Right now is the last moment when Obama can back off, treat both wars as a legacy from the previous administration, and cut America's losses. If he buys the troop increase, he buys the war, and from now on it will be Obama's war.

I suspect Obama actually knows all this. But does he have the political courage to take the hit up front? He may well have to temporize until the health care battle is over, but that is now a matter of weeks.

All we can do is wait and see.

After writing and posting the above, I went to Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish, and there, under a heading "Obama's JFK Moment?" found essentially the same analysis. I take this as a good sign, not as evidence that I have been "one-upped." What I am most encouraged by in the posting, which is by George Packer, is the statement that the people around Obama are all drawing the analogy and are fully aware of what is at stake. Let us hope so!