Any notion that President Barack Obama will be scaling back our military involvement in Afghanistan has now come to a crashing halt.
Obama, according to The New York Times, said today “it is his intention to “finish the job” that began with the overthrow of the Taliban government in the fall of 2001.”
Mr. Obama, offering a tantalizing preview of what looms as one of the momentous decisions of his presidency, said he would tell the American people about “a comprehensive strategy” embracing civilian and diplomatic efforts as well as the continuing military campaign.
While he avoided any hints of the new troop levels he foresees in Afghanistan, the president signaled that he will not be talking about a short-term commitment but rather an effort muscular enough to “dismantle and degrade” the enemy and ensure that “Al Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot operate” in the region.
A round of White House meetings on Afghanistan, which concluded on Monday night, included discussions about sending about 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, administration officials said. There are about 68,000 United States troops there now.
And now there will be more — and, despite the apparent inclusion of an “exit strategy,” they are going to be there for a long, long time.
The decision to double down on Afghanistan comes at a moment when the war has lost support among the American people and it is becoming clearer by the day that continued fighting will do little more than further inflame the situation.
A piece in the Sunday Times’ Week In Review by Robert Wright, author of an important
overview of religious history called The Evolution of God (I am reading it now and find it fascinating), offers a glimpse into the potential side-effects of this unnecessary remedy to our security ills.
These could include the creation of homegrown terrorists. Wright, focusing on the horrible case of “Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and the Fort Hood massacre,” says — quoting the argument of dovish liberals — attempting to end terrorism by killing terrorists is counterproductive. It actually does more to spread terrorism than to stop it.
One reason killing terrorists can spread terrorism is that various technologies — notably the Internet and increasingly pervasive video — help emotionally powerful messages reach receptive audiences. When American wars kill lots of Muslims, inevitably including some civilians, incendiary images magically find their way to the people who will be most inflamed by them.
This calls into question our nearly obsessive focus on Al Qaeda — the deployment of whole armies to uproot the organization and to finally harpoon America’s white whale, Osama bin Laden. If you’re a Muslim teetering toward radicalism and you have a modem, it doesn’t take Mr. bin Laden to push you over the edge. All it takes is selected battlefield footage and a little ad hoc encouragement: a jihadist chat group here, a radical imam there — whether in your local mosque or on a Web site in your local computer.
If this is the case — and I believe it is — then the Afghanistan war and our incursions into Pakistan and potentially other hot spots becomes a game of “Wack-a-Mole.” Each time a mole pops up from its hole and we smash it, another mole pops up from another hole.
Bulking up our mission in Afghanistan, therefore, will do little to alter this and could do much to exacerbate it.
As Wright points out,
Central to the debate over Afghanistan is the question of whether terrorists need a “safe haven” from which to threaten America. If so, it is said, then we must work to keep every acre of Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, etc.) out of the hands of groups like the Taliban. If not — if terrorists can orchestrate a 9/11 about as easily from apartments in Germany as from camps in Afghanistan — then maybe never-ending war isn’t essential.
However you come out on that argument, the case of Nidal Hasan shows one thing for sure: Homegrown American terrorists don’t need a safe haven. All they need is a place to buy a gun.
I’m not arguing that we should ignore terrorism. On the contrary, we should address it using a law-enforcement model, which would require a greater reliance on intelligence gathering and investigation, while also focusing on international economic development and aid.
There is another drawback to Obama’s apparent “surge”: It will derail his domestic agenda, sucking dollars from the treasury while weakening support for the president at home. LBJ is the model for this, of course, as Bill Moyers reminded us last week, when he made the connection between Vietnam and Afghanistan and LBJ and Obama:
Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we’re fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.
Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.
And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he’s got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.
And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.
We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.
I hope Obama is not following the path blazed by LBJ. That would be a tragedy for all of us.
