WyBlog

30,000 more troops for Afghanistan, with one hand tied behind their backs?

I sat through Obama's entire speech tonight (so you didn't have to). The word "victory" did not cross his TelePrompTer. He acquiesced to ¾ of what General McChrystal requested in terms of troop levels. But he pointedly didn't really elaborate on what new mission those troops would undertake.

The rules of engagement are key. If the troops are viewed by Obama and his advisors as glorified policemen, required to handle terrorists with kid gloves and read every detainee his Miranda rights in letter-perfect Pashtu, well then he's wasting everybody's time. War and counterinsurgency are messy. There is no time for the niceties favored by lawyers and REMFs. Our men shouldn't have to worry about who got a bloody nose.

There were nebulous references problems in "Pock-ee-stahn" and a desire that they get their act together vis-a-vis the Taliban. But again, nothing concrete about how they're supposed to do that. He rattled off 3 "goals", the first of which was to turn Afghanistan over to the natives as quickly as possible, but no later than mid-2011. That's 18 months from now. Some Taliban guys wait longer than 18 months to change their underwear. We'll be gone, and they'll still be hiding out, causing trouble.

The real surprise was there wasn't anything all that earth-shattering in his speech. He's been putting on this grave show of how heavily he's weighing his options and seeking input from all sides. It took 80+ days to decide he's going to go ¾ in? We toppled the Taliban 56 days after 9/11; how did it take longer to decide to perhaps half-heartedly finish the job?

General McChrystal specifically requested 40,000 more troops to fully implement a surge of force that he believes has a high probability of finishing off the Taliban. He's "Obama's guy", Obama should have listened to him. But with a smaller force success will be much harder to achieve. And if McChrystal fails he becomes a convenient scapegoat so he's really in a no-win situation. He got his troop increase (Obama will conveniently "forget" that he didn't send enough troops). If those troops don't get the job done in the allotted timeframe it'll be all that much easier to punt.

And in 18 months the pressure from Obama's left flank to cut and run will be impossible for him to resist. They're already pissed at him for not pulling out today. The generals in Pakistan know this, and they know the safe play is to bide their time with the Taliban until we're choppering off the roof of the American embassy. Then they can call the shots and become the dominant power in the region. A dominant power, I might add, that's cozy with al Qaeda and in possession of nuclear weapons.

Maybe that's why Barry didn't use the word "victory", because victory (for America) is not in the cards.

Posted at 21:31 by Chris Wysocki   [/obama_watch]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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