The process by which President Obama decided on a new plan for pursuing the war in Afghanistan is complete. We are thus in a position not only to reach tentative conclusions about the plan, but also to evaluate the decision-making process and the speech in which the end product was announced.
All three — the deliberations, the speech, and the plan — seem seriously flawed.
We have known for a while that the administration’s Afghanistan deliberations were taking too long. Now we know why, and the explanation is not pretty.
First, it was a month until Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s commander in the Afghan theater and author of the plan being considered by the administration, was brought into the discussions. McChrystal presented his plan in August and the White House began its deliberations during the second week of September. Yet, McChrystal was not consulted until Oct. 8.
Second, when the White House war planners finally talked to McChrystal, they discovered he was not on the same page as the administration. McChrystal said his plan was designed to “defeat the Taliban and secure the population.” But key members of the White House team insisted that the mission should be to “degrade,” not defeat the Taliban.
McChrystal responded that defeating the Taliban was the mission he had been given in March. Obama agreed, but decided that the mission should be redefined, and the general’s plan adjusted accordingly.
In short, the decision on a plan of action was delayed because the White House waited a month before bringing McChrystal into the loop and, when the general finally was consulted, the White House decided it did not like the mission it had given him.
There’s a word for this — incompetence.
A different word describes Obama’s speech announcing his plan — defensiveness. That’s an unusual word to describe a renewed call to arms, but Obama clearly felt he had much to be defensive about.
For one thing, he felt defensive about the delay. The president stated, correctly, that it was worthwhile to take the time needed to evaluate the situation in Afghanistan before making a final decision. But the evaluation would have taken much less time if Obama had communicated his true concept of the mission to McChrystal in the first instance.
Obama also argued that the three months of deliberations will not delay the surge because he has expedited the deployment of new troops. But the deployment could have been speeded up without the three-month delay. If it had been, the surge presumably would have commenced sooner than it actually will.
Mostly, though, Obama was defensive about the decision he reached. He felt compelled, for example, to explain why Afghanistan is not like Vietnam. That’s nice to know, but not exactly inspiring.
Obama’s defensiveness might have stemmed from the fact that his leftist base wants him to give up in Afghanistan. Or perhaps it stemmed from the president’s own ambivalence, which is reflected in his decision to establish a date, July 2011, by which the United States will begin withdrawing troops.
Obama’s defensiveness might have stemmed from the fact that his leftist base wants him to give up in Afghanistan. Or perhaps it stemmed from the president’s own ambivalence, which is reflected in his decision to establish a date, July 2011, by which the United States will begin withdrawing troops.
Obama defended the imposition of his timetable primarily on the grounds that, given our economic predicament at home, we cannot commit to a more sustained effort in Afghanistan. In short, he officially pronounced America war-weary.
This declaration may or may not reassure Obama’s leftist base. But there is no doubt that it will reassure the Taliban, along with America’s other enemies throughout the world. There’s a word for committing additional American troops to battle while simultaneously signaling to the enemy a lack of resolve to win — irresponsibility.
This leads us to the most important component of the Afghanistan evaluation process, Obama’s plan. That plan seems consistent with the administration’s modified mission of “degrading” rather than defeating the Taliban. For instance, we will deploy only about three-fourths the number of troops McChrystal asked for, leaving a gap of about 10,000 troops.
But the bigger concern by far is the July 2011 target date for beginning our withdrawal. The problem with setting such a date is obvious — it signals to both friend and foe that we are in the fight only for the short term.
How does the United States expect to secure the support it needs from key tribal leaders and a critical mass of ordinary Afghans when they have been told we will start pulling out only about a year after we have ramped up? Why would Afghans stick their necks out for a side that may abandon them in two or three years?
How, for that matter, does the United States expect to break the will of the Taliban when it knows the American mission is not to defeat it, and that we don’t intend to stick around long enough to do so in any event? Obama didn’t say.
In his speech, Obama correctly emphasized the importance of Pakistan in the fight to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, the Pakistanis are no more likely than the Afghans to be impressed by the short-term commitment Obama has made to the fight.
Some members of the administration have attempted to downplay the significance of the July 2011 date. They say it is not a hard-and-fast deadline, that the scope of any withdrawal may be small at first, and that (as Obama himself said) conditions on the ground will be taken into account.
These qualifications are better than an ironclad commitment to withdraw. But they still leave uncertainty about the strength of our commitment. This is not what our potential supporters on the ground in Afghanistan are looking for.
It is possible that Obama’s plan will succeed nonetheless. But the president has not used his three months of deliberations and his address to the nation to maximize the likelihood of success. Instead he has planted the seed of failure.
Sunday Reflection contributor Paul Mirengoff is a lawyer in Washington, and a principal author of Powerlineblog.com.
