Obama Is Wrong On Afghanistan

I've long been skeptical of Obama's support for escalating the war in Afghanistan. What can we possibly achieve there that would be worth the cost? I just don't get it.

Last week, Obama gave a rationale for the war which seems to be, frankly, dumb.

Here's Juan Cole:

President Barack Obama may or may not be doing the right thing in Afghanistan, but the rationale he gave for it on Friday is almost certainly wrong. Obama has presented us with a 21st century version of the domino theory. The U.S. is not, contrary to what the president said, mainly fighting "al-Qaida" in Afghanistan. In blaming everything on al-Qaida, Obama broke with his pledge of straight talk to the public and fell back on Bush-style boogeymen and implausible conspiracy theories.

Obama realizes that after seven years, Afghanistan war fatigue has begun to set in with the American people. Some 51 percent of Americans now oppose the Afghanistan war, and 64 percent of Democrats do. The president is therefore escalating in the teeth of substantial domestic opposition, especially from his own party, as voters worry about spending billions more dollars abroad while the U.S. economy is in serious trouble.

He acknowledged that we deserve a "straightforward answer" as to why the U.S. and NATO are still fighting there. "So let me be clear," he said, "Al-Qaida and its allies -- the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks -- are in Pakistan and Afghanistan." But his characterization of what is going on now in Afghanistan, almost eight years after 9/11, was simply not true, and was, indeed, positively misleading. "And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban," he said, "or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged -- that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."

Obama described the same sort of domino effect that Washington elites used to ascribe to international communism. In the updated, al-Qaida version, the Taliban might take Kunar Province, and then all of Afghanistan, and might again host al-Qaida, and might then threaten the shores of the United States. He even managed to add an analog to Cambodia to the scenario, saying, "The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan," and warned, "Make no mistake: Al-Qaida and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within."

This latter-day domino theory of al-Qaida takeovers in South Asia is just as implausible as its earlier iteration in Southeast Asia (ask Thailand or the Philippines). Most of the allegations are not true or are vastly exaggerated. There are very few al-Qaida fighters based in Afghanistan proper. What is being called the "Taliban" is mostly not Taliban at all (in the sense of seminary graduates loyal to Mullah Omar). The groups being branded "Taliban" only have substantial influence in 8 to 10 percent of Afghanistan, and only 4 percent of Afghans say they support them. Some 58 percent of Afghans say that a return of the Taliban is the biggest threat to their country, but almost no one expects it to happen. Moreover, with regard to Pakistan, there is no danger of militants based in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) taking over that country or "killing" it.

The Kabul government is not on the verge of falling to the Taliban. The Afghan government has 80,000 troops, who benefit from close U.S. air support, and the total number of Taliban fighters in the Pashtun provinces is estimated at 10,000 to 15,000. Kabul is in danger of losing control of some villages in the provinces to dissident Pashtun warlords styled "Taliban," though it is not clear why the new Afghan army could not expel them if they did so. A smaller, poorly equipped Northern Alliance army defeated 60,000 Taliban with U.S. air support in 2001. And there is no prospect of "al-Qaida" reestablishing bases in Afghanistan from which it could attack the United States. If al-Qaida did come back to Afghanistan, it could simply be bombed and would be attacked by the new Afghan army.

I started supporting Obama in early 2007 because of his outspoken and correct speech against the war in Iraq. I do not understand his position on Afghanistan.

Americans who aren't directly touched by the wars seem to have almost forgotten them in the wake of the economic crisis, but this issue is too important to stay on the back burner. How many more lives and billions of dollars must we lose in Afghanistan before we admit that there's really no reason for us to be over there?

Obama, Bush, Pakistan, and Partisanship

Last year, Obama said that if he had actionable intelligence on high-value terrorist targets in Pakistan, he would take them out, without Musharraf's permission if necessary. At the time, I thought that was just common sense, although I also thought it might piss off some on the left. What I didn't expect was for the right to jump on that statement as a "gaffe" and as "evidence" of Obama's "lack of experience."

Today, as Oliver Willis points out, George Bush admitted to embracing that position:

President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.

Will the same people on the right criticize Bush for this as they did Obama? Or will they admit Obama was right? Most likely, they'll try to ignore the whole thing, or else try to find a detail -- any detail -- that separates the two men's statements and seize on that to explain why they are completely different.

As it happens, I was able to track down specifically what my conservative blog-friend Ezzie wrote about Obama's statement:

Barack Obama suggested (from what I understand) nuking Pakistan [followed by suggesting nuking just terrorists in Pakistan, followed by suggesting contemplating attacking Pakistan on our own, all within a minute or so].

Obviously, Obama never said anything about nuking anybody, and I challenged Ezzie on this in a comment (I wrote, "Source?") Ezzie appeared to admit he didn't have a good one ("a friend on Shabbos said...") but then went on to say, "Regardless, even the last statement is completely idiotic."

So I'm calling you out, Ezzie. :-) Are Bush and Obama right or are they "idiotic?"