Obama, Right and Wrong

This blog is dedicated to the proposition that it makes a significant difference for human kind to get it right. What "right" means is something of a moving target, but it finds it home where a morality inspired by the values of freedom, equality, justice and peace meet the human reality created by governments, corporations and civil societies here and around the world.

President Obama's address to the nation this evening struck many "right" chords for the future of American foreign policy and was presented in a way that will make sense to many Americans. The decision he is obligated to make as President about a strategy to end the war in Afghanistan is one that was mandated by the mistakes of the past under the control of a foreign policy which did not get American or global interests "right".

President Obama is right that the war in Iraq was wrong and diverted valuable resources and caused a huge loss of life that was both unnecessary and not serving of U.S. nor global interests for security and peace. In fact, it created a world less secure and less peaceful, empowered other forces that could destabilize the whole nuclear weapon reality of our world and unleashed a series of consequences both here and around the world that still are causing problems for humankind.

President Obama is right to stake out the beginnings of a foreign policy that stresses the use of all the resources of this nation and its partners in the world to combat that which threatens not only our security, but the security of health network of common efforts by the global community to improve life on the planet. He is right to switch our approach to foreign policy to "right makes might", not "might makes right" as was the case in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield days. He is right that the focus in Afghanistan/Pakistan should be on disarticulating Al Quaeda and not on nation building in Afghanistan and he is right to set a plan and timetable for exiting Afghanistan.

Obama is also right that Al Quaeda and their associates are not a threat to Pakistan. And the reason for this is that we were wrong to make war in Afghanistan as consequence of this to all who gave war a second threat, would be to push the terrorists into neighborhing states, the consequence of which is that they would eventually see that they had to extend the reach of their terror into that neighborhing state in order to build a buffer that would protect themselves, i.e. the one sure way to keep the Pakistani army out of Al Quaeda safe haven area is to make the other parts of the country unsafe and in need of Pakistani army protection.

Unfortunately, he is wrong on some important interpretation of history and analysis that may put his current efforts to resolve the war in Afghanistan in a way favorable to the fight to restrict the reach of terrorism in our world.

Let us begin with history and its interpretation. The war in Afghanistan was wrong. It was wrong despite the facts of the overwhelming support (not really for war but for all and every action needed to combat Al Quaeda) given both by the Congress as well as by NATO and UN. It was wrong because it misinterpreted the enemy. The enemy is not, as Bush tried to persuade us, the nations that give space to groups like Al Quaeda. The enemy that attacked us was Al Quaeda and, behind them, a huge well of discontent among a certain portion of the Muslim community around the world. We did not wait long enough or try hard enough or use every other weapon at our disposal to disarticulate Al Quaeda before supporting a war effort in Afghanistan. We gave the Taliban just a short time to response to our request for help and we did not put any prolonged pressure on them. We had the possibility of many military actions short of war to convince Taliban Afghanistan to help us root our and up the Al Quaeda network. For instance, as the Taliban had no Air Force and no Navy, we could have used these two resources from the Gulf and through flyovers to monitor and even attack key sites of Al Quaeda while we worked diplomatically to build a larger coalition of peaceful partners to convince Taliban/Afghanistan to help us with our goal of disarticulating Al Quaeda. Al Quaeda would have ened as a prisoner in Afghanistan, under constant air and navy attack without any ability to fight back. As it was, we tried to kill a fly with a sledge hammer and the fly got away to fight another day. The war was wrong as a strategy and as policy. You cannot defeat terrorism with war because war is a form of terror and spreads terror in reaction.

The arguement that some object to increasing troops because Afghanistan is like Vietnam is a paper tiger which can easily be destroyed, as President Obama did in his speech. But, the reason not to increase troops or use a "surge" in Afghanistan is not that it is Vietnam, but because it is Afghanistan: a nation that is not a nation, in the middle of a region that has no desire for it to be a nation of any strength with a geography that defies containment or destruction of any and all forces who have access to financing. The Taliban can close one enclave on Monday and open another on Tuesday as they recently have in the north and Al Quaeda has a million friens and more than a 1000 miles of sparsely populated, absolutely desolate and difficult terrain just on the Pakistan border with Afghanistan.

So, the overarching ideas of the Obama approach to foreign policy are good, helpful, to be applauded, but the strategy may not work in Afghanistan, because it is Afghanistan. It is our attack on the Taliban which has led to the tactical alliance between the Taliban and Al Quaeda, Al Quaeda being another weapon in the arsenal to fight the "allies". We should leave the Taliban to the Afghanis and just go after Al Quaeda which would force the Taliban to rethink their tactical alliance as one that might take away weapons instead of adding them to their aresenal. As clearly as President Obama has outlines his limited project in Afghanistan, the project is flawed because it is not narrow enough.

The President is right to say that whatever we do of efforts around the world, these efforts should not go beyond our responsibility, our means and our interests. Unforteunately it could be the case that the current strategy, to the extent that it depends upon the Afghans and Pakistanis taking their responsibility puts the end result of a "win" outside our means.

Seven years ago, President Bush declared the war in Afghanistan to be "mission accomplished". President Obabam, tonight, should have declared the war in Afghanistan "mission impossible" and announced a plan to withdraw, as soon as possible from the war in Afghanistan to concentrate our current level of forces or a smaller on a far less ambition and more central mission of disarticulating Al Quaeda. This goal can be accomplished no matter what future the Afghans decide for themselves.

Tsunami Recovery

I think it is a sure bet that the way history will record these recent times in our nation and in the world is to say that the eight years of Bush/Cheney was something like an economic, social, political and military tsunami that put our nation, and the rest of the world in a big whole. Now we are digging out. In Iraq, despite the critics who said that a strategy for pulling out would not work, it seems we hare abouthalf dug out of a war tht did not need to be fought, accomplished nothing in the war on terror and empowered Iran for regional hegemony. In the economy it looks like we are about half dug out with unemployment close to peaking, economic indicators on the rise and the banking industry about half healthy. In addressing the pressing social questions within the United States, we have seen some progress on questions related to inclusion of gays and lesbians and we will likely have a health care legislation that will go about half way in solving our health care problem. On immigration we are far away from a solution, not because there is no solution but because all the reasonable ones are opposed by large interests on the right. In terms of restoring the integrity of both our relations with other nations and our integrity on questions of human rights and international treaties we are about half the way bqck from the disastrous last eight years and, the Nobel committee conisdered this such a significant digging out accomplishement that it gave is Peace Prize to President Obama.

As is the case of the war in Iraq, none of this progress is irreversible and, if left to the right wing of the country, it would all be reversed and we could go back into the hole. And there is still much to be done to get back to where we were some years ago in the economy, in the social health of the nation, in relations with other countries, in respecting human rights treaties and agreements, in addressing global warming, etc.

The one place where the hole has gotten deeper is Afghanistan. This should not be a surprise. Despite widespread support even among some who normally oppose military action, the war against Afghanista was the biggest mistake of the Bush/Cheney era which is saying something since Iraq wasa huge mistake. Afghanistan was a mistake because it was the wrong strategy for addressing 9/11, because it failed in both its objectives: disarticulate Al Quaeda and establish a non-Taliban state in Afghanistan. A smart strategy would have been to concentrate on disarticulating Al Quaeda and provide both carrot and stick reasons for the Taliban to help us; surround the country with intelligence and surgically accurate ability to attack Al Quaeda sites; work with Pakistan to remove (ahead of time) the western part of Pakistan as the hideout and safe ground for Al Quaeda and work slowly and surely to destroy the Al Quaeda infrastructure and disarticulate by police action, the organization. As it is, both the Taliban and Al Quaeda have not only survived, but, in the area, enjoy greater strength now than at the close of the offical war. And, cooridnated intelligence with European partners and others has resulted in a greater capacity in the Western world to interupt and avoid terrorist activities on the home ground.

Digging out of Afghanistan is the most difficult task left by Bush/Cheney for the Obama administration. Afghanistan is even less of a nation than Iraq, cobbled together from disparate geographies and tribes and warlord areas that met the criteria of falling, geographically between Pakistan and Iran. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, has been systematically destroyed in all aspects of life by decades of war with Russia and between its own factions. It has not existing health or educational or public utilities system as did and does Iraq. It has not national culture at all, or national pride and it has no oil, its one economic generator being a product that lucrative but declared unwanted by the rest of the world.

There is only one thing to do in Afghanistan - leave, while maintaining a regional capacity/partnership in addressing the threat of Al Quaeda not only to our security but to the security of the region. how many years does it take to do this? How many troops for how long does it take to do this? What agreements and partnerships with NATO, UN, Pakistan, Russia and Iran do we need to do this? None of the answers seem apparant.

The clearest aspect of answering these questions is that sending 40,000 more troops with the hopes that it will work like the surge in Iraq is not a good idea. What is needed is an exit strategy for the war against the Taliban, a realistic plan for rebuilding the country's infrastructure and health and education systems, and a plan for working with others to continue to monitor and slowly disarticulate the Al Quaeda terror network.

It would appear that the Obama Administration is working exactly in this direction, but, President Obama and the American people should not be surprised that even the best laid plans of mice and men will go awry in Afghanistan. This may be the hole out of which one cannot dig.