{"id":5547,"date":"2009-10-14T06:57:01","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T11:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5547"},"modified":"2009-10-14T06:58:48","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T11:58:48","slug":"time-for-decisiveness-on-afghanistan-the-atlantic-october-12-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5547","title":{"rendered":"Lead, Lead, Or Get Out Of The Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Kaplan, one of the best war correspondents working today and, as an “Atlantic” writer, hardly a tool of the GOP, on Obama’s Afghanistan policy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kaplan, the author of Imperial Grunts<\/em> (which sounded some of the first warnings about the impending failure in Afghanistan, back in the day when even John Kerry was a believer), says there’s not much good news on either side of the aisle:<\/p>\n

\n

When it comes to foreign policy, Republicans and Democrats are each suspect in their own way. Republicans used to be the party of competence in world affairs. They lost that aura during President George W. Bush’s first six years in office, when he mismanaged the wars both in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The Democrats, for their part, are often accused of being wobbly on national security, lacking both toughness and gumption. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s recent handling of the war in Afghanistan plays to those charges. Being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize will only intensify the perception that he is a weak war leader.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Kaplan’s not only entitled to his opinion about Bush, but given his background in the subject, the opinion deserves a serious listen.<\/p>\n

But while people might accuse the Bush administration of bobbling the high-level strategy, Obama’s greater-included sins seem to include a key tenet of basic leadership:<\/p>\n

It’s perfectly legitimate for Obama to review Afghanistan strategy and troop numbers. But by calling into question the very strategy that he put into place earlier in the year, when he called Afghanistan the “necessary war,” and promised to properly resource it, Obama is courting charges from the right that he is another ineffectual Jimmy Carter\u2014that other Nobel Peace Prize winner.<\/p>\n

But what Obama’s second-guessing of his own strategy in fact suggests is poor policy coordination at the White House. There’s more than a passing similarity between the White House’s hiccups on health care and its confusion on Afghanistan. In each case, the executive branch went forward on an issue without being fully staffed out, or in agreement on the specifics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Going “Charge!\u00a0 Er, no, wait, left face and march!” isn’t the kind of thing that inspires confidence.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, in this highly networked media age you only get to fire a general once. It’s not like the Civil War era, when Abraham Lincoln could quietly relieve one commander after another until he found Ulysses Grant. Last May, the Obama Administration fired Army Gen. David McKiernan, then the commander in Afghanistan, in a particularly humiliating manner. McKiernan wasn’t a failed general; he simply wasn’t the best man for the job. Yet he’ll forever be known as the first wartime commander to have been relieved of his duties since President Harry Truman fired Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Korea. The Administration chose Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal to take his place. It was during the selection process for the new general that a policy review would have made sense\u2014though only behind closed doors. And the time to roll out a new or adjusted strategy would have been when McChrystal’s selection was announced, so that he could become the face of the new policy.<\/p>\n

The Administration had many months, beginning the moment Obama was elected, to recalibrate Afghan strategy. Yet it’s now in the position of publicly questioning the fundamental wisdom of the general it has chosen. The position Obama’s now in is similar to that of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld some years back\u2014appearing not to be listening to his generals. If the president doesn’t agree with his field commander, that’s fine. Just don’t make a public spectacle of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obama still hasn’t learned that life isn’t all a Chicago city council meeting; you don’t get mulligans on the big calls:<\/p>\n

Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage. The Afghan people have survived three decades of war by hedging their bets. Now, watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, they are deciding, at the level of both the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban\u2014even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from Obama’s public agonizing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh – and remember all that hope and change Obama was going to bring to our public image abroad?<\/p>\n

Obama’s wobbliness also has a corrosive effect on the Indians and the Iranians. India desperately needs a relatively secular Afghan regime in place to bolster Hindu India’s geopolitical position against radical Islamdom, and while the country enjoyed an excellent relationship with bush, Obama’s dithering is making it nervous. And Iran, in observing Washington’s indecision, can only feel more secure in its creeping economic annexation of western Afghanistan. So, too, other allies far and wide\u2014from the Middle East to East Asia, and Israel to Japan\u2014will start to make decisions based on their understanding that Washington under Obama may not have their backs in a crisis. Again, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama only plays to such fears.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As with everything Kaplan writes, read the whole thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Kaplan, one of the best war correspondents working today and, as an “Atlantic” writer, hardly a tool of the GOP, on Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Kaplan, the author of Imperial Grunts (which sounded some of the first warnings about the impending failure in Afghanistan, back in the day when even John Kerry was a believer), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}