The Obama Surge a week later

Despite the Washington Post trying to equate the Obama Surge to the Bush Surge this morning, in ways that really matter, Obama is a far cry from Bush. Last week, Bush-sounding Obama announced an anemic introduction of 30,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan with a proviso that they’d begin withdrawing next year.

But yesterday, the Obama staff started backing away from the withdrawal (New York Times);

The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal.

In a flurry of coordinated television interviews, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top administration officials said that any troop pullout beginning in July 2011 would be slow and that the Americans would only then be starting to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces under Mr. Obama’s new plan.

The television appearances by the senior members of Mr. Obama’s war council seemed to be part of a focused and determined effort to ease concerns about the president’s emphasis on setting a date for reducing America’s presence in Afghanistan after more than eight years of war.

His exact words;

And as commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

What? One squad at a time?

This strategy, for want of a better word, sprang from McChrystal’s briefing in June as reported by Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades from a WaPo article last Saturday in which the National Security staff discovered what McChrystal envisioned as his mission;

His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a PowerPoint slide: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population.”

“Is that really what you think your mission is?” one of the participants asked.

I’d be more interested in what the Obama thought McChrystal’s mission is. Gabriel Malor writes;

What is this bullshit? “Oh, I told him to kill the Taliban, but I didn’t think he’d take it so literally.” What. The. Fuck.

What could it possibly have meant except “kill the Taliban.” I mean, with Obama, you never know, maybe he meant “hug the Taliban.” But he wouldn’t use the military for that, he’d go himself, right?

So, you really have to wonder what is going on here. They didn’t know that McChrystal actually thought he should be killing Taliban and after telling America from West Point that the surge would end in 14 months, they’re saying that ‘no, it won’t’ now.

Whether you liked George Bush or not, when he told you he was going to do something, he did it and his plan didn’t change with news reports and public opinion polls. That, coupled with the devotion of the troops to the mission, is what won in Iraq. How can the troops win when the mission and the perception of the mission changes every-damn-day?

The troops are even fighting against Obama’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eickenberry. In a phone conversation I had this morning, someone told me that the military officers in Afghanistan are calling my former platoon leader “Douchenberry” – I like that. We called him “Dingleberry” – so some things haven’t changed much in 34 years. But what does he expect when, as a politician, he undermines the military solution in public?

Our military wins when they’re given the equipment and political support for which they ask – when everyone understands the mission and the Administration stands fully behind them. I guess it’ll take a few years for that to happen, though. Say 2013.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Military issues