President
Barack Obama is currently facing the most two
important decisions of his young presidency.
On Wednesday, we will learn whether he has the
intestinal fortitude to fight for real change
in reforming the nation’s health care
system.
And
later this month, we will learn whether he will
commit more young men and women to a losing
battle in Afghanistan, which is rapidly becoming
President Obama’s briar patch. Meanwhile,
nothing has changed at home, where the armchair
warriors of the mainstream media are campaigning
for more troops and a greater commitment to
“winning.”
Sadly,
nothing has changed in Afghanistan, where Afghan
civilians are being killed in NATO bombing raids
that continue to demonstrate a cavalier attitude
toward protecting the innocent from U.S. fighter
planes. And yesterday we learned that U.S. soldiers
stormed through an Afghan hospital, searching
for wounded Taliban fighters and tying up hospital
staff and visitors.
We
were led to believe several months ago that
the change in U.S. commanders in Afghanistan
was due primarily to making sure our military
power more responsibly and to avoid “collateral
damage” in order to “win hearts
and minds.”
The
late Supreme Court justice Hugo Black believed
that “paramount among the responsibilities
of a free press was the duty to prevent any
part of the government from deceiving the people
and sending them off to distant lands to die
of foreign fevers and foreign shots and shells.”
Seven years ago, however, many elements of the
mainstream media helped build a consensus for
war against Iraq based on falsified intelligence
and devious claims about weapons of mass destruction
and Iraqi links to terrorism.
The
day after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s
calumnious speech to the United Nations making
the case for war, the editorial and oped writers
of the Washington Post seconded the motion and
called for immediate military action. Even the
most liberal Post writer, the late Mary McGrory,
wrote an oped titled “I’m Persuaded,”
which failed to analyze the dubious claims put
forth by Powell’s speechwriters at the
Central Intelligence Agency, led by CIA Director
George Tenet and deputy director John McLaughlin.
Once
again, the editorial and oped writers of the
Post are making the case for an expansion of
the war in Afghanistan. Armchair warriors such
as Richard Cohen and Anne Applebaum in Tuesday’s
Post as well as David Ignatius and Michael Gerson
in recent weeks have made their pitches for
war. Cohen, who is neither a student of national
security nor foreign policy and regularly beat
the war drums for Iraq, makes the simplest and
most simple-minded argument in an oped titled
“Eight Years Later and Still No Revenge.”
His
column used the word “revenge” six
times and provides no other reason for an expanded
military conflict that will cost great amounts
of blood and treasure with no real chance for
success. Applebaum simplisticly believes it
is up to Obama to “cajole and convince,
to produce plans and evidence, to show he has
gathered the best people and the most resources
possible—to campaign, in other words,
and campaign hard.” She presents no reasons
for any of this and has reduced the difficult
decisions of war vs. peace to ordinary politics
and politicking.
Gerson,
the former speechwriter for President George
W. Bush, simply believes that we have “no
choice but to try,” and Ignatius opts
for the so-called “middle way,”
which demands that we “bolster our friends
and bloody our enemies enough that, somewhere
down the road, we can cut a deal.” Gerson
and Ignatius provide platitudes and bromides
without addressing the essential question of
whether Afghanistan (impoverished, landlocked
Afghanistan) is a vital U.S. national interest
that demands more American lives.
They
provide no discussion of the impossible logistics
situation that we face; no discussion of the
impossibility of nation building where there
has never been a genuine “nation;”
no discussion of the Pakistan sanctuary and
Pakistan support for the Taliban. (Post editorial
writers would benefit greatly from reading the
excellent reporting of their own staff writer
in Southwest Asia, Rajiv Chandrasekaran before
offering their chauvinistic opinions.)
But
the Wall Street Journal, again like the run-up
to the Iraq War, takes first place in making
the case for an expanded war in Afghanistan.
Unlike the Post, the Wall Street Journal actually
turns to oped writers Michael O’Hanlon
and Bruce Riedel, who have wide experience in
the national security arena. Reidel, in fact,
chaired President Obama’s review of Afghan
and Pakistani policy.
They
base their case on six factors that make little
sense and, in some cases, are counter-factual:
the “Afghan people want success”
(what does that mean?); “Afghans are still
largely pro-American” (we are talking
about one of the most xenophobic countries in
the world); the “Afghan Army is reasonably
effective” (pure fiction); the “Afghan
police show some hope” (more fiction);
the “economy is better” (we are
talking about one of the most impoverished and
tribalized countries in the world); and the
“elections were not all bad” (numerous
villages turned out unanimous “votes”
for President Hamid Karzai in places where no
one actually voted). O’Hanlon and Reidel
conclude that “our strategy is not perfect
yet” but some quick fixes will find “results”
in 12-18 months.
Unfortunately,
President Obama has not “gathered the
best people” to deal with this problem
and certainly doesn’t have the “most
resources possible.” His national security
team has little experience in foreign policy
decision-making, let alone the difficult geopolitical
terrain of Southwest Asia.
His
leading policy adviser (General James Jones)
and his leading intelligence advisers (Admiral
Dennis Blair and Leon Panetta) were never known
for profound thinking on national security;
his secretary of state (Hillary Clinton) was
chosen for domestic political reasons and has
never demonstrated wisdom on tricky foreign
policy matters; and his secretary of defense
(Robert Gates) was also chosen for domestic
political reasons and has already waffled on
the question of more troops in Afghanistan (just
as he did on the so-called troop surge in Iraq
in the winter of 2006-2007).
The
weakness of this team is one of the reasons
why Obama has been slow to make serious policy
initiatives on Russia, Iran, North Korea, and
the Middle East peace process, which beg for
high-level U.S. intervention.
President
Bush invaded Iraq six years ago when there was
no connection whatsoever between that country
and American national, let alone vital, interests
and now President Obama is prepared to commit
greater forces and resources to Afghanistan
where there is no connection between that country
and American vital interests. Our only concern
should be making sure that al Qaeda or some
other international terrorist force does not
gain a safe haven in Afghanistan; it does not
require a large-scale troop presence to achieve
that mission.
Sea-based
air power and air bases in the Persian Gulf
could contain any government in Afghanistan,
even a Taliban one, and disrupt al Qaeda operations
and facilities there. It’s time to join
the contrarian voices in asking the president
not to draw the U.S. defense perimeter at the
Hindu Kush.
Melvin
A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for
International Policy and adjunct professor of
government at Johns Hopkins University, is The
Public Record’s National Security and
Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years with
the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S.
Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence:
The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
