I watched all of Obama’s speech and listened to a welter of comment afterwards.

Some experienced regulars faulted him for not saying how he would fight the Taliban with the new forces–as if it would be a good idea to tell the enemy what to expect.

Another, a well know neocon, moaned about “our” moral responsibility to Afghan women. (He didn’t moan when Bush turned his back to invade Iraq.)

Perhaps the most telling comments, which half a dozen “experts” came to agree on, was that Obama had picked the least worst thing to do. And Bryan, no approach looks attractive, to Obama or to any thoughtful person.

The covert CIA war in Pakistan was little referenced in the speech–why should it be? Should the understandable sensibilities of Pakistanis be face-slapped, Bush-style before an international audience?

Something not mentioned, and which I think is central to Obama’s conundrum, is the Pentagon.

There is a good case for firing McChrystal, top commander in Afghanistan. He is part of a cabal that includes Odierno in Iraq and Petreus, CinC Central command. McChrystal takes much of his advice from an ur-neocon. (The flavour of the neocon’s is horribly exposed in a Tom Friedman article today (NYT). He said he supported the war in Iraq, not because of WMD but “to see if we” could give Iraq a system no other country in the region has. Go to war “to see if…?”) McChrystal and his ilk have a “mission”–to remake the region, or to make their own reputations and fortunes in trying to do so.

McChrystal has already been summoned to Airforce One to explain himself and to get his knuckles rapped for leaking his memo to the president. But Obama can’t fire him. There would be a revolt in the officer corps. During the Bush years, the officer corps was highly politicized. I recall one general, seen on C-SPAN, telling a gathering of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing “think tank,” that America was now engaged in full-time war, and that this would be so way into the future. Generals were allowed to say more than most cabinet secretaries say in America. And of course, the Pentagon budget is bigger than the combined military budgets of the rest of the world. (In part, their spending ensures cushy jobs for them as “advisors” when the leave the service.)

My preference before the speech and now, is full withdrawal. But I see Obama’s position. He’s like a relief pitcher who comes to the mound with the bases loaded, but not in just one game. He’s pitching at least three games simultaneously. And he’s also playing simultaneous chess on three boards.

Some urge him to do less. But that’s the advice of the threatened, for it’s all one big ball of worms. Economy, jobs, healthcare, military healthcare, supplies, personnel, and deficits stretching beyond the horizon.

Obama expressed the hope that he could get past the divisions in American society. But the tower of Babel isn’t just a biblical story. It’s a modern reality, in Ireland and America. And while we all seem to speak the same language, we hear different things. And these blurred meanings are exploited be the real power-holders, the big money people, who can demonise science, destroy reputations, and assassinate presidents if necessary.

I think Orwell would have smirked if he heard that the US was having a war on war, Obama has lost credibility. So Afghanistan will be a vital national interest for the next 18 months but not after that, give me a break. Its Vietnam all over again where more then 4 million died for reasons that are meaningless now and didn’t make sense then. Maybe its part of the stimulus package but on the downside think of all the CO2 that will be released. I am actually surprised that he is out-Bushing Bush on defence issues.

Bryan,

Of course the US needs to help with infrastructure and food and drugs. No argument there. But it is naive in the extreme to assume to Taliban will just go away if the US is nice. They are Muslim extremists who despise western values and whose sole goal is to destroy ‘infidels’ and impose a theocracy in Afghanistan.

Military might is needed. They have to be defeated, pure and simple. Don’t try and suggest their cause is only to do with American ‘imperialism’ – why then are they blowing up Pakistanis and Iraqis as well? Don’t forget as well, that the US is there at the invitation of the elected government of Afghanistan. At least in principle, this is a just war.

Of course innocent people will be killed, but what is the alternative? Allow the Taliban take the country and impose their madness and terror there? Or worse, what if they take the region? Neighboring Pakistan has nuclear weapons, remember. Do you think if they fell into Islamo-facist hands, the world would be a safer place?

The world appeased HItler and look where that got us. Unfortunately, war is sometimes a necessary evil.

Way things are setup Bryan there’s a lot more money to be made in tanks and armed helicopters than food, drugs, relief infrastructural development and so forth. That’s the bottom line. Eisenhower warned us about it, in 1945. Called it the Military-Industrial Complex. Aka the Iron Triangle and what I call the Rough Beast, or Its physical architecture, to reference Nietzhe (himself referenced in Faulks: “Charlotte Gray” ) – Abstract Evil cannot choose the Form in which it emerges into the PaRtiCular. Eisenhower was too polite. He left out the third leg, the Congressional one, didn’t want to offend his colleagues apparently. Even a guy like him who’d faced the Third Reich could quail from the truth when he faced the New Rough Beast the Third Reich had midwifed into the world and Allied brutalising of a fallen (or apparently fallen) enemy and a hateful ideology the sperm and egg of It. This is what drives the world today. Food and drugs and blankets and relief aid and infrastructural developmen (e.g. Halliburton, Kellog Brown & Root )are an industrial facet. By comparison to what we make that necessitates them in the aftermath they’re a lot less impactful to the bottom line of the countries who we stand together with in the West. What we make that makes food drugs infratstructural developmen necessary in the mopping up stages, is where the real money is. None of this will change until the whole paradigm falls down. I don’t think it ever will. First ever issue of the Irish Times talked about the terrorism and brutality stalking Europe and it was talking about the Second French Republic! I think. Guess meanwhile well-minded people, which is a lot of the human race, can continue to coalesce into structures, groups, and oppose the Rough Beast. But we also eat our bread in the sweat of our faces from working so close to Its heart. We countenance the most appalling things done in our name because there’s now so hard as to make a wo/man see that which their salary depends on their not seeing. I know. Miniscule cog in the RB myself. Anyone who works for US multinationals is, by necessity. Even if they’re in the food and blankets and infrastructural development biz. Ironic. One thinks the defence of automatism might be allowed but we’re still thinking “Befehl ist befehl”.

Kynos,

How would you have stopped the genocide which occurred in Rwanda, Bosina, Kosovo, Iraq, and elsewhere? If not by Military force, then how? I’m asking a tough question, because sanctions have proven to fail in all these cases. So, if we use your analogy, we should turn a blind eye and care less for those who can no longer prtoect themselves. This is a standard European mindset, not an Americans. Dislike us, curse us, but need I remind you, the graves of 176000 Americans lie on European soil defending the failures of past European leaders. As I mention to Bryan, Kynos, please visit, and stay for a period, in Afganistan and ask them how life was under the Taliban. Better yet, live under such a regime and tell us first hand how wonderful life really is. Better yet, continue to provide input on this blog while Americans and their few allies fight for others rights and freedoms. I did, and have no regrets except that I retired and no longer can serve.

Addendum 2:

“The only way the ‘war on terror’ ends is if the accusations made against the US are disproved beyond a shadow of a doubt. ”

There you go again, Bryan, assuming that all peoples are rational in the same framework as your rationality. You may as well say the NI rift will end only when Orangemen realize the pope was on the same side as KIng Billy in the League against Louis XIV, and that Masses of thanksgiving were said in Europe when Billy beat Jimmy at the Boyne.

Tribal myths persist and prevail.

And so you ask the wrong question: What is America to do? Which America do yu mean? No! The question was, what is Obama to do? And he has done it. And given all the options, according to the most respected commentators, he picked the least worst of them.

Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon correspondent criticized Obama for not telling her, us (and by extension, the Taliban), how he was going to change tactics. That’s the best/worst she could find to say.

Dexter Filkins, NYT journalist, so fresh back from Afghanistan he was in danger of falling asleep while listening the the chatter of the other critics, is acknowledged as the best there is in the Afghanistan reporting field. He said, to general agreement among 6 chatterers, that the status quo is not viable. He said that Afghanistan is still a potential base from which Al Q would launch attacks on America. Whilel Al Q is now widely scattered, in Africa, for example, their other locations are unlikely bases for unfettered training and planning. Afghanistan, with the bolt-hole of Pakistan, is such a base. As it was before, and will be again if Obama and McChrystal don’t find the key to more widespread unity in Afghanistan. And sweet-talk and dried milk won’t defeat religious nuts. In AfPak or NI.

The Bush jr. Afghanistan crusade was doomed to fail from day one. No country has ever changed Afghanistan. The world whould better off as a group to buy up all of Afghanistan dope and destroy it than have troops in Afghanistan. What are the troops dying for? The problem is in the country next door.

David,

I don’t agree with you at all.

Al Qaeda agents destroyed the WTC, and their management was based in Afghanistan and North Pakistan. GW Bush’s white house used the WTC attack as an excuse to invade Iraq. Now that Obama is trying to wind that down, and pull out of Iraq it’s STILL NOT ENOUGH. The safe havens in Pakistan (an utterly worthless “ally”) are being attacked. Pakistan is at least struggling with the duplicity of its ISI. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step away from where we’ve been.

What do you think is supposed to happen now? Real world only examples please. Utopia doesn’t exist. Solutions are complicated. Obama hasn’t even been in the white house for a year and there’s the chorus of complaints from the ever whingeing Left, the forever nabobs, that he’s not doing enough. Theyr’e as bad as the right-wing conspiracy theorist crowd who think he was born in Kenya.

Meanwhile he’s winding down America’s involvement in Iraq, which everyone knew was a scam and a sideshow, and he’s putting troops into Afghanistan where they should have been all along. And it’s still not enough.

Bush should never have been president, but he was. It’s been an insane eight years, but they’re over.

Here’s my question for you: What do you think should have been accomplished by Obama since the elections? Be specific please.

David,

I apologise if I was unclear, so I’ll go into some details.
At the most basic level, it’s the sheer negativity of your post that I disagree with.
The US was absolutely sidetracked in Iraq, since Iraq had nothing to do with 911, and everybody with half a brain knew that. It isn’t “cleverly sidestepping” anything to say that, despite the list of injustices meted out to Iraqis in the process. So I disagree with that too.

Obama won’t pull out of Afghanistan because very little has been accomplished there. The training of the national police and army continues at a snails pace, and if the US and other NATO members pulled out, you’d have a replay of when the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan and Najibullah ended up castrated and hanging from a lamppost in Kabul.

So your assertion that Obama is “simply appeasing the hawks by escalating military operations” is another thing that I disagree with. I think the situation is more complicated than that, and I think (I hope) the situation can be improved upon.

Now – I’ll ask again – what do YOU think Obama should have accomplished by now? Or do you feel the situation is hopeless, and Afghanistan and Afghans are screwed no matter what? Do you have any alternatives to suggest that might be better than the current scenario? I’m not being sarcastic by asking that. I’m honestly curious.

Perhaps that question should be better posed to Bryan, to be honest.

But I put it to you. And you haven’t answered. So in other words, while criticizing the current course of action you have no constructive suggestion of your own to make, even in a safe environment like an anonymous blog posting? Come on. That’s the easy way out. If you want to ask the Afghan people, you’d get a variety of different answers, whether the question is phrased in Kabul or Helmand or whatever warlord they’re in serfdom to. I’m not sure they even view themselves as a single unified people, or a coherent national unit. Afghanistan was created. It’s been interfered with by America, Russia, Pakistan… Talking about M16s and cluster bombs and body counts is a cheap shot. Obama stepped into a huge pile of crap when he won the election. He inherited a pseudo-war on two fronts, one of which should never have been opened. He’s trying to back out of one, and manage the one that’s at least vaguely justifiable. I don’t think he’s doing too badly, given the hand he was dealt. And if you think he’s doing a lousy job, then what do you think he should do instead? That’s all I’m saying.

It’s ok David, you’re not high on the list of people I need to be taken seriously by. I really just felt I was seeing IMHO some fairly formulaic criticism without a suggestion of an alternative, no matter how theoretical. In the course of my job I often have to deal with people who like to blow other people’s efforts out of the water, then sit there with their arms folded when it comes to figuring out solutions to things. So I like to press a bit for details, and I’m capable of being pressed in return.

So do you feel that the US & NATO should withdraw from Afghanistan if the Afghan people should wish it? I think that’s a pretty good idea. The only problems I can see with it is who you ask that question of and how you ask it, since Karzai is who we’re dealing with, and his last election result was “dodgy” to say the least. And also he doesn’t have a lot of credibility outside of Kabul. If you went around the country and conducted a survey, I’m sure you’d get some people who want the foreign presence out, and there are some who would want it to stay. That would depend on whether they’re on the receiving end of Western money and security, or a bombing run that leveled their house and killed their kids. Not to mention tribal affiliations and subservience to the local warlord, which are bonds that are more real to them than Karzai sitting in Kabul. And then if the US and NATO pulled out, would they be any better off with the Taleban coming back, as funded and backed by Pakistan? It might end up being 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, really… It’s a tough one. There are no absolutes, except perhaps that the Afghans should have the choice.

I fail to see how absurd and insulting it is for me to write that. Ah well.

Personally, I’d like to see the US and NATO respect the result of as free and fair an election as is capable of being held. I think that would go a long way toward solidifying Afghanistan, since it might remove the perception of the election winner as a foreign imposed ruler. I think things should go forward from there, with a troop pullout at the end.

I’m curious – what do you mean when you say that Iraq is the key to any discussion on Afghanistan?

Hey DHF5811 I’m sorry not replied before now I don’t know what I’d do in Kosovo or Rwanda, Bosnia Iraq or elsewhere but the first thing I wouldn’t do is break international law. Which was what America did first in Bosnia then in Iraq and look at the mess we find ourselves in. The worst warcrime is the war of aggression containing as it does within itself the whole of the evil of all other warcrimes. What would I do if I were America now? Look to make peace with them all. Whatever it takes. Whatever it took I mean. Thanks for your service DHF5811 btw I’ve a few in my family served also in various uniforms in various tight spots. We all appreciate it because it’s why we’re breathing something resembling free air these days still. The air of Ireland still ain’t so free that no man can breathe it and remain a slave. Shannon Airport and the US kidnap-and-torture flights continue their profitable association I’ve no doubt. Bit of a blot on the old eschutcheon I would suggest. For both of us.