Obama choice in Afghan war 'to define presidency'

THE US war in Afghanistan begins its ninth year today and is almost certain to break the 10-year record of Vietnam as America’s longest foreign conflict.

As US casualties mount, President Barack Obama is grappling with a difficult decision: whether to commit tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

The choice is, US defence secretary Robert Gates said this week, “among the most important of his presidency”.

Obama is caught between proponents of opposing “counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” strategies.

These arguments were thrashed out yesterday afternoon when the president received a bipartisan group of 31 Congressional leaders in the White House. They will be repeated again today and on Friday, when Obama meets security advisers again.

Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, is supported by much of the military’s top brass, secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the special envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke and Republican lawmakers. They want to send up to 40,000 fresh US troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the 68,000 already there.

This counter-insurgency strategy aims to protect Afghan civilians and beat the Taliban on the ground.

It was in essence Obama’s strategy last March, when he declared: “I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al- Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”

Obama showed his support for the counter-insurgency strategy by committing 21,000 more troops earlier this year and by appointing Gen McChrystal in May.

In the meantime, though, public opinion has soured. On Monday,Gates said he agreed with Gen McChrystal’s assessment that “the situation is serious and deteriorating . . . The reality is that because of our inability . . . to put enough troops into Afghanistan, the Taliban do have the momentum right now.”

The level of violence in Afghanistan has risen 60 per cent in the past year and 852 American soldiers have lost their lives there. Eight Americans were killed in a day-long battle last Saturday in a remote village near the Pakistani border. The US seeks to “win hearts and minds,” in Afghanistan, but the local population supported the insurgents in that battle.

The counter-terrorism contingent is led by the vice-president, Joe Biden. They oppose pouring more troops into “the graveyard of empires” and instead advocate increasing drone attacks on suspected Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, supporting the Pakistani government in its war on the Taliban and stepping up the training of Afghan troops.

However analysts such as Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and author Peter Bergen point out that counter-terrorism was in essence the failed “light footprint” policy of the Bush administration in Afghanistan.

Gates, who has hewed to the middle in the Afghan debate, will have a strong influence on Obama. History, too will affect the president’s decision. He doesn’t want the war in Afghanistan to drain time, energy and resources from his embattled programme of domestic reforms.

As EJ Dionne of the Washington Post points out, Franklin D Roosevelt was diverted from the New Deal by the second World War. Harry Truman abandoned his Fair Deal to fight the Korean War and Lyndon B Johnson’s Great Society ended with Vietnam.

Obama reportedly has Gordon Goldstein's book, Lessons in Disaster, which recounts how the Johnson administration was sucked ever deeper into Vietnam, on his bedside table.

Two weeks ago, Gen McChrystal’s 66-page confidential report to the president was leaked to journalist Bob Woodward.

Last week, in a talk in London, Gen McChrystal warned of “Chaos-istan” if he didn’t get his troop reinforcements and said “a strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a shortsighted strategy”.

Gates and the national security adviser, retired Gen Jim Jones, publicly rebuked Gen McChrystal. “Ideally, it’s better for military advice to come up through the chain of command,” Gen Jones said.

“In this process, it is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations . . . provide our best advice to the president candidly but privately,” Gates said.

Despite the intensity of the debate on US strategy in Afghanistan, there is no question of pulling out completely. “I don’t think we have the option to leave, that’s quite clear,” the president’s press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

The deeply flawed presidential election of August 20th would seem to work against a troop increase. US diplomat Peter Galbraith resigned from his post as the second-ranking UN representative in Kabul, accusing his Norwegian boss of ignoring massive electoral fraud.

"This fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest victory in eight years," Galbraith wrote in the Washington Post. "President Obama needs a legitimate Afghan partner to make any new strategy for the country work."