Should I Surge or Should I Go …
By: NCViking
The liberal Norwegians who awarded President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize have now weighed in on what he should do in Afghanistan. These and other international left-leaning elites have embraced America’s new inclusiveness and appeasement and are hoping to nudge the new President further into deflating American power and influence into general irrelevance (jokes be damned!)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the 48-year-old president’s creation of a “new climate in international politics” and his work on nuclear disarmament. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population,” the committee said.
President Obama has not accomplished anything on the world stage except for a lot of promises, rhetoric, speeches and missed opportunities. Large decisions about the war on terror, Iraq withdrawal and Afghanistan loom in the air. So then, how can an American President celebrated with the most “prestigious” recognition for peace send 40,000 more American troops into a war zone? Especially when said president seeks approval from and may lean farther left than the liberal Europeans who continually sit on their hands? I need to again quote my favorite columnist on this one (Charles Krauthammer) as he points out that even the French are scratching their heads at Obama’s actions (or inactions) …
“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.” — French President Nicolas Sarkozy. When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom.
The right thing for President Obama to do is to listen to General McChrystal and move forward with the “Comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” that he announced way back on March 27th. Instead, he is bowing to Biden-influenced political pressure to conduct a clean-hands war effort that can appease the far left, make political claims to action, and ultimately lose the war. But what the heck, if you can blame everything on President Bush, why not do what’s politically expedient now and pass the buck? To hell with the warnings from your own hand-picked general saying if you don’t follow his recommendations that failure is eminent. Better spend weeks upon weeks mulling over it. After all, there is quite a bit at stake here. The failure of Obama’s narcissistic mythical “world savior” image, to be specific. Protecting this seems almost more important to him and his ilk then doing what’s right, and the Nobel Peace Prize elites knew exactly how to feed his beast.
What’s it going to be, Mr. President?
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Maybe he got the Nobel prize for trying to bomb the moon? LOL. anyhow – i think we should give him a break and a chance to prove himself..
LOL Caitlin. Well said.
Viking, I sincerely doubt that Obama sought, expected, or is going to be swayed by the Nobel Prize. I expect that he will significantly downplay it.
I also sincerely doubt that Obama plans to lose Afghanistan. Throughout the campaign Obama has continuously stressed that he intends to increase troops in Afghanistan. He stated then, and I believe he feels now, that Iraq was a distraction.
I know you gents think Bush could do no wrong and that Iraq was the main action. He troop starved Afghanistan for 8 years (causing in my opinion needless American troop deaths). That error will soon be corrected by your east favorite President.
All I can hear now is The Clash. Now it’s in my head the rest of the day. Thanks Viking!
Well, I hope that the Appeaser, err, Commander-in-Chief does something soon…
We are waiting…
It took GW Bush 1 1/2 years to “find his way” to the surge in Iraq. He finally settled on James Baker to run a commission on Iraq. That was formed in early 2006. The surge speech was finally delivered on Sept 13, 2007. One and a half years while American soldiers died, by the thousands.
I attribute that 1 1/2 years to the strong influences of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the strong neo-conservative movement. Bush finally broke with their ranks afters safely winning a second term.
Those events bring me to the collective-conservative-amnesia. Bush waits 1.5 years and he is a war president. Obama moves to repair Afghanistan in 9 months and you just have derogatory terms for him.
Therein lies the conundrum in American politics: it’s ideology over actual facts.
It took around a month after the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation for Bush to announce in January of 2007 the plans for a surge. Obama is sitting on and waffling with a recommendation he asked for with no real decision in sight. These are the facts.
Continuing with the facts, Iraq commanders had asked for additional troops two years before the Iraq Study Group. Those are the facts.
You are somehow justifying Obama by Bush-bashing and comparing apples to oranges. Study report vs. Study report.
Somehow, when Bush studies a report for two-years it’s fine; when Obama listens to his war council for a few months it’s appeaser in charge.
How about setting a standard and measuring both presidents by it?
Pointing out the obvious fact of Bush’s inability to lead is not Bush-bashing. It is pointing out the obvious and painful lack of leadership. And you guys want us to trust the Republicans in 2010?
Always about Bush with you. To clarify again, Bush received the Iraq Study Group’s Report around one month before announcing his surge decision. Not 1 1/2 years or two years.
To reiterate the full history of the Iraq Study Group in its proper context, George Bush received reports that the Iraq war was going badly. He asked Jim Baker and others to go to Iraq in early 2006. In March 2006, the ISG began its formal work, taking between March and December to formalize its findings (or 9 months).
George Bush announced the surge 1 month after the study group’s formal report, but the group’s work was well known and the surge question has been openly discussed for at least 6 months prior to the report’s release.
Worse, the ISW was not George Bush’s idea. He was opposed to it. It was introduced into the budget in Oct 2005 by Republican Frank R. Wolf. The proposal for ISG had been discussed in the summer of 2005, after the hugely disastrous 2004-2006 years Iraq. In those years, 3,000 Americans lost their lives.
To say that Bush took one month after the ISG is to hugely mislead the history. Bush would have been a hero doing the surge in 2004 or 2005, not in January 2007.
These facts are well known. They are not aimed at bashing Bush.
I believe that fundamentally you gents want to play fair, to measure both presidents by the same yardstick, to evaluate what is right for America using the same criteria.
It took the ISG and the President 10 months to make the surge decision (10 painful, deadly months). You call that a hero. So far Obama has taken less time. The first request came in March or May, a decision likely by November.
Next time do a bit more research before you post.
One was a sitting administration with a strategy and plan in place that had to be uprooted against the advisers in the administration to do a 180, not easy to do. Once the report was formalized he took one month to announce the change. It is irrelevant what was “supposedly” well known. Even your hero Joe Biden (since Bush is somehow mine, Joe must be yours) fought it like hell as well as many others. Obama is in fresh, with a fresh look, fresh advisers and mostly bipartisan agreement with the formal recommendation report he got. He also has the luxury of looking at the Iraq example and seeing that it worked quite well. Really, nobody was certain back in the Bush days what would work best for counterinsurgency, it was a leap and it worked. You can’t even stomach to give Bush any credit for doing the 180, eating crow and making a change. Why, because everything this president did in the eyes of a partisan was wrong and horrible. It is apples to oranges pure and simple. If you want to compare, do it report to report – period. Otherwise, don’t. Bush has nothing to do with this. Judge Obama for his actions. Wait, that’s right you don’t do that when it comes to your hero Obama. Good grief.
Adding more troops, as in the surge, isn’t a 180. What is it a 180 from, stay the course and die? To say 180 is a huge and unsustainable stretch. The surge was adding 10% or so. It was, finally, giving in to a troop request that came in 2005.
Joe isn’t my hero. None of them are. But Bush was a disaster.
You and I can agree on one point: Bush acted after a 10 month study of what is the best course of action. You should at least give Obama the same courtesy.
Again, you are comparing apples to oranges regarding Bush. Both circumstances are different and yes adding troops and changing strategy from combativeness to local cooperation was a 180. The only thing that can be fairly compared is receiving that formal recommendation and how it is acted upon. I voiced my opinion on what Obama should do, pointed out influences to his decision, admonished him for waffling and concluded the article with the rhetorical question “What’s it going to be, Mr. President?” We will see.
It is hardly apples and oranges. Bush had a group study the situation in Iraq for 10 months. Apparently he couldn’t figure this out himself. During that time American soldiers died. Bush sat still (at his vacation house).
Obama has been evaluating options (I’m willing to say he is studying his options), for about 5-6 months. He has already increased troop levels in Afghanistan by 40,000 troops in 2009. You either missed it or are choosing to ignore it. In March, he announced 21,000 troops to Afghanistan. This week he announced 19,000 additional troops.
Yet to some of you he is an appeaser. Bush on his hands is the model conservatives put up for a war hero.
It is time we call it for what it is: Omaba has moved decisively in Afghanistan already.
Now we could discuss the problem the Afghan government has placed on America, but so long as the discussion is an Obama bash I don’t think you can be engaged in the details.
I cannot find any announcement for 19,000 more troops. From the AP 4 hours ago: Tuesday, the White House rejected reports that the president authorized 13,000 additional troops that were now arriving in Afghanistan. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the troops were part of a deployment ordered by the former Bush administration that had not made their way to the Afghan theater by the time Obama took over the presidency.
There could be some confusion as to who ordered what. Obama has consistently described his desired to strengthen Afghanistan.
From FoxNews
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/17/troops-headed-afganistan/
That’s good, but that was back in February. McChrystal’s recommendations are from August. Regardless, it doesn’t matter. There is an urgent recommendation on the table and we are waiting on Obama’s final decision for a course of action. I do hope he implements it.
Let’s use your last comment to jump off into what is the right thing to do. The mistake made in Vietnam is exactly where we are now in Afghanistan. So a reasonable question is why should we place young men and women in the service of something that may eventually be a mistake?
Where we are is that the US has been manipulated into defending a highly corrupt government. The currency is American troop lives.
It is true that McChrystal wants more troops, but that is exactly what Westmoreland wanted, and for the same reason – to take, hold, and pacify the countryside.
Now I am no pacifist. I think we want to think through what we need to do.
- So far the US has been unable to protect ordinary Afghans
- Collaborating with the US marks your family for death
- Afghan police and military is a corrupt
More troops in Iraq helped attack specific cities and disrupt AQI. The US has already removed the Taliban in Helmut province, only to lose it once US troops leave. As president I would ask what is different now.
I happen to believe that Obama will send more troops. I want him to do much more in removing corruption and asking Karzai to step down.
If we want to compare Afghanistan to Vietnam we need to understand its angles. I studied the war in college so I have a few. To summarize, it seemed the biggest failure (among many) in Vietnam was that it was a political war. Politicians orchestrated the fake incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify the troop explosion. Politicians conducted the war down to combat strategy. Politicians didn’t have the stomach to stop supply routes in neighboring countries. Politicians had no stomach to pressure China to stop resupplying the north endlessly and wouldn’t tolerate any ideas of shutting this down for fear of the war’s escalation. Commanders and military forces did the best they could, considering their hands were tied most of the time and they generally didn’t have a clear cut reason for being there or a strategy for victory. Advance, pull back, advance, pull back. The enemy was both conventional and a counter insurgency, fighting the North Vietnamese army and the Vietcong guerillas with mostly conventional forces. The enemy was grossly underestimated, even though history showed the French had a hell of a time pacifying the Vietnamese. They had an end goal – conquest. South Vietnamese troops were horribly trained and ill equipped to stop them without our help. The SV government was horribly corrupt. And of course, there was little support for the war effort at home because politicians could not explain it or justify it leading to a near civil war state side.
There are some similarities but also differences. Afghanistan is the country that gave safe-haven to an enemy that murdered thousands of innocent Americans on our soil, unprovoked. Al Qaeda and the Taliban worked hand in hand. It should be unacceptable to allow either faction to gain back control of the country. They should be eliminated. Support of the American people in this effort is very strong. AQ and Talibs are operating with general immunity in a neighboring country, we are repeating this mistake. Our politicians cannot stomach forcing this issue, though I do commend Obama for calling attention to it. If this area in Pakistan and the mountains of Afghanistan could be overrun by a massive surge of allied forces, AQ and Talibs are finished. But this is not going to happen because Pakistan is unstable and it also has the bomb. So Afghanistan must be secured. Luckily, we have one huge thing on our side, similar to Iraq – the enemy is brutal to innocents. Like in Iraq, natives will only tolerate this for so long before they turn on them. When they do, they need to know the Allied forces have their back. I am with you and believe it may be next to impossible to get a decent trained home-grown security force in place in the short term so we may need to be that security like we were for Japan, Italy, Germany and South Korea until the country comes out of the dark ages, which may take a long time. Any strategy must revolve around the country doing this as well as working mightily to lessen corruption in the government.
I agree with much of what you said, down to AQ and the Taliban can always melt away and cannot be defeated in the classic military sense. Push into Pakistan and they’ll move to another area, perhaps Kashmir.
One measure of our catastrophic failure so far in Afghanistan is that we can’t control the flow of money to the Taliban, the poppy seed growth, and election fraud. If I were Obama I would set benchmarks against all of these, and let Karzai know that we’ll be coming after him for the corruption.
Simply massive forces without purpose is much worse than all other alternatives.
One additional comment…
I happen to know a lot about Vietnam. Your description of the war is a point of view you received in college that does not match with reality. Some would say it is a revisionist history of the war.
The war was no more micromanaged by politicians than the Afghan war under either Bush or Obama. All wars, to one extent or the other, require civilian oversight – the President and the Secy of Defense. LBJ did not move pins around a map and order air strikes.
The typical way this is done is that the military brings options. These options are weighed for political risk. Questions about civilian casualties, historical (cultural) site damage, and so on are addressed together with long term risks and positions.
The Vietnam war had very strong support of the American people. Americans voters were by and large WWII veterans. They supported their President against the godless communists. In 1967, baby boomers were between 14 and 23. Only those that were 21 and older could vote.
That all began to change with the 1968 Tet offensive. It became clear at that point that the war could not be won. Democrats splintered on their support first. Those who favored the war voted for Nixon, those who didn’t voted for Humphrey. Nixon won.
The “unwinable war” dragged for another five years, until 1973. Support waned significantly, but the war had already been lost – on the battle field. No credible plan had been proposed or provided.
So I would say that Vietnam
- was not a political war by any measure;
- politicians did not conduct the war down to combat strategy. You will not find any credible discussion of that assertion;
- it is a bit conspiratorial to believe that “Politicians orchestrated the fake incident in the Gulf of Tonkin.” Rather, I would say that Gulf of Tonkin incident was used to pressure congress into passing a law authorizing escalation of the war (using domestic rewards as pressure);
- the assertion that “Politicians had no stomach to pressure China to stop resupplying the north endlessly” is incorrect. First, the USSR supplied Vietnam. Several incidents occurred where the US had to make sure not to bomb Haiphong harbor because of Soviet ships. Second, there is not way to stop China short of bombing its routes. The US did bomb the heavily protected routes along the NV/China border.
- it is reasonable to ask why we didn’t bomb “supply routes in neighboring countries.” The answer is the same as why Bush didn’t attack Pakistan to get the Taliban. Attacking Laos or Cambodia, as Nixon eventually did, resulted in instability. It would have led to a Communist take over of these countries.
- US intelligence relied on South Vietnam intelligence, which was entirely and thoroughly compromised by the North. The US never knew whom to trust and often revealed plans to the enemy.
- I agree that the enemy was grossly underestimated.
- I agree that SV government was horribly corrupt.
- I disagree that there was little support for the war effort at home.
- There is still no explanation for Vietnam. It was then the same explanation we get today: you can fight them in Vietnam or you can fight them in Hawaii. If you don’t buy that, then you would be right to question the motives for the war yourself.
- There was never going to turn into a civil war state side, ever.
- Westmoreland was grossly inept. You should read A Soldier Reports, by Westmoreland himself. He never speaks of politicians micromanaging his leadership.
- Westmoreland would disagree with there not being a strategy for victory. Westmoreland’s strategy was initially a war of attrition (same as ours in Afghanistan) and later a clear and hold strategy ((same as ours in Afghanistan).
- Our military may not have been as effective as it could have been. Our troop strength went from 16,000 to 535,000, including navy and air force support. All of it directly at the request of William Westmoreland.
- in 1982 Mike Wallace aired a show about how Westmoreland consistently lied about enemy troop strength. Westmoreland sued, but later dropped the suit rather than go forward with the trial.
My concern is with Afghan govt corruption. We should disrupt AQ and do nothing else.
A few points.
- Johnson and Nixon did indeed order air strikes.
- Politicians would not allow troops to cross borders into Laos and Cambodia
- The Gulf of Tonkin incident was always suspect then debunked by release of a declassified NSA report confirming malfeasance
- I’d call troops on college campuses as close to a civil war we’ve come to in modern times
- Westmoreland believed in straight conventional warfare, when a segment of the enemy engaged in guerilla tactics. Even after that, the war was not really lost on the battlefield. Americans won virtually every engagement with the enemy. The war was ultimately lost at home.
I don’t agree with your disrupt Al Qaeda and nothing else strategy when it comes to Afghanistan.
Student riots does not make a civil war. There was never any activity that in any way would lead to civil war. National Guard troops to quell student activity on a campus was just a show of force to relieve campus police – nothing more.
Westmoreland was much smarter than you give him credit for. He knew the enemy was not in straight formations and lines as they were in WWII.
It is very true that the US won every, or nearly every engagement with the enemy. It is very likely that the US will win every engagement with the Taliban. But “win” in this case is empty. For one, the enemy melts away, so “win” is all but inevitable.
The enemy moves to fight again. The win is hardly a point.
What do Kamdesh and Khe Sanh have in common? Both are battles where the enemy did not melt away; both were abandoned by the US after military attacks by the enemy. BTW, Kamdesh was near the Pakistani border.
Why do you disagree with my “disrupt Al Qaeda and nothing else strategy when it comes to Afghanistan?” How is Afghanistan different from Vietnam?
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