Tethered Swimming

The latest issue of The New York Review of Books contains an article titled “The Afghanistan Impasse” by Ahmed Rashid.  It is predictably thorough, detailed and depressing and is the most comprehensive look at the wars currently tearing up both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  This of course includes the direct US engagement in the former and the active US encouragement of the latter.  The ostensible goal of these wars is the defeat of the “Taliban” on both sides of the border and the establishment of a vaguely democratic government in Afghanistan.  The real goal is the continued political marginalization of the Republican Party here in the United States.

As paranoid, goofy and disrespectful as that sounds, it’s true.  Barack Obama, and therefore the United States along with him, is committed to the continued existence of the government in Kabul.  He campaigned on it and in doing so gave himself political cover with the American public (and the doltish American media) that he could be trusted to – ahem – keep us safe.  That means that Karzai, or someone like him, has to remain the titular leader of Afghanistan.  His government must not cease to exist, for if it disappears it will mean that Obama “lost” Afghanistan to our “enemies”.

That’s a crude and wildly ill informed concept, but it’s the way politics works here in a United States of America that is still recovering from one of the most disastrous periods in its history.  The world rejoiced when he won because it made it seem like the insanity coming from Washington was over.  But he’s up for re-election in three short years and barring an economic collapse in 2012 the only thing that really threatens him is “national security” and “terrorism”.  If Obama is seen as having let al-Qaeda or the “Taliban” recover their strength, or if there’s another major terrorist attack against America, he becomes instantly vulnerable to charges that he simply isn’t tough enough, and those types of attacks are always dangerous for Democrats (see: Kerry, John; Dukakis, Michael; Mondale, Walter; and Carter, Jimmy).

Obviously we don’t know who the challenger will be in 2012, or what the main issues will be.  But we do know the date, and we do know that the challenger will come from a party that has traditionally been able to exploit Democratic foreign policy failures.  If the “Taliban” or something like them has kicked us out of Afghanistan Obama will have a major vulnerability that the Reds will be only too happy to attack.  Maybe it’ll be enough to sink him, maybe it won’t; but it’s hard to imagine a worse weakness.

It isn’t fair.  People in Helmand and the North-West Frontier Province shouldn’t have to die so that people in Iowa and Ohio can feel safe.  But the greater threat to the world isn’t a bunch of guys in caves, it’s the reestablishment of neoconservative control over American foreign policy.*  You’d be hard pressed to find any serious observer of world affairs, outside of right wing American think tanks that is, who believe that the 2001 attacks were worse than Bush the Younger’s reaction to them.  The Iraq War alone has caused the violent deaths of more than thirty times as many people as perished eight years ago in America.

As the recent health care protests have shown, it would be unwise to discount the ability of the right wingers to scare the living shit out of ordinary Americans on a given issue.  Then there’s the lead story in this morning’s New York Times, anonymously sourced from the White House and Pentagon, saying that Obama is unhappy with Afghanistan and may be considering . . . well, something.  It isn’t entirely clear what his other options are, but the political implications are obvious just in the tone of the article: he’s thinking about backing down.  The article was co-written by Elisabeth Bumiller, who isn’t much of a reporter but is a very good bellwether for the conventional stupidity inside the Beltway’s green rooms and salons.  The threat there is greater than the one along the Afghani-Pakistani border.

Whatever the progress, or lack thereof, in Afghanistan itself, Obama and his minions have already made the political calculation that they cannot end both wars at once.  Iraq is the bigger, stupider and costlier war, it ends first.  They campaigned on fighting the good fight, and now they’ve got to at least try it or they’ll look like the fickle Democrats of old.  That means that Afghanistan, and the American troops sent there, will have to endure a few years longer; and tragically sad stories like the one in Bob Herbert’s column yesterday will continue.

It sucks, it isn’t fair, and it will doubtless be small comfort to those who will be killed, injured or lose someone in the interim (American, Afghani and otherwise).  But that’s the reality of the world Bush the Younger left to us.

End Note: It was big news these last couple weeks when polls began showing that Americans are souring on the Afghan War.  And much as the hyperbole outraced the numbers there is an unmistakable trend there.  But Obama cannot be challenged on Afghanistan from the Left and the only challenge that will come from the Right is to fight more and harder.  The peace movement, sadly, has nowhere to go.

* And if you think any 2012 Republican wouldn’t have such a foreign policy, well then, I’ve got some land in Florida to sell you.  As late as last year the bulk of their foreign policy establishment still thought Iraq was a really keen war and worth continuing.