There is an almost papal quality to watching the anticipation of Barack Obama’s decision on a new Afghan strategy. The leaks and rumors are flying fast and heavy, but in the meantime there’s no deadline on his decision (Red charges of “dithering” fell flat) so all the chattering classes and the byline brigade can do is watch the White House for the white smoke that will mean we have a new Afghan strategy.
What I haven’t seen pointed out anywhere is that the only decision he could make that would actually qualify as Big News is one of the few he is explicitly not considering: a withdrawal of most or all of American troops from Afghanistan. Whether he sends 40,000 more troops or just three extra guys named Ted the Western effort in Afghanistan is going to continue. There is a very strong case to be made that setting a deadline on American involvement and beginning the process of winding down the war is the right thing to do, in both military and humanitarian terms. But those arguments have no place to be heard because the most compelling reason for continuing the war is, and remains, domestic American politics.
I’ve said that before, now comes word that I’m not the only one that thinks so. This is from a short piece by Garry Wills in the current New York Review of Books:
I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate.
These are the arguments that have kept us in losing efforts before. They are the ones that made presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon pass on to their successors in the presidency the draining and self-lacerating Vietnam War. They are the arguments that made President George W. Bush pass on two wars to his successor.
Indeed. But Wills confines himself to speculation about Barack Obama as a one term president. What he doesn’t address (like I said, it’s a short piece) is what effect that would have on the (presumably) Republican 2012 victor. If the Reds won back the White House on the strength of charges about Blue weakness on “terrorism” and other “national security” type questions they would be almost compelled to send the American military gallivanting around the globe in search of those ever elusive Bad Guys. In other words, a withdrawal from Afghanistan that was so politically costly to Barack Obama as to make him a one term president could very result in more war, not less.
It is nauseating conclusion, that American troops must die on the far side of the world so that foolish Americans at home can be kept away from the levers of power. But it is inescapable. A Red victory in 2012 would be seen, by the victories party and by much of our hackneyed media, as a vindication of the theory of perpetual war, of making America safe by forever fighting abroad. The damage they could wreak with that righteous sense of fresh vindication and political justification is almost beyond imagining.
None of that will come as any comfort to those whose lives will yet be lost or shattered as Obama plods ahead in Afghanistan. That goes for Americans, Afghanis and other alike. But those future casualties, however certain they may be, shrink to insignificance when placed next to the corpse pile amassed by Bush the Younger. That man did tremendous damage to this country, its people, and its politics and there isn’t enough political genius in the world to mend it in a mere four years.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with history can tell you that not everyone who dies for their country dies gloriously for their country. Sometimes they die in pointless avalanches of shit, or in ill conceived gambits by incompetent superiors, or simply by vicissitudes of chance. The history of war is the story of the young dying for the mistakes of their elders. The walking dead of Afghanistan, those who will die (or be shredded) between now and the exhaustion of the conflict, are just the next in that tragic line.
At this point, when America and the world are already waist deep in blood, gore, severed eyeballs and destroyed lives, it’s better to wade through to the certain shore than grasp for an early exist and risk falling head first into the mire. Make no mistake, that is the danger of a one-term Barack Obama. It can be couched in the polite terms of The New York Review of Books, but everything we know about Obama’s likely opposition in 2012 means more war, more waste and more death, especially if one of the main points of contention is that Obama “lost” Afghanistan. One sounds closed-mindedly partisan when saying that, but it doesn’t alter the facts or the stated attitudes of the opposition.
Obama’s only political vulnerability on Afghanistan comes from looking weak. Those of us up in the gallery can only hope that he’s savvy enough to keep himself in office without getting in too deep. Passing zero wars onto his successor isn’t enough; he has to do it in a way that keeps the number at zero after he’s out of office.
