He gives good speech. We knew that already, but there’s really no doubt about it. In a little more than a half an hour he can remind us why Afghanistan isn’t Iraq, make his commitment of additional troops seem like the only rational course of action, and throw a (potentially significant) bone to those of us who see little to no future in America’s Afghan adventure.
Setting aside the pretty rhetoric and measured delivery there were really only two important things in that speech. The first is immediate and leaked so long ago that it almost doesn’t qualify as news: the addition of more American troops. (In the speech itself Barack Obama was at pains to also emphasize the renewed focuses on the civilian side of things and working with Pakistan, but those will inevitably be drowned out, in more ways than one, by the troops.) The second is father off, but if Obama sticks to his rhetoric it has the potential to have the greater long term impact: the frank acknowledgement that at some point soon American involvement in Afghanistan must begin to end, and not at some hazy future date many years off, but in a measureable time that we can see clearly from the present.
He mentioned July of 2011 as the time at which American troop levels would begin to wane. That is a mere twenty months from now. (Twenty months ago he had not even secured the Democratic nomination.) The freshmen amongst those stone faced cadets will be preparing to start their junior years at that point. Of course the manner in which he mentioned the date was as tenuous as possible. It is not the kind of written deadline we have with Iraq, nor is it a date by which the war itself would end. Saying that in twenty months we’ll begin to end things is rather like an alcoholic saying that in a year and a half’s time he’ll begin cutting back. There have been too many false dawns and broken promises already for so intangible a statement to be automatically given much credence.
But those previous falsehoods were not Obama’s, and while he cannot escape them entirely he also shouldn’t be expected to bear them fully. Besides, we already know what will be said between now and then. Over and over again, from now until that gossamer deadline twenty months from now, the fools who believe in war without end will say “How can you think of ending it now, right when things are going so great/terrible?” (It doesn’t matter to them.) The rest of us will be saying “What’s done is done, now can we please get the hell out of here?” The only question is the proportion of voices on one side versus the other. If the preponderance is the latter, as seems likely to be the case (one has a hard time imagining seriously renewed enthusiasm for this war amongst the general population) then this may prove to be a masterstroke.
Effectively tripling the number of American troops in that country in his first year is not a small decision. But however dubious the prospects of this renewed Afghan effort, it was a political necessity for him and he built in enough wiggle room to provide him with wide latitude as events develop. If he is willing for that date to have meaning, and make no mistake it will take an enormous amount of will on his part, then it will have meaning.
The real question is whether or not he’ll be able to resist the unchanging urgings of the war crowd that victory is just around the corner. The political pressure on him will be enormous, no matter what happens next November. But if he wants to face the voters in 2012 with Iraq in the books and Afghanistan headed for a defined end date, then he can do so, provided he sticks to his guns. That’s the window he opened last night, for himself and for all of us. If he means it, if he can resist the pressure to continue, if can avoid being intellectually seduced by promises of future progress . . . if, if, if. That’s not much, but it’s not nothing, and it has the potential to be a very big something.
