Obama’s dilemma

By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com

It is a measure of the difficulty of the task that over the last few weeks, President Barack Obama has spent countless hours with his war council trying to develop a strategy for something that could be called victory in Afghanistan. Vice President Joe Biden is said to be the least inclined to send significantly more troops while the generals want an increase of 40,000 to 80,000. The president must weigh the conflicting views of his top advisors and take into account growing opposition to the war in the country as a whole and especially among his own political base. Out of all this, Obama must come up with a plan for a political and military victory in Afghanistan.

It would be very hard for the president to walk away from Afghanistan. On the campaign trail, he was vocal in saying that the Bush administration took his eye off the country in order to wage war in Iraq. He vowed that he would send more troops (which he has done already), and virtually promised victory. But more troops mean more targets for the Taliban. Thus there were more Americans killed in October in Afghanistan than in any previous month. Meanwhile the polls show most Americans have turned against the war.

The strategies put forth are basically two: counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. The first implies several difficult things: lots of troops, a long-term commitment, and many American casualties. The second relies on air power and quick strikes by special forces and is likely to produce many Afghan civilian casualties. Vice President Joe Biden is the main proponent of the counter terrorism strategy while the generals weigh in for a counterinsurgency strategy, with other players such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton some place in the middle.

The president is under tremendous pressure from his base who want an early peace and the Republicans, who are holding Obama to his promise to listen to his commanders.

Meanwhile, the American people seem to be of two minds. They don’t want another defeat on the model of Vietnam but they also won’t accept lots of American casualties. But it is likely that there is no strategy for victory that doesn’t produce many American casualties. That is because the counterinsurgency strategy requires close contact with the population in order to win their trust and commitment to defeat the Taliban. This exposes American troops to enemy attacks, causing increasing casualties and loss of support for the war on the home front.

On the other hand, the counterterrorism strategy tends to rely more on the use of firepower and kills many more civilians, breeding hatred and a new generation of combatants. But it reduces the number of U.S. casualties.

It may be that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. It violates the Powell doctrine that war should only be waged with the support of the American people, overwhelming force, and a clear mission. Right now the mission seems less than crystal clear. Is it nation building or just preventing the government from disintegrating and being taken over by the Taliban?

Even if the generals get more troops and more Afghani forces are trained, it is difficult to foresee a situation where there is overwhelming force. Afghanistan is a big country. The presence of NATO and U.S. troops dates back to 2001 and the situation is worse than ever. If the Russian experience is any guide, more troops equal more targets. Public opinion, even in a totalitarian state, played a role in the Soviet decision to withdraw.

According to the polls, U.S. public opinion on the war seems already lost even before the really hard part has begun. The war was popular at first but it has been too many years without tangible progress. Osama Bin-Laden is somewhere out there in Pakistan or Afghanistan thumbing his nose at the United States. The American people are tired of endless war and are not too interested in differentiating the “good war” from the bad one. They have figured out that the jihadi movement is not located in a defined space or dependent on a single leader but is a set of networks fueled by beliefs.

An orderly but quick withdrawal from Afghanistan is probably the best policy. But it’s not in the cards; Obama has too much skin in the game.

Societies are not transformed through the barrel of a gun. The fierce warriors of Afghanistan have humiliated several empires. It would be a tragedy if this were to happen to the United States and this war were to drag down Obama’a potentially transformative presidency in the way Vietnam overshadowed the accomplishments of Lyndon Johnson’s war against poverty and the civil rights movement.