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The Obama Way of War

AP
September 17, 2014

Among the many reasons things are such a disaster in Afghanistan is that President Obama’s initial plan for that country—which was meant to reverse the tailspin the place was in as of 2009—generated more confusion than it did clarity, and was never fully accepted by the generals meant to execute it. This is happening again.

The press doesn’t cover it much, but in Afghanistan the Taliban is coming back and the national government is held together by a combination of sticky tack and shoestring. The Kabul government may well fall before the year is out, which would likely precipitate a large-scale civil-war.

President Obama inherited a bad situation in Afghanistan in 2009. After an incredibly long deliberative period, he authorized a substantial troop increase, and gave his generals the task to "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat" al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while denying them a safe haven in Afghanistan. In addition, they were to "reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government." The Afghan government, as a key part of the plan, was to be strengthened to be able to hold its own against its enemies. Simultaneously, the president announced a deadline for the end of his troop increase.

His plan had the sort of sophistication and nuance of which a University of Chicago (adjunct) lecturer could be proud: fight the Taliban this much (but not too much!) and at the same time fight al Qaeda harder—but only in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, fight them a little bit less. Help the Afghan government, but only until a certain pre-determined time. Then, sayonara. It’s almost like achieving a good end-state in Afghanistan wasn’t the president’s priority, but that he felt he had to do something for reasons of domestic politics.

Meanwhile, the generals—for a while at least—actually tried to defeat the Taliban, despite the fact that the president had rather clearly indicated that this wasn’t his goal.

Sound familiar? Endless deliberation, followed by a too-clever-by-half tasking statement—the nature of which gives doubts about the commander-in-chief’s resolve—followed by a confused execution? "Degrade, and ultimately destroy" is not the sort of crystal-clear rallying cry that typically precedes military success. (A general could be forgiven for asking, when should we destroy them, then?) Nor is his ideological opposition to using ground troops in combat. Nor is the president's focus on the effectively non-existent border between Iraq and Syria that will condition the way our forces operate. This issue was—is!—also a critical problem in the Afghan war.

In yesterday’s Senate hearing on the president’s plan for Syria, Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who has a reputation among his own staff for alarming moments of frank talk in public—made an eminently reasonable point to the committee. If, at some point in the future, General Dempsey determined that the current plan wasn’t working, he would return to the president and suggest a different course of action—which might possibly include ground troops.

The White House rapidly distanced itself from these comments, all the while claiming that there was no dispute between president and the military. Today, the President is at the headquarters of Central Command in Florida to be briefed on the situation with the Islamic State. This is unusual--they can do briefings just fine at the White House.  The New York Times reports:

The rare visit is described by White House officials as part of his effort to mobilize public support for the mission. But it is also calculated to soothe tensions with the military over who is in charge of the operation after Mr. Obama named retired Gen. John R. Allen to be his special envoy to the coalition of countries fighting the Islamic State. General Allen will be based at the State Department.

Already, Mr. Obama’s policy has been tested by his commanders. General Dempsey said Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who oversees the Central Command, had recommended putting Special Operations troops on the ground to direct airstrikes during a recent campaign by Iraqi and Kurdish forces to retake the Mosul Dam from the extremist militants.

Mr. Obama rejected that recommendation, and General Dempsey said the United States used technology — a drone known as a Rover — to compensate for not having its own advisers on the ground. The American advisers remained in the Kurdish capital, Erbil.

It would be apt to say that we have seen this movie before, and so know how it ends, except that we will be forced to watch the Afghan tragedy end while viewing the start of something very similar in Iraq and Syria. The current situation bears the same foreboding hallmarks of American involvement in Central Asia, and of the Obama way of war: half-hearted, distrustful of the military, and far too impressed with its own cleverness.