Dems flounder on Afghanistan

Evidence continues to mount demonstrating how much better Democrats are at campaigning than governing. Legislative chaos, Gitmo waffling, missile defense implosion, metastasizing debt, and skeletons tumbling out of the closet (Van Jones, Acorn etc.) to name just a few items continue to enhance the Democrats’ reputation as the “Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight”- great at running for office, but terrible at running the government. The best- or we should say the worst- is yet to come however as the nation watches the bizarre unfolding of an Obama Afghanistan strategy with a high potential for disaster.

Six months ago Obama with much fanfare informed the country that following an exhaustive review of the situation in Afghanistan- consultations with Congress, military experts, allies etc.- he had settled on a “new strategy” that would bring success to what he had long trumpeted as the “right war” or the “must win war”. As further evidence of his ‘hands-on” decisiveness he fired the U.S. commander in Afghanistan and appointed his own commander- General Stanley McChrystal- and instructed him to look at everything and make recommendations about what he would need to deliver success.

Now six months later Obama with much fanfare informed the country that he would conduct an exhaustive review of the situation in Afghanistan –consultations with Congress, military experts, allies etc. – and then he would announce a “new strategy” and what it would take to deliver success.

This left people scratching their heads and wondering what happened to the old “new strategy” and what about the recommendations that General McChrystal had been asked to deliver.

Well, that was then; this is now. What happened between then and now is that when General McChrystal reported that success in the “must win” war would require thirty to forty thousand additional troops the left wing of the Democratic Party went bonkers.

Up until now being “hawkish” on Afghanistan has been a “win-win” for the Democrats because it allowed them to flagellate George Bush over the “wrong war”- Iraq-while proclaiming their determination to win the “right war”.

Now that it is “put up or shut up” time on Afghanistan the Democrats are desperately seeking excuses for rejecting the advice of their handpicked general and embracing the alternative strategy of Field Marshal Joe Biden.

It isn’t easy to disguise a “cut and run “ strategy as the “Road to Victory” in the “must win” war, but the Democrats are hell-bent on putting “lipstick on the pig” any way they can.

What follows are nominees from the “Best Excuses” Contest being run by the Democrats; they range from the patently disgraceful to the merely laughable. The media has attributed most of them to “unnamed White House sources”.

1. General McChrystal being “just a soldier” doesn’t see the “Big Picture” (unlike Rahm Emanuel and David Axlerod). 2. Colin Powell agrees with Field Marshal Biden. 3. This war has lasted longer than World War II. 4. The Taliban isn’t the real enemy. Its’ Al Qaeda and they’re mostly in Pakistan. 5. Al Qaeda is also camped out in South Yemen. 6. A “surge” wouldn’t work in Afghanistan. 7. The Afghans are “drug dealers”. 8. Iran will be more reasonable when U.S. forces have left Iraq and Afghanistan. 9. Train the Afghan army, and they’ll win the war for us. 10. We have discovered corruption, and even-gasp- election fraud in Afghanistan. What a howler: guys from Chicago “shocked” by corruption and vote stealing! Should we have called off World War II because Joe Stalin wasn’t democratically elected? 11. The polls for Obama and Afghanistan are heading south. 12. Best for last Dept: How can a Nobel peace Prize winner (go figure) escalate a nasty old war? Wouldn’t John Lennon want us to: “Give Peace a Chance”?

What we are witnessing is the triumph of politics over the national interest thanks to a Democratic Party obsessed by the ghosts of Viet Nam- seeing false analogies everywhere- and terrified that Barack Obama could become another Lyndon Johnson.

All of this has the making of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Obama- true to form- will try to have it both ways splitting the difference between his military and political advisors. In doing so he will –like Lyndon Johnson before him- be too clever by half and spawn a series of self-defeating, half measures that will bring disaster upon himself, his party, and his country. _________________________________________________________________________

William Moloney is a Centennial Institute Fellow and former Colorado Education Commissioner. His columns have appeared in the Wall St Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post.

For Dems, it’s always ‘butter’ over ‘guns’

In the wake of the Obama Administration’s looming failure with its government health insurance and possibly its cap-and-trade proposals, it has made a grand splash on the international stage–at the United Nations in New York and the G-20 (formerly G-7) meeting in Pittsburgh. No one could fairly call Obama a tyrant, for he lacks a tyrant’s power, and he is certainly not acting like one (except for Honduras). When a tyrant runs into difficulties at home, he diverts attention by stirring up troubles abroad. But Obama is apparently contemplating reversing course in Afghanistan.

Like previous Democrats, President Obama’s international strategy seems rather to diminish than enlarge our world role. When he is not denigrating the previous administration or apologizing for his country, Obama is determined to build up the power and prestige of international organizations. Ostensibly aimed at curbing the aggressive designs of rogue nations like North Korea and Iran, the President’s real objective is to check the supposedly imperial ambitions of the United States.

Like failed presidential candidate George McGovern, Obama wants America to "come home" from its international responsibilities, dropped into its lap by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and kept there by the Soviet Union’s drive for world domination. Liberal Democrats believe that almost all international "tensions" arise from either misunderstandings or America’s own failings.

When one puts this together with the pressures from domestic politics, we get retreat from international leadership. As liberal Democrats in Congress indicate their displeasure with Obama’s attempts to rescue its health care "reform" by reducing or masking its socialistic features, Obama may have found the tactic that will placate them.

Early on, Obama seemed to make good on his promise to give our efforts in Afghanistan the priority they have long deserved by a commitment of 40,000 troops with a new commander. However, liberal Democrats in Congress made it clear that they did not wish to continue our efforts there.

So when someone in the Beltway leaked to the Washington Post that the commanding general wants to ratchet up the total numbers to 100,000, the President suddenly announced that, until we have settled on our strategy and tactics, he cannot approve the request without more study. Friends, this was the "good war" that the bad Bush neglected for nation building in Iraq. Why the abrupt change?

I submit that, however forcefully Obama declared that he would prosecute the war in Afghanistan, his heart was never really in it. The truth is, the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan were fought against the same enemy, often working in tandem with each other and always against the United States and the Western world. As Bin Laden is a terrorist without a government, Saddam Hussein was a terrorist with a government.

It was clever and useful for Obama to distinguish between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for it gave a patina of truth to his claim that his quarrel with Bush was tactical, not strategic. Obama needed only to accept the windup of the American campaign in Iraq, but Afghanistan turned out to be more difficult than he thought.

So now that the left wing of his political party (Obama’s wing) shows signs of restiveness over his domestic policy, that faction’s zealotry for socialism and indifference to the plight of other nations is combining to cause the biggest disaster for America since the fall of southeast Asia to Communism. That defeat, too, was a direct result of the left’s hostility to political freedom abroad and its disrespect for American honor.

Just as our retreat in Vietnam made meaningless the sacrifices of our fighting men in that long conflict, so those brave men and women who have served and continue to serve in harm’s way in Afghanistan face a similar prospect.

Lyndon Johnson was determined not to follow the example of his hero, Franklin Roosevelt, who shelved the New Deal in order to give priority to saving America from German and Japanese imperialism. The war in Vietnam was the "bitch" that Johnson felt he was cursed with but which he would not permit to delay his cherished Great Society.

Like LBJ, Obama would rather "transform" American society than attend to the common defense. Placing its faith in international organizations, this administration imagines that foreign threats will go away as long as our nation takes the socialistic course. We will pay for this folly.

Chickenhawk in Chief

Barack Obama scored big points during the 2008 campaign by reminding voters of his opposition to the war in Iraq in 2002 (when he was an Illinois State Senator without an actual vote). He called it "Bush's war of choice" and repeatedly spoke of its folly; later, as a United States Senator in 2006 and 2007, he voted against the Bush "surge" and consistently called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces. At the same time, in an obvious effort to push his "tough on terrorism" credentials, Obama repeatedly criticized Bush for ignoring the all-important war in Afghanistan, and made it clear that as president, he would finish the job of destroying Al Qaeda there. "Afghanistan is a war of necessity, not of choice" he has said many times. Many conservatives (myself included) always suspected that Obama was using Afghanistan as a cudgel with which to beat Bush (and McCain) around the head and shoulders on the unpopular war in Iraq -- a calculated political move that was more about getting elected than it was about really winning in Afghanistan. Back in February when I was a guest on a John Andrews' talk show Backbone Radio, I talked about Obama's emerging foreign policy as one of "valuespolitik". When I was asked about Obama's plans for Afghanistan, I made the comment then that I believed Obama would never allow a growing war in Afghanistan to get in the way of his domestic agenda -- making the comparison to how LBJ tried to manage the war in Vietnam so as not to destroy his "Great Society" programs. Obama would temporize, stall, delay and find some reason to abandon the war, because it is clear that the fierce opposition to the war from Obama's left-wing political base would make having "guns and butter" not possible -- particularly for this president with his grand plans to remake American society.

I never saw making such a prediction as going out on a limb, of course, because I always saw Obama as a "chickenhawk" -- someone who talks tough about military action but never puts himself (or his interests) in the cross-hairs. I always knew that Obama's true goals were redistributionist, and that his primary objective was (and is) to remake America in a "kinder, gentler" image that removes the rough edges in favor of a safer place for union members, ACORN supporters and others needing protection from the jungle of American capitalism. Obama-the-opportunist used tough talk on Afghanistan to convince the American people into believing that he was up to the job. Like everything else in his campaign, it was pure manipulation.

But posturing never stands up to reality, and this month events on the ground in Afghanistan are going to push Obama to making a real decision on Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal was sent to Afghanistan to develop a "Patraeus-style" counterinsurgency plan, and to come back with a recommendation (and request) for the forces he needs to be successful. He has now done so. But based on comments made over the weekend by Obama on his round-robin of talk show appearances, the president is now hesitating on his commitment to finishing even the "war of necessity". My bet is that he will use the compromised Afghan national elections of the past two weeks to make a case for pulling back -- and that he will find some "middle-ground" approach that will reduce the number of troops in favor of reliance on "high-tech" weapons like pilot-less drones, cruise missiles and the like. An "offshore" war fighting strategy.

Leslie Gelb has an interesting take on Obama and Afghanistan in the Wall Street Journal this morning entitled "Obama's Befuddling Afghan Strategy". Gelb is no conservative, and supported Obama in the 2008 election. He seems to be confused by Obama's flip-flop on support for the mission in Afghanistan, though he also clearly understands that Obama's left-wing base wants an immediate withdrawal. "Americans are now confused and caught somewhere between remembering the president's insistence on Afghanistan's importance to U.S. security and rapidly rising pressure from his party to bring the troops home." For Gelb, however, "the president's failure in Afghanistan would be America's failure, and we cannot allow this to happen."

It is good that someone on the left understands that central point -- but it gives me little confidence that the president will not let our efforts in Afghanistan go down the proverbial rat hole. Temporizing on Afghanistan would be just like Obama-the-chickenhawk. And it is exactly what we should expect from a president who seeks accommodation with Iran, Russia and other states who manifestly do NOT have our interests at heart. Obama said he wanted to "reset" our relations with the rest of the world and he is certainly doing so. We are now forsaking our friends and embracing our enemies, and are now on the verge of abandoning a critical component of the war on terror.

That certainly is change -- but not the kind I can believe in.

Straight talk on Gitmo, 'torture'

Last year many Americans decided to support a change in presidential administration at least partly because they believed that the United States government was running an abusive prison at Guantanamo Bay and torturing suspected Islamic terrorists. The case for both horror stories was shaky at best, and now we have an eminent biographer to thank for demolishing them once and for all. Arthur Herman, whose subjects have ranged from Winston Churchill and Mohandas Gandhi to the Scottish Enlightenment and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, has written "The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard" for Commentary, a monthly publication of the American Jewish Committee. In 13 densely packed pages Herman manages to discredit the liberal fantasy that has tried to pass itself off as a serious critique of the Bush Administration’s policies for dealing with America’s enemies.

President Barack Obama still has not closed the Guantanamo prison, partly because it has been no simple task to transfer dangerous men to other facilities and doubtless from the knowledge that no abuse ever took place there. The success of the campaign owes more than anything else to the efforts of the misnamed Center for Constitutional Rights, headed by Michael Ratner, which disseminated misinformation repeatedly.

In fact, only three persons were ever water boarded, a technique that falls short of torture, while the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that 73 percent of the detainees were a "demonstrated threat" to Americans.

It is well to remember, Herman writes, that "the detention facility was created in the wake of a declaration by Congress in September 2001 that ‘all necessary and appropriate force’ should be used ‘against those nations, organizations, or persons’ [emphasis added] responsible for the attacks of September ll."

No one had to read secret documents to learn that Gitmo inmates were accorded every courtesy (and then some) to accommodate their religious and cultural needs during their long confinement. They were so well fed they gained weight. Meanwhile, some tried to commit suicide while others threw human urine and excrement at prison guards.

Those supposedly torture-rationalizing memos written by John Yoo (for which service to his country congressional Democrats would like him prosecuted) were actually written to spell out limits so that the understandable zeal with which Central Intelligence Agency officers interrogated terrorists was tempered by constitutional and legal guidelines. As Herman observes, those memos were better characterized as anti torture, rather than pro torture.

In any case, the waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques were not used until after the memos were written. And when they were used they yielded high value information, particularly the plot to blow up airliners flying out of Los Angeles.

And remember the Abu Ghraib controversy? There was never any doubt that those abuses were entirely the work of the "night shift," as the Schlesinger Committee report concluded, not attributable to any high official of the Bush Administration, as was so often alleged. The least temperate critics were the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who said that Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers had reopened under American management, and Sen. Dick Durbin, who compared Abu Ghraib to Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago and Pol Pot’s death camps in Cambodia.

Unfortunately, the propaganda campaign influenced the federal courts, which ruled that detainees were entitled to due process rights, thereby second guessing the military judgment that men bearing arms on a battle field were necessarily enemies of the United States. Nearly 400 men have been released, Herman reports, at least 18 of which returned to the battlefield and 43 are listed as "suspected" of going back to the fight. In fact, one killed a judge in Afghanistan.

Now Attorney General Eric Holder is investigating whether CIA officers who interrogated suspects are guilty of violating the law, ignoring the fact that these men were (and are) at war with the very idea of the rule of law and therefore out of its protection.

We are in danger, in fact, of abandoning the war on terror, returning to the disastrous policy of the Clinton Administration, which treated terrorism as a nuisance rather than the full-fledged adversary of civilization that it is.

It is more than a little ironic that the same persons who are so solicitous of the nonexistent constitutional rights of our enemies have so little trouble making blank paper of the Constitution when it comes to governing American citizens who desire only to raise decent families and engage in honest commercial enterprise.

Afghan War winnable & important

(Washington, May 10) As news from Iraq got progressively better in the last year the reflexive pessimists among us have shifted their focus to Afghanistan where they tell us portents of gloom and doom can be found in abundance. We hear of a resurgent Taliban advancing on several fronts, the capital of Kabul under siege, insurgents controlling ever more of the countryside, attacks and suicide bombings way up, the Pakistan border uncontrollable, and U.S. and civilian casualties increased dramatically.

Back in fashion are the words “quagmire” and of course “Viet Nam”. In fact a Newsweek cover story called Afghanistan “Obama’s Viet Nam”.

All these grim tidings, of course, lead to the inevitable advice that the U.S. should cut its losses, and escape this “graveyard of empires”, ASAP.

While most of the alarmist assertions cited above contain the proverbial grain of truth, collectively they represent a gross distortion of reality in Afghanistan.

A vital key to these misrepresentations is that increases in attacks or casualties are invariably reported as percentile increases over a previously established base number while failing to report how relatively tiny that number may be or offering any comparisons from similar conflicts (e.g. Iraq).

For example the Brookings Afghanistan Index reported a 48 % increase in attacks for 2008 in regional Command-Capital which includes Kabul and environs and has a population of over four million people. What is not reported is that the actual number of attacks went from just 106 to 157 for the entire year or that 157 was the average number of attacks that occurred in Baghdad every four days during the summer of 2006.

Similarly while civilian casualties are increasing in Afghanistan the total for 2008 represents only one sixteenth of the casualties in Iraq in the pre-surge year of 2006.

Thus when we hear as we do of late that attacks or casualties for a given week or month were greater in Afghanistan than Iraq this is much more a reflection of the dramatically improved situation in post-surge Iraq than any gross deterioration in Afghanistan.

In assessing the validity of comparing the two countries consider that Afghanistan ( 249,934 sq. miles) is a much larger country than Iraq ( 167,884 sq. miles) and its 30 million people exceed the population of Iraq as well.

In terms of results the Afghan war from the beginning has been a considerable success story despite being greatly “under resourced” when compared to Iraq. Today there are just 38,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and even with the recently authorized 17,000 increase the total will be barely one third the number in Iraq during the surge (160,000).

Similarly the Afghan National Army (ANA) which has performed most effectively and is universally regarded as the most trusted indigenous institution in the entire country numbers only 80,000 men. Even adding the 70,000 men of the far less effective Afghan National Police (ANP) 150,000 total security personnel is small when compared to the 500,000 men in Iraq’s army and police.

Finally we frequently hear that “primitive” Afghanistan can never be a real nation but only an aggregation of feuding tribes.

This ignores the fact that while highly tribal Iraq has been a nation for less than one hundred years (1919) Afghanistan has been an independent country since the 18th century with a history of strong monarchs ruling a reasonably stable country. The last of these- Mohammed Zahir Shah (1933-1973) – oversaw substantial economic and political progress including a fairly democratic written constitution. Only a 1978 Marxist coup and the subsequent Soviet invasion precipitated the tragic period of war and civil conflict that has characterized the last thirty years.

By no means should we minimize the very daunting challenges we face in Afghanistan or conceal the fact that only a strong multi-year U.S. commitment can assure success.

However neither should we minimize the severe price of failure.

Many critics including President Obama long derided Iraq as the “wrong” war and a distraction from Afghanistan which was the “right” war and the one we “had to win”. The 17,000 additional troops President Obama authorized are a commendable first step in backing that conviction with deeds. In continuing along this necessary road of many difficult steps he deserves our strongest support.

William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post.