Afghanistan: Obama’s war with the Pentagon

last updated 8 January 2015

President Obama is on a collision course with the Pentagon, said Peter Beinart in TheDailyBeast.com. Gen. David Petraeus and the Pentagon have been “pushing for a full-on counterinsurgency effort” in Afghanistan, and conducting a lobbying campaign through leaks and surrogates to erode Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing troops. With the Taliban’s strength growing, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai wallowing in “mind-boggling corruption,” Obama has become increasingly reluctant to spend “massive amounts of blood and treasure” on a failing war. Last week, Obama replaced his national security advisor, Gen. James Jones, who had straddled the Pentagon–White House divide, with Jones’ deputy, Thomas Donilon. It’s a deeply significant switch: Donilon is a longtime Democratic Party loyalist and former aide to Vice President Joe Biden, known to share Biden’s deep skepticism that the war is winnable. Donilon’s promotion can mean only one thing: Obama wants another ally in the coming “bureaucratic knife fight” over withdrawal.

To understand the White House’s views on the war, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post, consider the grim report it leaked last week. The report declares that this year’s surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan, which Petraeus championed, has produced “minor” and “uneven” gains. Further, the report states that U.S. efforts have been compromised by Pakistan’s refusal to mount a new offensive against the Taliban and al Qaida forces operating from Pakistani territory. Petraeus is running out of time, said Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. Obama bought into Petraeus’ strategy, but “if the war’s trends continue to go south,” Donilon will be tasked with engineering a “speedier withdrawal or another shift in strategy.”

This is hardly the time to give up, said Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. The troop surge has enabled U.S. and NATO commanders to mount intense pressure on the enemy, with up to 10 deadly attacks on their strongholds every night. With low- and middle-level Taliban fighters now in real fear for their lives, “the psychological battlefield” has shifted, and small groups of the insurgents are now approaching Afghan officials to ask “what kind of deal they might get.” This is the objective of Petraeus’ strategy—to encourage “political reconciliation” with Taliban rank and file while isolating hard-core terrorists. But if the U.S. signals it is really pulling out in July, it will undermine all of the military’s work. Obama must make it clear “that America is not abandoning Afghanistan.”