Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan

What happened

President Obama unveiled his long-awaited strategy for the war in Afghanistan this week, ordering a rapid deployment of 30,000 more troops while setting a July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawals. In a speech before cadets at West Point, the president said that his three-month review of all available evidence had left him “convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” requiring a greater commitment of forces to reverse gains made by the Taliban and to prevent al Qaida from re-establishing terrorist bases there. Marines will begin arriving in Afghanistan by Christmas, with all new forces scheduled to be in place by May. Along with 21,000 troops that Obama ordered to Afghanistan in March, the new deployment will bring U.S. forces in the region to 100,000. Obama has asked NATO allies to provide 5,000 to 10,000 additional troops to bring NATO’s total to around 40,000.

But in setting a time limit on the U.S. commitment, Obama ratcheted up the pressure on both Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is directing the war effort, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is widely accused of running a corrupt and ineffective government. “The days of providing a blank check are over,” Obama said.

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What the editorials said

Obama “owns” this war now, said the New York Post. So it’s bizarre that not once in a “4,580-word speech could he bring himself to utter the word ‘win.’” Instead, he promised to “end this war” and begin withdrawals in July 2011, just one year after the full complement of troops is in place. “That will surely embolden” the notoriously patient Taliban, which now needs only to wait out Obama.

No one knows if 140,000 allied troops “will be enough to turn this war around,” said The New York Times. But at least Obama is setting benchmarks for success, and making a real commitment. President Bush’s insistence on fighting the war “on the cheap” for eight years, while he got diverted by Iraq, has been disastrous. At $1 billion for each 1,000 additional soldiers, there’s nothing cheap about Obama’s strategy, said The Philadelphia Inquirer. Plagued by high unemployment and mounting deficits at home, “most Americans want out of this war soon.”

What the columnists said

Obama made a convincing case that the “AfPak” region poses a threat, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. But he “risked contradicting himself by setting such a tight deadline” for withdrawal. It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx song, “Hello, I must be going,” said David Rothkopf in ForeignPolicy.com. Obama’s speech promised “an escalation and an exit, an effort to be tough with and to support the Afghan government,” and mollifying rhetoric for both hawks and doves. In his night at the opera, Obama warbled both bass and soprano lines.

Actually, he’s been consistent from the start, said Michael Crowley in The New Republic Online. Obama’s new strategy flows directly from his speech in March, when he made the case for additional troops and “implied” he’d adopt the kind of counterinsurgency campaign he’s now empowered Gen. McChrystal to wage. As for the controversial withdrawal date, Obama merely said that it’s when the U.S. would begin to hand over responsibility to Afghan forces. White House officials insist the actual pace of withdrawal will be dependent on “conditions on the ground.”

Despite his rhetorical “balancing act,” Obama will face a real dilemma in July 2011, said Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. “Won’t there be pressure to declare that all is well, even if it isn’t?” Politically, though, Obama had little choice but to tell Americans sick of prolonged and expensive wars that U.S. commitment is not “open-ended.” And the truth is, “we can’t afford” an open-ended commitment—militarily or financially. In the end, AfPak success will depend heavily on the commitment of leaders in the region to truly seek the destruction of al Qaida and the Taliban. “If they don’t get serious, none of this matters.”