Obama rethinks the mission in Afghanistan

What happened

The Obama administration has launched a top-to-bottom review of its Afghanistan war strategy, after a top general called for a dramatic increase in troops as other administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, were advocating a scaled-back war effort. In a confidential report obtained by The Washington Post, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who oversees the war in Afghanistan, warned that unless the U.S. and its NATO allies quickly commit up to 45,000 additional troops, they risk “an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” McChrystal urged that the U.S. step up efforts to protect civilians, more vigorously combat drug trafficking, and tackle corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai, which has been accused of widespread fraud in the recent elections.

President Obama, in several weekend TV interviews, appeared to distance himself from his general’s recommendations on troop levels, and said he was looking at alternatives. “I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan,” he said. Vice President Biden is reportedly pushing to reduce American forces, while focusing the mission on targeting top al Qaida militants holed up in the mountains along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. Such an approach would represent a sharp reversal from the strategy Obama announced in March, when he deployed 21,000 additional troops to implement McChrystal’s nationwide counterinsurgency strategy.

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What the editorials said

“Obama seems to have forgotten his own arguments for a counterinsurgency campaign,” said The Washington Post. In March, he made a convincing case that our nation’s security required that we remain in Afghanistan until the elected government was stabilized. Otherwise, he argued, al Qaida and the Taliban would seize control of the country and make it a safe haven for terrorists, and Pakistan, too, could fall. “Keeping faith with that goal will require more troops, more resources, and years of patience.” The nation must keep its nerve, even if Obama seems to be losing his.

Rethinking our strategy isn’t weakness, said the Baltimore Sun. It’s sanity. “The war is going badly,” and there is little reason to think that more troops and more American blood could ever fundamentally change the dynamic in this dysfunctional country. “If the Pentagon and White House still can’t articulate a plausible set of benchmarks for using our military to create a more stable Afghanistan,” it may be time to develop a withdrawal strategy. “An indefinite occupation of Afghanistan” cannot be sustained.

What the columnists said

Obama’s waffling reveals the cynicism of the Democrats, said Rich Lowry in National Review Online. When Democrats were out of power, they were happy to call Afghanistan “the good war” and use it “as a rhetorical club to attack President Bush’s focus on Iraq.” Now that it’s “crunch time in Afghanistan, they’ve gone from resolute to flaccid.” Obama hasn’t played his hand yet, said Marc Ambinder in TheAtlantic.com, and he could still see this war through. “The McChrystal assessment is an echo of Winston Churchill’s message to President Roosevelt: ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job.’ This is Obama’s FDR moment.”

Let’s be clear about what that could actually mean, said Bob Herbert in The New York Times. We would be sending Americans “to fight and possibly die in support of a government that is incompetent and riddled with corruption,” to protect a population that largely wants us gone. We would be diverting billions of dollars desperately needed at home. And for what? “A mishmash of a mission” with the “admirable but unachievable task of nation-building.” No wonder most Americans want us out.

If only it were that simple, said Leslie Gelb in The Wall Street Journal. There are hard truths that both backers and opponents of the war must face. “Obama can’t simply walk away from the war,” and he knows it. He “has got to give Afghan allies a fighting chance to hold their own.” But “Republicans must acknowledge that America’s combat commitment cannot be indefinite,” because the supply of U.S. troops and dollars is finite. We have two or three more years to “make this war Afghanistan’s responsibility.”