Post-American Presidency (24 page)

CBS’s David Martin asked a follow-up question: “You’ve talked to him once in seventy days?” McChrystal said: “That is correct.”
²

On August 30, 2009, McChrystal asked Obama for reinforcements. Between that day and Obama’s December 1 speech on Afghanistan, 116 American troops were killed in Afghanistan.
³
But in his speech Obama defended himself against charges that he had endangered American troops already in Afghanistan by delaying his decision on whether to send more troops: “There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war during this review period. Instead, the review has allowed me to ask the hard questions, and to explore all the different options, along with my national security team, our military and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and our key partners. And given the stakes involved, I owed the American people—and our troops—no less.”
⁴

And to be sure, Obama had not always seemed to be as indifferent as he appeared during the summer and fall of 2009. During the 2008 election he had banged repeatedly on the Afghan war drum. Afghanistan, in his construction, was the “good” war, Iraq the “bad” war.
Afghanistan, he said, was neglected. That’s where the real action was, according to General Obama: it was the place where the war on jihad, the war on terror, the overseas contingency operation (as the Obama administration, ever mindful of politically correct niceties, memorably renamed it) really was. Afghanistan was where Obama would redeploy our troops, while withdrawing from the great mistake that was George W. Bush’s venture in Iraq.

And so, committed once again to pursuing the war in Afghanistan, finally Barack Obama went to West Point to explain to the nation and the world what he hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan, and how he intended to go about it.

It was a singularly uninspiring speech, perhaps reflecting the post-American president’s postmodern, post-American distaste for the Manichaeism and carnality of warfare. He identified the enemy—if this word could be rightly used while Obama never spoke of “victory,” or explained in any detail what he would consider to be a successful outcome in Afghanistan at all—as “Al-Qaeda,” whom he described as “a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world’s great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents.” In keeping with this whitewash of the militaristic Islamic texts and teachings that jihadists use to justify violence, and with his own pronounced affinity with Islam, Obama also characterized the Taliban as “a ruthless, repressive and radical movement.” Radical what? He didn’t say.

Of course, this soft-pedaling of the Islamic character of the jihadist war against the United States was little different from language George W. Bush had used for eight years. But coming from as Islamophilic a president as Barack Hussein Obama, it signaled more than simply a desire to make common cause with moderate elements within the Islamic world (if such allies in reliable enough supply could truly be found), as it did with Bush. For Barack Obama, in contrast, it was a manifestation of a myopia of immense proportions.

OBAMA AND THE “MODERATE TALIBAN”

This myopia first became glaringly apparent in March 2009, when Obama stated a desire to open negotiations with moderate factions of the Taliban. On first reflection, that actually sounded reasonable. Something like it had worked in Iraq, after all, even if the victory was short-lived. Obama spoke explicitly about wanting to duplicate that success, saying that “part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq.” And “there may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region,” although he granted that “the situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex.”

And it was, for at least two reasons.

First, the Iraqi Sunni insurgents among whom Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, was able to gain confidence had turned against the Al-Qaeda elements for their own pragmatic reasons. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had forced themselves into the communities, onto the tribes, and even demanded local sheikhs’ daughters in marriage. Despite whatever ideological affinities the populace may have had with Al-Qaeda (which always appeals to peaceful Muslims by reference to an imperative rooted in the Qur’an and Sunnah), they were overridden, at least temporarily, by the jihadis’ boorish behavior. Second, Petraeus had enough troops at the time to provide local security to the former insurgents and their tribal leaders.

Neither of those conditions pertained in Afghanistan; nor would Obama’s thirty thousand new troops significantly change that fact. There were still too few American troops to provide local security beyond the capital city, and the Taliban remained the strongest faction among the many mountain tribes.

So who were Obama’s “moderate Taliban”? Where could they be found? Waheed Mozhdah, the director of the Afghan Foreign Ministry’s Middle East and Africa department when the Taliban were in power, dismissed the post-American president’s hopes as “a dream more than reality,” asking derisively: “Where are the so-called moderate Taliban? Who are the moderate Taliban?” Newspaper editor Muhammad Qaseem Akhgar declared: “‘Moderate Taliban’ is like ‘moderate killer.’ Is there such a thing?”
⁵

Obama offered no details as to why he believed in these fantastical creatures, but Vice President Joe Biden, ever helpful, chimed in with some statistics manifesting his confidence in their existence. “Five percent of the Taliban is incorrigible,” he explained, “not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, of the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. Roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money.”
⁶
He didn’t explain how he arrived at these figures, but one would think that if they were remotely accurate, we would have seen some evidence of dissension within Taliban ranks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with moderate elements objecting to their colleagues’ more extreme behavior.

In late September 2009, for example, Taliban commander Mohammed Ibrahim Hanafi told CNN that the Taliban considered foreign-aid workers to be spies, and was planning to execute them. “Our law,” he declared, “is still the same old law which was in place during our rule in Afghanistan. Mullah Mohammad Omar was our leader and he is still our head and leader and so we will follow the same law as before.”
⁷
That law included prohibiting the education of girls, destroying girls’ schools all over the country, and even throwing acid in the faces of girls who dare to try to get an education. The Taliban in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan bombed or burned down around 300 girls’ schools, affecting over 100,000 students. And in Afghanistan
over 600 schools did not open in 2009 because they could not guarantee their students’ security.

There was no record of any “moderate Taliban” elements speaking out against either the execution of foreign aid workers or the closing of girls’ schools and the terrorizing of female students.

The Taliban had also targeted police stations—because they are considered outposts of the central government in Kabul—as well as video and CD stores, since Islamic law forbids music and images of human beings. Pakistan’s
News International
reported last month that “two police stations, 12 police posts, 80 video centres, around 300 CD shops, 25 barbershops, 24 bridges, 15 basic health units, an electricity grid station and a main gas supply line were either destroyed or severely damaged” by the Taliban as it has moved in recent months to gain control of Swat—which was once a thriving tourist spot.
⁸

There was no record of any moderate Taliban elements speaking out against any of this, or lifting a finger to stop it. One would think that if these reasonable elements who could be negotiated with really constituted over two thirds of those who identify themselves as Taliban, as Biden claimed, there would be some trace of their existence somewhere—even a minute indication that they dissented from the harsh vision of draconian Sharia law that the Taliban imposed upon Afghanistan when it was in power in Kabul, and which it continues to impose upon those areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan that it currently controls.

INTERNATIONALISM IN AFGHANISTAN

Obama, in his December 2009 speech announcing the sending of more troops to Afghanistan, spent a good deal of time recounting the history of how the United
States got involved militarily in Afghanistan in the first place. Ever the internationalist, he recalled that “the United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America, our allies and the world were acting as one to destroy Al-Qaeda’s terrorist network and to protect our common security.” Obama emphasized that the United States entered Afghanistan in the first place only “under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy.”

The Karzai government, he further noted, was also the fruit of international cooperation, having been established “at a conference convened by the U.N.” Once it was up and running, “an International Security Assistance Force was established to help bring a lasting peace to a war-torn country.”

But disrupting this vision of an internationalist paradise was Bush’s other war: “The decision to go into Iraq caused substantial rifts between America and much of the world.” He also obliquely blamed the Bush administration for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan: “Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.” Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, sharply disputed this, calling the post-American president’s claim a “bald misstatement.” Rumsfeld declared: “I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President’s assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”
⁹

In any case, Obama announced his intention to reverse what he undoubtedly saw as Bush’s cowboy unilateralism and irresponsibility: “Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end.” He announced: “We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011.” And likewise in Afghanistan: while announcing that he
would send thirty thousand fresh American troops to Afghanistan, he declared in the very next breath that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.” He gave the specific date of July 2011, meaning that the troops would leave Afghanistan before they would leave Iraq.

Why a time limit? “The absence of a time frame for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.”

Once again, he emphasized that this would be “an international effort,” and so “I’ve asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies.… We must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility—what’s at stake is the security of our allies, and the common security of the world.” He declared that as American troops left Afghanistan, he would once again consult with the international partners of the United States: “[W]e will work with our partners, the United Nations, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security.”

And recalling his outreach to the “moderate Taliban,” he added: “We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens.” Apparently, if they renounced violence and worked toward the same goals through nonviolent means, the post-American president would have no problem with that. Meanwhile, despite having nothing whatsoever to show for his many overtures to the Islamic world, Obama declared his outreach a victory: “[W]e have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim world—one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict, and that promises a future in which those who kill innocents are
isolated by those who stand up for peace and prosperity and human dignity.”
¹⁰

WAR AND INTERNATIONALISM IN OSLO

Less than two weeks after his Afghanistan speech, Obama traveled to Oslo to accept his Nobel Peace Prize—a prize that many thought the Nobel Committee gave him as a criticism of George W. Bush’s foreign policy and an endorsement of Obama’s socialist internationalism.

Speaking of Obama’s Afghanistan speech,
National Review
’s Andrew McCarthy pointed out that hard-core Alinskyites “reserve the right to take any position on any matter, to say anything at any time, based on the ebb and flow of popular opinion.” As if to confirm this observation, during his Nobel acceptance speech Obama retailed some themes that had become extraordinarily rare during his post-American presidency: the necessity to wage war in some circumstances, and the right of the United States to defend itself. “I face the world as it is,” said the dreamy internationalist, “and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.”

Obama even reminded the assembled elites that “it was not simply international institutions—not just treaties and declarations—that brought stability to a post–World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.” Sounding an Ayn Randian note, Obama said that the United States had done all this “out of englightened self-interest.”