The Redhunter

If you accept, as I do, the premise that President Obama is an Alinskyite, last night's speech was totally predictable. From 2003 forward, he and his party cynically raised the Afghanistan mission into a noble calling -- not because they thought it really was one, but because it made their political attack on the war in Iraq more effective. Now, Obama is cratering in the polls and his party is in even worse shape. Politically, they can't afford to abandon the noble calling at this point: Even the legacy media couldn't protect them from the fallout, which would intensify when the Taliban overran Karzai right as we headed into our midterm elections next year.

So we can't leave, but we can't wage war either. The Obama Left can tolerate, barely, the appearance of waging war if that's what it takes to prevent rank-and-file Democrats from revolting. But they have no interest in defeating anti-American Muslims (who, after all, have a point, right?) or in pursuing American interests for their own sake.

What to do? Well, the Right has given Obama his escape hatch. Conservatives keep talking about "victory" but they never define it. We keep saying, "Give General McChrystal the troops he needs to win," but because we're as vague as Obama when it comes to what "winning" means, no one will really care what the additional troops actually do in Afghanistan. Thus, as long as Obama agreed to send a contingent -- low-balled, but reasonably close to the 40,000 in McChrystal's last request -- he knew he'd be fine....Our unwavering resolve for this task will last 18 months -- during which we will continue solidifying the new narrative that the war is not ours but Afghanistan's, and that the hapless Karzai isn't producing results fast enough. That will get Democrats through the midterms.

By that point, it will be the middle of 2011 -- and that's when the "taking into account conditions on the ground" kicks in. If the Left has succeeded in souring the country on the whole enterprise such that Obama's reelection chances won't be impaired by a withdrawal, we'll pull-out. On the other hand, if the noble calling is still perceived as noble, Obama will satisfy the Right by bravely staying the course and giving General McChrystal the time he needs "to complete the mission successfully," and satisfy the Left by re-promising a phased withdrawal in about 18 months, so that those resources can be invested here at home in rebuilding our economy and putting Americans back to work (since unemployment should be hovering around 12 percent by then).

All true enough, but Marin Strmecki reminds us it could have been far worse, starting off by pointing out that anything that annoys the left can't be all bad:

When a president from the liberal wing of the Democratic party defies part of his political base in order to protect the national security and vital interests of the United States, it is not wise to begrudge him a measure of praise....

The president deserves praise for the way he has defined the problem. The United States faces a syndicate of violent extremist groups -- al-Qaeda among them -- that is based in western Pakistan....

In addition, the president deserves plaudits for rejecting a narrow counterterrorist strategy -- essentially drone attacks on steroids -- and for adopting a strategy for defeating the enemy by working with and strengthening our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A narrow counterterrorist strategy was tried in the 1990s, and it failed....

The president has also rightly endorsed the counterinsurgency approach articulated by General McChrystal. This approach is based on using the persistent presence of forces at the local level to protect the population from attacks and intimidation by the Taliban....

Moreover, when the president signaled to Pakistan that we will not "tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear," he demonstrated a new realism about the problematic conduct of elements of the Pakistani security establishment, which has permitted the development of sanctuaries in its territory.

Victor Davis Hanson asks if we are we to be led in war by a "tiger" or a kitten? Apparently neither a lion or fox was under consideration:

...the problem is that the commander-in-chief was clearly pained by the decision -- sometimes fobbing off his dilemma on the prior administration, at other times trying to contextualize the war as a complex socio-legal problem rather than a struggle to force our enemy to accept our own political aims (i.e., a consensual government in Kabul that is inhospitable, rather than welcoming, to global terrorists).

And when a war leader visibly regrets the situation he has found himself in -- rather than being determined to prevail in the struggle at hand -- that hesitancy inevitably ripples through the ranks. Think of the British or French war effort between September 1939 and May 1940, or America in Vietnam between 1964 and 1969. Chamberlain was no Churchill, and LBJ, like it or not, was not a Nixon, at least when it came to trying to win in Vietnam.

In contrast, with the ascension of the "Tiger," Georges Clemenceau, as prime minister in 1917, his will to win ("la guerre jusqu'au bout") filtered throughout the French ranks and soon made an enormous difference in the trenches. Take away a win-at-all-costs Lincoln in the dark days of spring and summer 1864, and the Army of the Potomac, Grant or no Grant, would have lost its soul. During the Cold War, American forces, down to the level of private, were more enthused with a "tear down this wall" president than an earlier "free of that inordinate fear of communism" commander-in-chief.

So, yes, in the short term, troops will be sent. Two brilliant generals will have leeway. And we will have a year and a half at the new troop levels. But no nation can -- or should try to -- win a war when the heart of the man at the top is not in the struggle.

The invaluable Charles Krauthammer saw the speech as quite strange:

It was a very strange speech. It was supposed to be a clarion call to battle ... But it was so hedged and cramped and ambivalent. There was a huge reluctance you could hear in his tone.

On one hand, he sends in the troops, and on the other hand, he says we are leaving in 18 months. ... You can say it's a sop to the left, but we heard his national security adviser today in testimony say the date is fixed one. The withdrawals will start. The only question is [that] conditions will determine the pace of withdrawal.

So James Jones was saying it is a real date. That's the reason why I think people are unsure about this. There are a lot of people on the right who think this was OK. They won the policy, and the left won the speech -- [meaning] all the caveats are in a speech, but the president is committed to the surge and his commanders have at least partial victory in what they want.

But the issue is this -- Is his heart in it? He spoke about unwavering resolve, and yet he talks about exit. He talks about how the security of the world hangs on this, and yet he had a whole riff in the speech about how we have to look after our economy and how expensive war is and how we have to balance the needs of our country.

Finally, Peter Kirsanow reminds us that we weren't the only ones listening to the speech:

The Taliban and al-Qaeda were not the only ones marking their calendars while listening to President Obama's speech last night. Certain parties in Tehran and Moscow were making self-interested calculations as well. In those cities, the lines from the speech that mattered most were those pertaining to the 18-month timetable. If the president of the United States pronounces this war to be so important, yet spends much of his time plotting an exit seemingly untethered to victory (indeed, doesn't even define what "victory" in Afghanistan would be), that sends a signal to our adversaries likely to produce headaches in the future: Be patient, and your aims shall be realized. If there was any doubt in Tehran that no serious effort would be made to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, that doubt was markedly diminished, if not extinguished, last night. And the gleam of adventurism in Mr. Putin's eyes shines brighter today as well. The dog whistle in last night's speech alerted a few wolves as well.

We may well pull a victory out, but by only sending 3/4 of what General McChrystal asked for he's made it unnecessarily risky. His timeline telegraphs to friends and enemies alike that we're not dedicated to victory. To our enemies it means that all they have to do is survive another 18 months. Our friends must make a hard calculation; "will the U.S. win in 18 months?" If they conclude no, they'll "make their accomodations" with the Taliban now, if they conclude yes, they had better be right, or we'll have what happened in south Vietnam and Cambodia all over again.