Obama's Afghanistan: The Goldilocks War

In his speech to the nation President Obama stated that he was going to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to form a “surge” intended to turn the tide of the war.  At the same time, he announced that he would be withdrawing those very same forces beginning in 2011.  By linking a withdraw date with a surge date, Obama hopes to show he is serious in winning the war yet wise enough to avoid an even more protracted engagement.  In fact, he will achieve neither with his “too cold, too warm” approach.  In war there is not “just right.”

Guerrilla fighters such as we find in Afghanistan and Pakistan are successful because they use their enemies’ strengths against them, making them weaknesses.  Thus, if you are fighting a conventional military with planes, troops, and bases, you attack beyond their areas of control, forcing them to stretch their lines.  If you face an enemy that is proud because the “will of the people” is listened to, you stage bombings and events in front of camera crews or before elections so as to make their voters somber and tired.  If you face a foe that is hesitant to engage in border areas, you hide and attack within those border areas exposing them as being weak.  And if you face an enemy that sets a timetable for withdraw you lie low letting a lull set in until they do withdraw, then you attack with full force.  Any way you look at it, if you play your enemy’s strengths as weaknesses you can defeat them.

And so shall it go with the Taliban and Afghanistan.  They are in it for the duration, however long that lasts.  Since Obama has already set a withdraw date he is saying that he does not have the political will to see the conflict through to its logical conclusion: victory.  Having set an end date that is during his re-election year also shows he will not be willing to adopt bold strategic moves that could turn the tide.  Everybody said President Bush was crazy to go for his surge in Iraq.  It worked, violence dipped and calm broke out.  Bush never set a withdraw date… he always maintained that conditions on the ground would determine that.  His was the correct strategy.

Because President Obama adopts half-measures in everything he does he can never be truly successful in anything he attempts.  When you are simply wasting billions of taxpayer dollars it is one thing but when you are playing with American military lives it is quite another.

Obama is not the right candidate to lead America into battle and he’s not the right person to achieve any sort of success overseas.