By Patrick J. Buchanan
If actions speak louder than words, President Obama is cutting America free of George Bush’s wars and coming home.
For his bottom line Tuesday night was that all U.S. forces will be out of Iraq by mid-2011 and the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan will, on that date, begin to get smaller and smaller.
Yet the gap between the magnitude of the crisis he described and the action he is taking is the Grand Canyon.
Listing the stakes in Afghanistan, Obama might have been FDR in a fireside chat about America’s war against a Japanese empire that had just smashed the fleet at Pearl Harbor, seized the Philippines, Guam and Wake, and was moving on Midway.
Consider the apocalyptic rhetoric:
“[A]s commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest …”
“If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake …”
“For what is 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.”
After that preamble, one might expect the announcement of massive U.S. air strikes on some rogue nation. Yet what was the action decided upon?
“I … will send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”
To secure America and the world, not 5 percent of the Army and Marine Corps will be surged into Afghanistan for 18 months — then they will start home.
Let us put that in perspective.
During the Korean War, we had a third of a million men fighting. In 1969, we had half a million troops in Vietnam. But in Afghanistan, where the security of the world is at stake, Obama is topping out at 100,000 troops and will start drawing them down in July 2011.
“Of course, this burden is not ours alone to bear. This is not just America’s war”, said Obama.
But if the burden is not ours alone to bear, where is everybody else?
Apparently, the Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Indians and Arabs do not believe their security is imperiled, because we are doing all the heavy lifting, economically and militarily.
The contradictions in Obama’s speech are jarring.
He says the new U.S. troops are to “train competent Afghan Security Forces and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help to create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans”.
Thus, we are going to train the Afghan army and police so that, in 18 months, they can take over the fighting in a war where the security of the United States and the whole world is in the balance?
Moreover, the commitment is not open-ended, but conditional. “It will be clear to the Afghan government — and … the Afghan people — that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country. … The days of providing a blank check are over.”
Most Americans will agree the time is at hand for Afghans to take responsibility for their own country. But, if the stakes are what the president says, can we entrust a war to preserve our vital national interests and security to an Afghan army no one thinks will be able, in 18 months, to defeat a Taliban that has pushed a U.S.-NATO coalition to the brink of defeat?
At West Point, Obama did not hearken back to Gen. MacArthur’s dictum — “War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war, there is no substitute for victory” — but to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s, that we must maintain a balance between defense and domestic programs.
Obama was not citing the Eisenhower of Normandy but President Eisenhower, who ended Korea by truce, refused to intervene in Indochina, did nothing to halt Nikita Khrushchev’s crushing of the Hungarian revolution, ordered the British, French and Israelis out of Suez, and presided over eight years of peace and prosperity, while building up America’s might and getting in lots of golf at Burning Tree.
Not a bad president. Not a bad model.
How can we reconcile Obama’s end-times rhetoric about the stakes imperiled with an 18-month surge of just 30,000 troops?
Stanley McChrystal won the argument over troops. But Obama, in his heart, does not want to fight Bush’s “Long War”. He wants to end it. Obama is not LBJ plunging into the big muddy. He is Nixon coming out, while giving an embattled ally a fighting chance to save itself.
In four years, Nixon was out of Vietnam. In 18 months, Obama says we will be out of Iraq with a steadily diminishing presence in Afghanistan.
What we heard Tuesday night was the drum roll of an exit strategy.
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agreed, What we heard Tuesday night was the drum roll of an exit strategy.
Fighting a war against Muslims does not fit the philosophy of a man who has spent his entire life trying to be like Jesus Christ. It detracts from his idea that America needs to get along with the world community, and that fighting a major war will not let that happen. He wants peace now, so that before his eight years are up, everyone will be kissing their neighbors and there won’t be poor little children of color and the world will be on the mend and please somebody stop me because I’m getting ill.
Say one thing (whatever they’ll believe) and then do another. That’s how politicians do it. Obama is the posterchild of this tactic. BS the public, then continue the agenda.
The “Black Messiah” will do what the military industrial complex tells him to do.
First, as Rush says, each of Resident Obama’s utterances has an expiration date. Second, Obama needs foreign wars to burn off the inflation caused by his economic policies. If he doesn’t have our troops in Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan, he’ll have to have them somewhere.
When it was near certain that Obama was going to beat McCain, I thought, “well at least he will end the wars.” Now he is sending in more troops. I hope Pat is right that this is just a political stunt and that Obama will bring all the troops home soon. Haven’t we learned that every regime we support in third world countries ends up being an enemy in 10, 20, 30 years? All this money is spent in Afganistan and we aren’t even fighting a country. We are chasing after a few 100 criminals (more each day we occupy a foreign country)yet spending billions? Oil/military complex rules. Come on Democrats, impose a draft (one that makes rich and poor serve) and increase troops to 500,000 and impose a war tax on the wealthy. I’m sure everyone will agree to withdraw at that point.
I enjoyed this article. We have a lack of leadership in Washington. Barack Obama, Byron Dorgan, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and the list goes on and on. I’m from North Dakota and I plan to do my part in 2010 and vote for Paul Sorum for the Senate. We need some leadership and some common sense conservatives in Washington. Far left liberals like Obama and Dorgan aren’t cutting it.
If I follow Pat, he’s saying the small size of the surge relative to our Korea/Nam force levels indicates Obama is not just ‘whistling dixie’ about a 2011 Afghan exit. But Nam and Korea were different types of wars. A team of 11 hi-jackers (plus planning and logistics) did vastly more damage to the U.S. homeland than the NK army, the VC, or for that matter the conventional forces of Nazi Germany and Japan combined.
I only wish Obama compared to Ike or Nixon, men with core national security credentials who (1) didn’t have to prove their toughness as they made rational decisions and (2) were savvy enough to harness advisors like Dulles and Kissinger. The day after Obama’s speech, Clinton and Gates contradicted the President in front of the Senate.
Ike had better Cold War strategies than the Truman Doctrine. And Nixon pulled out of Nam after the China deal/SALT I, with his broader Cold War objectives in place. I don’t think turnkey Obama is especially relevant to Anti-Terrorism — certainly not as central as Ike and Nixon were to the Cold War. They are great models for Obama to follow — if he’s capable of it.