Terror, War & Twilight (9/21/09)

Last year during the presidential campaign, as Barack Obama was hawking up Afghanistan as the "real" War on Terror from which Iraq was a "distraction," I wrote and said (among many on the right) that this was just an empty tactic designed to convey the false impression that The One had a national security penis and would whip it out if it became necessary to, um, flog our enemies back into submission. Once safely elected, sooner or later B.O. and his Marxist base, or his Marxist base and then B.O., would lose interest in Iraq (since President Bush managed to pacify Iraq in time via the "Surge") and turn on Operation Enduring Freedom.

Turns out it came in the latter order, as the Obamunists turned fairly quickly and their pacifist hammering has steadily eroded public support that Obama, far too busy trying to communize us domestically to pay any real attention to the "real" war on terror in the wastes of Southwest Asia, did pretty much nothing to maintain or shore up.

The result? The cut & run table is being set for him:

Fifty-seven percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday say they oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan, with 42% supporting the military mission. The percentage of those in opposition to the war is up eleven points since April, and is the highest ever in CNN polling since the launch of the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001…

“Fifty-seven percent of independents and nearly three-quarters of Democrats oppose the war. Seven in ten Republicans support what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Democrats mildly opposed the war in April while independents and Republicans favored it. But opposition has grown eighteen points among Democrats and ten points among independents.”

The poll suggests that nearly six in ten think the U.S. can win the conflict in Afghanistan, but only 35% questioned in the survey say that American is currently winning the war.

I've pointed out often that Americans historically do not have the stamina for long wars. A cursory survey of American history puts the shelf life of public support for overseas conflicts at about four years. The one war before the current one that exceeded that time limit was also the only one that we've ever quit (Vietnam).

However, as the last aforequoted 'graph "suggests," all hope is not lost. The principal reason why public backing has waned is that people don't think the Li'l President is serious about winning the GWOT front about which he claimed to be so gung-ho. It seems to me that a "Surge"-like strategy would buy an additional grace period of public patience, given how successful it was in dragging Iraq back from the brink of disaster. But absent that evidence of commitment, Americans are not going to continue signing off on a war which accomplishes nothing beyond feeding U.S. servicepeople into the woodchipper when victory is essentially denied (as was the case in....Vietnam).

Enter another general's report, this time from Af-Pak theater commander Stanley McChrystal, that recommends....another "Surge":

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by the Washington Post.

General Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next twelve months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on August 30th and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

McChrystal concludes the document’s five-page Commander’s Summary on a note of muted optimism: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

I think what alienates Afghan civilians is that the "international force" has not and is not doing everything it possibly can to crush al Qaeda and the Taliban once and for all. That is what General McChrystal is telling The One needs to be done, and what it will take, and that it CAN be done with the necessary increase in troops. Based on his "this is the war we have to win" rhetoric of as recently as six months ago, this should be a no-brainer, right?

Like they say in the old Pennzoil commercial, "Come on, you know better".

Remember what Barack Obama is: a pacifist. He doesn't believe in war because he believes he can hug any enemy into submission. Nor does he believe in America, nor will he until he's finished "transforming" it into a gigantic Luxembourg. Like a good leftist he believes we brought 9/11 on ourselves, that al Qaeda was justified, that we deserved it, and that we had, and have, no business invading Afghanistan any more than we did Iraq.

But such is his politically precarious position these days that, unlike his infamous "we must understand the root causes of Islamist anger" comments in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, long before he erupted on the national political stage, he doesn't dare say it because it would finish any tattered remnant of his presidency that his domestic communization overreach hasn't carbonized. To say nothing of a proactive retreat that would hand Afghanistan, and probably nuclear Pakistan as well, right back to the same enemies that plowed airliners into the Pentagon, World Trade Center, and but for four courageous Americans over Pennsylvania, the U.S. Capitol as well. That would be the blue plate special of nuclear Islamist states with his green-lighting of a nuclear Iran right next store.

So the question of what the Golden Child will do answers itself: do nothing. Allow public backing for Enduring Freedom to continue evaporating, and a year from now General McChrystal will report the tactical and strategic situation in-theater hopeless, and then Barry can give his base what it wanted all along - defeat - and claim both a bowing to majority opinion and that he's "listening to what the generals on the ground are telling me." And then pray like the devil to himself that bin Laden can't hit us hard again before November 2012.

Seems like a foolish gamble to me, one against which a genuinely robust wartime gravitas would provide a great deal more public relations protection, and one he won't be able to teleprompt his way out.