Don’t Panic: Is Obama’s escalation of the Afghanistan war going to succeed?
Did the surge, the tactic now being applied to Afghanistan, “win” the Iraq war? Hardly
Being president of the United States has some perquisites.
You get a house. You never have to stop at red lights. And you’re pretty much guaranteed a multimillion dollar payday for your excruciatingly dull post-presidential memoir. Yes, I’m talking to you, Bill My Life Clinton.
The job also has downsides. You never really have a day off. Crazy people are trying to murder you. And no matter how much you want to punch him on his whiny mouth, you actually have to be polite to Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Perhaps the biggest downside is that, regardless of your policy ambitions, job one for every new president is mopping up the poop left behind by the last guy.
No modern president has walked into a more poop-drenched Oval Office than Barack Obama. F.D.R. handed World War II to Truman, but the U.S. was just four months shy of total, unambiguous victory at the time of Roosevelt’s death.
Obama was handed two big, unwinnable wars and a national economy in its steepest decline since the Great Depression.
The Iraq war has been the easier of the two wars for Obama to manage. War-weary Americans want out because they never wanted in. And war-hungry Americans think it’s OK to withdraw because they think Bush won the war. With the public on his side, Obama has been able to ratchet down troop levels with few objections. When’s the last time you heard a U.S. politician demand that Obama pour more resources into Iraq?
Obama’s plan for Afghanistan is conceptually straightforward: Apply the political and military lessons of Iraq to Afghanistan. Escalate the war. Tell everyone how successful escalating the war has been. Declare victory. Get out.
Will it work? It depends on what you mean by “work.”
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(Photo illustration by Andisheh Nouraee)