Afghanistan Special: Josh Shahryar on the Obama Not-So-Grand Plan

NOTE: The second part of Scott Lucas's "Gut Reaction" to the Obama speech, covering the policy in Pakistan, will now appear on Saturday.

Finally Barack Obama made up his mind about sending more troops to Afghanistan? If so, it's a vague resolution: the only specifics were that there would be 30,000+ more troops sent to fight the Taliban and troop withdrawal would start in 2011.

This is an announcement that comes up short in so many ways. Fighting the Taliban shoud not be the only worry for the US and the West. There are a wide range of issues that are jeopardizing security, stability, and democracy in Afghanistan, but none of those issues were discussed with even the vaguest of details.

A Gut Reaction to Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Speech: The Halfway House of The Long War (Part 1)

Afghanistan may be a failure inherited by Obama from former President George W. Bush, but 10 months is enough to forget President Bush’s flaws for a moment and start scrutinizing President Obama’s policies. After those 10 months, the best that we get out of Obama is that he’s simply going to press ahead --- there has been no major shift in policy.

The most important of the issues ignored by Obama is the presence of warlords in the Afghan government, as their continued exercise of authority has made the Afghan populace disillusioned with the West’s approach to their troubles. There's the far-from-minor issue of Afghanistan turning into a narco-state. And Obama’s plan outlines little on how the US is going to deal with Pakistan’s continued sloth in stopping Taliban militants engaging in cross-border raids.

Corruption has become so widespread that hardly anything gets done in Afghanistan without being first tainted with a side-deal. The most prominent recent example is the serious allegations against the Minister of Mines and Industries, who reportedly received millions from China to grant them access to one of Afghanistan’s largest copper mines. There’s the challenge of making Afghanistan a state that is viable and not just heavily dependent on foreign aid. The trickle of money from the West, which will dry up sooner or later, and the sale of opium are propping up the country. Add to that astronomical unemployment, and you have a catastrophe in the making.

None of the above is addressed in a satisfactory manner in the Obama plan. In essence, this is simply a make-over of Bush’s policy in Iraq – a policy that might have succeeded there but might completely fail in Afghanistan. For, without addressing the above issues, even a million US troops will do little to help the situation.

Worse, Obama's not-so-grand package is wrapped in the announcement that troops would start to be flown back in 2011. This gives the resilient Taliban a simple timetable to follow. They’ve kept fighting for eight years, so no difficulty for them to sit back for two years and then start fighting full-force again .

On what basis is Obama going to bring the troops back? What makes him so sure that the war would be won or even stabilized by 2011? None of these questions were answered by the President, his plan, or his associates.

This is not the Iraq War. The people are different, their needs are different, and their problems are different. For all his rhetoric of change, Obama seems to really lack an understanding of what it really means here. And without that understanding, this war will continue to escalate and take more Afghan and American lives.

A Gut Reaction to Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan Speech: The Halfway House of The Long War (Part 1)

The second part of "A Gut Reaction", covering the Obama policy in Pakistan, will appear on Saturday.

This was a terrible speech. More importantly, it may come to mark a terrible moment in the Obama Presidency. Most importantly, it may come to mark --- in months and years to follow --- a terrible moment in American foreign policy.

The speech is not terrible in its rhetoric or delivery. It is not terrible in its declaration of lofty values. It is not even terrible --- though I think it is evasive and misleading --- in its opening five paragraphs on a past tragedy to rationalise a blank check for current decisions. It is terrible because it is void of political strategy. This speech is either a stunning exercise in being oblivious to failure or hoping against hope that failure will never be exposed.

Afghanistan Special: Josh Shahryar on the Obama Not-So-Grand Plan

I'm plumping for the latter, not just because the President does not seem the oblivious type but because the hodge-podge of measures looks to be an attempt to buy some time for either political fortune or divine intervention to save the day.

So, as we thought yesterday, the number of 30,000 troops is put forward primarily as a domestic political compromise, rather than as the culmination of a military strategy for the campaign against the Afghan insurgency. The US commanders get most of their request, which gives Obama some insulation (but only some, as there are a lot of critics inside and outside the military who want even more of a troops-first approach) against domestic sniping.

So Obama put in, albeit almost as an afterthought to the troop announcement, put in a brief section on non-military measures. For there are those in the US, let alone abroad, who might think that more than a stick is required for stability. And this President is at pains to make clear that Afghanistan 2009 is not another Iraq 2003-2007. (We'll save Obama's Afghanistan 2009 is not Vietnam 1967 for the moment

But, for his domestic audience, Afghanistan 2009 can be Iraq 2007-2009. So, after patting himself on the back for the "responsible" policy in the latter which lays the foundation for a US withdrawal, Obama promised that his soon-to-be-apparent Afghan success would mean the first American troops could leave in July 2011.

It's a neat trick. You like the "surge" myth? Well, you've got a sequel. Not sure about the "surge" myth? Well, just go with me and we'll begin drawing this adventure to a close in 18 months.

Not that it's an easy trick, even for the sake of presentation. It's notable that, contrary to earlier leaks of 6000 additional forces from NATO countries to bolster his plan, Obama didn't cite a number last night. So far, he has only got a fig leaf of 500 more soldiers from Britain. With other allies like Canada now out of this battle, the President --- who emphasised Afghanistan-not-Vietnam because 42 countries were alongside the US --- is going to struggle to make this more than the US way, way out in front.

But let's leave such minor quibbles aside. The audacity of Obama's speech, and thus its terrible roar, was in the willful ignorance of matters closer to Kabul and indeed Islamabad.

Consider first of all the deception that underlay the speech. Five long paragraphs invoking 9-11 does not bring Osama bin Laden and his boys into Afghanistan. If Obama wants to follow the logic of his rhetoric, then the 30,000 US soldiers should be marching into Pakistan.

But that's not possible for political reasons (just as it hasn't been possible since bin Laden and Co. crossed the border in December 2001). So instead there has to be the convoluted horror story of the Taliban getting back into power in part of Afghanistan, inviting Al Qa'eda to a restored sanctuary, and posing no objections as more 9-11s are planned.

I'll leave the dissection of that nightmarish rationale to others who can explain clearly the defects of the thesis of the Taliban-Al Qa'eda "alliance".

Let's assume, however, that the fight in Helmand and Kandahar and Kunduz against Afghan insurgents is essential because of non-Afghan fighters across the border. For granting that assumption exposes the halfway house of Obama's solution: there is no political strategy to match his military escalation.

If the President picked up on anything between his initial escalation in March and last night, it should have been that he has no stable base
in Kabul. Eight months ago, he told the American public and the world that, in addition to the more than 30,000 forces being put into the country, the US would ensure that its Afghan partner focused on development, that it would not be mired in corruption, that it would make progress on security. Have a look between the lines of Obama's address yesterday --- General McChrystal saying that the security situation had worsened, the passing Presidential reference to "corruption" and the Afghan election --- and ask, "What did the March escalation achieve?"

The primary objective of the Karzai Government is to remain in power. If reducing corruption and fighting a battle to the death with the Taliban offered the maintenance of that power, then perhaps the Obama strategy would have a partner. If the US had some meaningful lever of pressure --- the threat of a political alternative? even a coup? --- against Karzai, then perhaps the Obama strategy would have a partner.

But we've been there and done that. Karzai and his circle have maintained power by cutting deals, whether you want to call that "corruption", and accepting that it cannot take on the insurgency throughout Afghanistan in a direct conflict. The Obama Administration considered taking Karzai out in its first three months and found that it had no good options to do so, either through the ballot box or beyond it.

Perhaps, and it is a big perhaps, the Obama Administration can get a convergence of interests with the Afghanistan Government through a political deal beyond Kabul. That's the meaning of Obama's briefly outstretched hand to "Taliban" members who will leave the movement. But the deal in question would have to be much more than that; in short, it would have to accept the Taliban and other insurgent groups as political actors in exchange for a renunciation of violence. And even if it is true that the CIA is broaching such a possibility, and that it is backed by the White House, this is a political negotiation that is far beyond Obama's extra 30,000 troops, far beyond his 9-11 rhetoric, and even beyond his conception of American power.

Afghanistan-Pakistan: 5 Things Obama Will Say Tonight (and The One He Won't)

I'm not sure we had to wait 92 days --- from the delivery of the recommendations of General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama's speech tonight at the US Military Academy --- to get this outcome. It's pretty much, in substance and in rhetoric, what we've predicted throughout the autumn. But politics is politics, especially when the "easy" solution of an Afghan election to hold up as a beacon of progress didn't materialise.

So here's what America and the world gets this evening:

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1. SEND IN THE TROOPS: McChrystal asked for 40,000 more troops (though he wanted even more). He gets 30,000.

Obama will frame this as a carefully-considered compromise. He shows Presidential strength 1) in not simply giving the military its full demands and 2) delivering most of that demand as a sign of US resolve and commitment. The President carried out the same manoeuvre --- really, the very same manoeuvre --- in March.

In fact, this is effectively an adoption of McChrystal's proposal, albeit through a bit of staging. Obama will also declare that NATO is going to put in 6000 more forces. Though this is more for show than substance --- think of Britain's total of 500 additional troops --- it gets the number close to 40,000, and I suspect there will be some US "support forces" that will make their way into the package.

2. SOFT POWER, SOFT POWER, SOFT POWER: Obama will then need to skip quickly past the troop numbers, because there are a lot of folks (and not just on the "left" of the Democratic Party) who are not happy about escalation. So he will dedicate a long section of his speech to the US civilians who will be working in important sectors from agriculture to education to health care to assist Afghanistan's development.

Obama will be careful not to give numbers because someone might check the back story. Yes, this was also in the March speech, and since then, the US has only been able to get several hundred people into the field.

3. MR KARZAI, DO YOUR JOB: Obama will emphasise that the US additional effort must be matched by a sustained effort by the Afghanistan Government to cleanse itself of corruption as it takes over responsibility for security and other operations. He will say that the the US is a dedicated partner but that Kabul must be just as dedicated.

The sleight-of-hand here will be that this is a new theme in American policy. It's not: Obama made the same demands on Kabul in March, and they were repeated by his officials, notably Secretary of State Clinton, throughout the spring. But, of course, the summer was filled with stories of money going astray, political intrigue, and the failure at the show of democracy.

So this will be a "Political Ground Zero" moment: all starts anew.

4. YOU TOO, PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT (AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). The political shift behind this speech, although it will not get a direct reference, is that Washington thinks it's on firmer ground with the Government in Islamabad. This is because President Zardari, after months of US effort, has effectively been pushed aside. The US wants to deal with Prime Minister Gillani and the Pakistani military, and it seems that the alliance is developing.

With this apparent political evolution, Obama will lay down the challenge for Pakistan to keep moving against the "Taliban", as it has appeared to down with summer offensives. He may even make direct reference to the Bin Laden spectre, suggesting that Pakistani forces can complete a job that was botched in 2001.

No reference, by the way, to the US drone and missile attacks: those might be effective in Washington's eyes, but it gives the appearance that Washington's military is running Pakistan's war.

5. EXTREMIST, EXTREMIST (WHO'S AN EXTREMIST?). Lots of that word in Obama's speech tonight. It's how you sell an escalation when the political and military situation is far from clear and far from winnable. So Al Qa'eda will pop up all over the rhetorical map this evening, even though it's not much of a presence in Afghanistan.

Obama's trick will be to move from Pakistan, where there are the Al Q bad guys, to the sanctuary/haven/breeding ground for extremism in Afghanistan. And there I think even his skills will be challenged: who exactly is the US fighting in the country? The word "Taliban" is the catch-all for a variety of insurgent groups: does Obama dare say that the US strategy is to split off some of those groups by negotiating with "extremists"?

WHAT HE WON'T SAY:

"We're screwed."

Sorry. No deep analysis here. Just being blunt. Even before Enduring Americawe were writing on "Watching America" on the Libertas website that the problem for Washington was the lack of a political centre to its efforts. The "hole in the doughnut" was the weakness of President Zardari and the shakiness of an Afghan Government whose authority didn't extend much beyond Kabul.

While the hole may have been filled in Pakistan, Obama is still trying to cover it with distractions in Afghanistan. If he was being real, he would declare to the US public that President Karzai might be on difficult ground in his own country but he has out-manoeuvred Washington in the last few months to assure power in Kabul, if not beyond. Those deals have kept Karzai in power, but they of course are not the battle against the "extremists".

The great and glorious myth of the American "surge" in Iraq is that throwing in more boots on the ground suddenly rescued a country from civil war. What that myth never acknowledges is that the most important political development was of a stronger central government emerging in Baghdad in 2007/8. So the US Government could bolster, with money as well as discussions, "local" Sunni militias and groups against "Al Qa'eda". All of this might be building later conflict --- what happens when those local groups and the national government compete for authority and profits? --- but by then US forces hopefully would have been able to draw down and call it victory.

No such scenario exists in Afghanistan. There is no "Al Qa'eda" spectre that can be used for the US strategy with local groups --- the contest is between an assortment of indigenous factions. There is no strong national authority.

So Washington either puts forth or supports a wondrous solution in which those factions reach an accommodation over power, one which hopefully means they won't kill each other and anyone who gets in the way (that is the option put forward by Karzai and by the Pakistani Government, though it is not clear how they would achieve this), or the US Government treads military and political water and hopes they don't get sucked down if the undertow of violence gets stronger.

I don't think the Obama Administration has a way forward on the first option, which is why the President after 92 days has finally decided to put on the public face of more troops and a largely-mythical non-military effort. Welcome then ---- over months and over years --- to the second option.

Just don't say: we're screwed.