They Sing the Policy Obama, But Not All That Well
Remember that 18-month deadline the President set for our troops to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan? He seemed pretty definitive about it when he said, “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home”. And he reinforced that later when he added a specific month.
Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.
Of course, he immediately followed that by saying, “Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.” That muddies the water a bit, but it doesn’t erase the hard deadline he explicitly set.
Today, the Choir Obama took to Capitol Hill to weave two conflicting melodies — success in Afghanistan and a date certain to begin a troop withdrawal – into a pleasing tune to a skeptical Congress. They task seemed pretty simple: explain why Democrats shouldn’t worry that this troop increase will lead to any Bush-like warmongering and why Republican’s shouldn’t fear that we’ll leave Afghanistan to the wolves. When they were done, no one was happy, mostly because the Meistersingers von Obama couldn’t seem to agree on whether the President’s explicit deadline was actually an explicit deadline. Here’s a quick roundup of the confusion.
General McCrystal, the guy who has to implement the President’s crap sandwich, said that we’d hand things over to the Afghans “as rapidly as conditions allow”. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen spun that on its head when he assured the Senate Armed Services Committee, “Obviously the July 2011 date is a day we start transferring responsibility. … It’s not a date that we’re leaving.” He said that right after Secretary of Defense Gates told John McCain that if the condition stunk in July, 2011 “we will take a hard look at the strategy itself” and that the date only really pertained to “uncontested areas”.
Uh oh. That’s not what the President said, so we have to go back to his wooden dummy spokesman Robert Gibbs, who assured Chip Reid (in Reid’s words) that “it IS locked in – there is no flexibility. Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It’s etched in stone. Gibbs said he even had the chisel.”
Fantastico! So, that’s the final word, yes?
Err…no. Secretary of State Clinton showed up to say the withdrawal had to be handled “in a responsible way that is conditions-based” but then she said, “All of that will enable us to make the goal of 2011 a real target for us to aim at.
So, it’s a real target that’s based on what, exactly? How ready does the Afghan government have to be for us to start pulling out? How will we know if the Taliban’s momentum has been blunted? What, exactly, are these troops going to be doing if not actually fighting the enemy (that’s not really an enemy since the President never quite named them as such). What sign do we have that the administration realizes that Iraq and Afghanistan are two very different situations and that the word “surge” is not actually a magical incantation?
Right now, I have more questions about what this administration intends to do in Afghanistan than I did Tuesday afternoon, and that’s saying something. If the President can’t get his team to sing the same simple tune 12 hours after he gave the downbeat, I don’t hold out any great hope that he’s going to get more than confused cacophany from a much larger group performing a far more complicated symphony.
Other Posts of Interest:
- If Last Night’s Speech Confused You, Don’t Worry. The President Probably Wasn’t Talking to You.
- Close Gitmo? What Would Ever Have Given You the Idea That Would Happen?
- Welcome to September 10th, America. Brace Yourself.
Category: Fighting the Islamists, President Barack Obama
