Commander-in-What?
Barack Obama spent two years campaigning to become the leader of a corporatist, national-security state whose ways of wielding power aren't those of a republic. "States hover like crows over the nests that nations make," wrote the historian Robert Wiebe, and by the time Obama faced the state's gray ranks of cadets last night as their commander in chief, the crows of national security statism and finance capital had cannibalized so many of the republic's strengths that he found himself in command of the wreckage and Orwellian newspeak they've left behind.
When I say 'wreckage," I don't mean the cadets and their instructors, who put many of us to shame. I've visited with them at West Point. Those I met are deeply thoughtful and brave. In my book, that adds up to noble. How 'thoughtful'? West Point has hosted such lecturers from the "left" as Seyla Benhabib, Jeffrey Alexander,... and Noam Chomsky. Think about this for a minute.
,
Obama tried, at times, to tell the truth. At least he didn't promise to do for Kabul and Kandahar what our corporate state and its corrupted polity haven't done for New Orleans or Detroit. But the concentrations of power over which he now presides, and whose language he must speak, have no more truths to tell about how economic and institutional power flow in a free society. They haven't a clue where terror comes from, or what makes a society strong enough to endure and resist terror instead of recapitulating it in its entertainments, let alone its torture protocols.
To become commander in chief, Obama had to mortgage too much of his ability to change what he's now commanding. He needs a deeper, broader push now from the citizens who elected him. Unfortunately, his campaign was a terrific Michael Jackson performance for some, and a symbolic lifeline for others terrified of being swept under by riptides of predatory marketing and finance capital that are destroying their communities. But the campaign didn't become a powerful political organization, and now he's condemned to keep splitting the difference, as he did last night, between the swarming crows' bromides and the civic republic's fading echoes.
He's buying time. But he's not welding a political organization strong enough to keep frantic claims that 9/11 was an "act of war" from stampeding us into tearing up the judicial foundation of a republic -- as the terrorists want -- or to keep fears of the Taliban from driving others to fantasize a re-run of Churchill v. Hitler. Such myopia is for crows, not citizens, not even if they're cadets. The road to "victory" is different now, and Obama knows it. But, last night, he only hinted at it.
Amen brother. Obama and Co. are slowly, if unwittingly, nailing closed the coffin of our dearly departed Republic.
A moment of silent reflection, if you would.
December 2, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
The coffin was made when those too good for American politics decided to throw away their votes and elect George Bush president. It very well may have nailed shut when the Twin towers fell.
You concern for Obama's sometimes ineffective attempts to resurrect the corpse are duly noted.
December 2, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
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December 16, 2010 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
OT - What's wrong with the TPM Cafe Reader Posts?
December 2, 2009 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
This romantic, fictional republic you guys talk about is not "departed" - it never existed. Jim, when was there a time in American history when this bustling, expanding, capitalizing country was not ruled by money and the people who have lots of it?
Yes, yes, Obama ran for President of the United States, not of Senior Warden some Masonic lodge. That means he is now the chief executive of a large, rich, powerful state with a sizable national security apparatus.
Could we try to stay on topic?
December 2, 2009 12:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's not forget the all-too-recent hubris of electing "The One" who promised "change we can believe in". I was a skeptic during the primaries primarily because I saw no indication that he could deliver any of the things he so assiduously implied in his campaign that he was going to achieve. He ran as a pie-in-the-sky idealist that was going to deliver us from the eight years of horror we had gone through after Gore v. Bush was decided by the gang of five at the SCOTUS.
In vain I said to MJ and all the starry eyed cheerleaders of "The One" nothing of the sort that he was promising was even in the cards no matter who got in. But no, everyone thout he could turn water into wine. And here we have it.
I also said that when a new captain takes over the wheel from a captain that has navigated the ship of state into tumultuous and perilous waters, we cannot expect that the new guy ("The One") would be able to decide to take us on a cruise to the Bahamas when he took control of the helm. The best we could expect is some kind of gradual change of course. I suppose, this is what Obama is trying to busy himself with right now.
The tragedy--which was totally foreseeable--is that he does not have the connection to power that--say--a Johnson had. He was artificially picked practically from thin air. That was a bad omen from the start.
I was hoping that Hillary ( one of a powerful political inside couple in Washington with which--although having been turned into damage goods by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy--at least would have had a better chance to maneuver the ship towards safer waters with an more authoritative hand. The realities of modern politics are that it matters what network you are embedded in.
So here we are. As for my good friend Jim Sleeper and his hope for some kind of Civic Republicanism to flourish in our nation any time soon, that's really a stretch. I will say it one more time, we may get to a Cvic Republican polity in our nation in some future (if we come out of this alive), but it will be by choosing the right INCREMENTAL political moves, and not getting all gushy about (as Biden said) An articulate charismatic guy who came out of...what exactly?
December 2, 2009 3:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
To my ears, the sentimental, self-serving nature of the above three comments and at least four of the ones just below come down to saying something like this:
"Oh, we all knew that Obama was a phony who was capitalizing politically on the wishful projections of civic-republican dreamers and entertainment addicts. Unlike them, we're too smart to believe that there was ever a republic, anyway."
There's something a little too defensively fat and flatulent about this, in that way that's self-satisfied and ultimately self-destructive.
It was I who wrote, during the campaign, that Obama is one-third Harvard neo-liberal, one-third Chicago pol, and one-third legatee of the best of the civil-rights movement. He was nevertheless "The One" to elect because there were certain things he could do that others could not. If you need more of this, go to www.jimsleeper.com and, under "Latest Work," find the Obama Chronicles.
Most of all, strop trolling and kvetching, and grow up. If and when you've lost the republic, you'll miss it far more than you seem to have imagined. That we are on the cusp of its defeat, from within, does not license defeatism about it.
December 2, 2009 6:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, we all knew that Obama was a phony...
I don't think Obama is a phony. He campaigned on the notion that we had to wind down the war in Iraq so that we could direct more resources and attention to Afghanistan. And that's just what he's done.
Obama wrote an article for Foreign Affairs called "Renewing American Leadership". It wasn't about dismantling the empire or replacing the basic structures of the American postwar economic and military might with a new civic republican order. There is no reason at all to think Obama ever had any intention of undoing the national security state that has been in existence since the end of the Second World War. The agenda laid out in the article is an explicitly restorationist one. He comes off in that article like a classic "national greatness liberal" and exceptionalist. He seems proud of postwar military-economic order behind the American Century, and wishes to restore the United States to the power and global leadership position it possessed before Bush enfeebled it. He called for revitalizing the military, rebuilding NATO and exerting visionary leadership to extend the "American moment":
The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. To see American power in terminal decline is to ignore America's great promise and historic purpose in the world.
That Foreign Affairs piece also contains a section on "Combating Global Terrorism" in which Obama says, "We must refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the central front in our war against al Qaeda -- so that we are confronting terrorists where their roots run deepest." That, and several other themes from the article were reprised last night. Indeed, it's remarkable how consistent is Obama's plan, as laid out in the speech last night, with the agenda developed in that 2007 article.
The main kvetching going on here is yours, with another flamboyantly rhetorical post riding your own personal hobby horses. The post appears to have been written before, and independently of, Obama's speech, since it doesn't contain any concrete response to even one passage from the actual speech, or articulate anything but vague cultural criticisms of its contents.
December 2, 2009 8:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whoa, quite a lot of name-calling in this reply, possibly because Dan K is difficult to criticize on the merits of his arguments.
December 3, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
"He tried, at times, to tell the truth"?
When? I must have missed that speech.
I seem like you like the President like a men feels about a woman. I have to tell you something, there are some that where happy when the attack on New York was delivered.
Osama ben Ladin's promise was that he was going to attack out Capitalis ecomony.
So tell me Sleepy, have you invested in the Talib Hedge Funds?
December 2, 2009 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can't be serious!
Obama isn't stumbling (bumbling?) backward under the press of "concentrations of power."
Hell man; he's leading them!
December 2, 2009 12:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
And could we please get some coherent metaphors here? I haven't the slightest idea what a "riptide of predation" is. Is that like an earthquake of maceration? Or a sinkhole of rapine? Or a volcano of plunder?
December 2, 2009 12:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're going to have to do a better job than this of explaining how a President who actually keeps his campaign promises on a key national security issue is somehow acting undemocratically.
December 2, 2009 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do I detect pessimism from the always optimistic Sleeper?
You have been giving this guy the benefit of the doubt since long before the election. Why suddenly tear the curtain away and look at what you've really got here? I am very interested in hearing what exactly turned the worm here for you.
Were you expecting moral courage from him? Were you expecting perhaps he might demonstrate real leadership by acknowledging that our presence in Afghanistan is itself the primary destabilizing force in the region and thus we should withdraw with all deliberate speed and in good order? I really am curious to know your mind on this.
December 2, 2009 2:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oleeb, I should have answered you sooner on this, and I apologize for not doing so.
My pessimism these days concerns not only or even mainly Afghanistan but what is going on in America. Obama is the wisest -- and let's hope, tactically, the smartest -- president we've had in my lifetime, and that includes Kennedy and Clinton (although I do think that Kennedy would have proved "wise" had he lived long enough). But the republic strikes me as being weaker and more deeply corrupted than it has ever been -- and, yes, I know that that's saying a lot, given McCarthyism, Vietnam, and so many other signal depredations, just in my own lifetime.
I am talking about something that's deeper and therefore more subtle, and this isn't the place to go into it, but one can find its outlines in some of my past posts here at TPM. In the past, the republic has managed to curb some of the most dangerous and potentially tyrannic abuses of what even Eisenhower called "the military-industrial-academic" complex and its sometimes-equally destructive populist counter-reactions (such as McCarthyism or the excesses of the religious right, as in the Schiavo case). There was even a temperate "establishment" (from Teddy Roosevelt and FDR onward) that could draw itself up and curb some of the worst demagoguery, enough so that something more democratic and resilient could live to fight another day.
Many of us thought we were seeing and sharing in such resilience during the Obama campaign and victory. But now I'm not so sure that, with the 'new media,' we didn't trick ourselves into mistaking a simulacrum of democratic, civic-republican revival for the real thing. In this short space I can't say more about what I think that that suggests, but I'm sure that I'll get to it again in future posts.
December 3, 2009 2:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
To my ears, the sentimental, self-serving nature of most of the above comments makes them come down to saying something like this:
"Oh, we all knew that Obama was a phony who was capitalizing politically on the wishful projections of civic-republican dreamers and entertainment addicts. Unlike them, we're too smart to believe that there was ever a republic, anyway."
I'm sorry, but there's something a little too defensively fat and flatulent about this, in that way that's self-satisfied and ultimately self-destructive.
It was I who wrote, during the campaign, that Obama is one-third Harvard neo-liberal, one-third Chicago pol, and one-third legatee of the best of the civil-rights movement. He was nevertheless "The One" to elect because there were certain things he could do that others could not. If you need more of this, go to www.jimsleeper.com and, under "Latest Work," find the Obama Chronicles.
Most of all, strop trolling and kvetching, and grow up. If and when you've lost it, the republic will something that most of you will miss far more than you seem to have imagined. That we are on the cusp of its defeat from within does not license you to be defeatist about it.
December 2, 2009 6:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with your concerns about losing the republic. It was clear to me Obama didn't care one whit about that when he did his big flip flop on FISA and giving a free pass to the big telecoms for spying on us all.
I was/am genuinely curious though about your pessimistic tone. You are usually very upbeat, but this one was downright gloomy as though something had changed.
December 2, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oleeb, I should have answered you sooner on this, and I apologize for not doing so.
My pessimism these days concerns not only or even mainly Afghanistan but what is going on in America. Obama is the wisest -- and let's hope, tactically, the smartest -- president we've had in my lifetime, and that includes Kennedy and Clinton (although I do think that Kennedy would have proved "wise" had he lived long enough). But the republic strikes me as being weaker and more deeply corrupted than it has ever been -- and, yes, I know that that's saying a lot, given McCarthyism, Vietnam, and so many other signal depredations, just in my own lifetime.
I am talking about something that's deeper and therefore more subtle, and this isn't the place to go into it, but one can find its outlines in some of my past posts here at TPM. In the past, the republic has managed to curb some of the most dangerous and potentially tyrannic abuses of what even Eisenhower called "the military-industrial-academic" complex and its sometimes-equally destructive populist counter-reactions (such as McCarthyism or the excesses of the religious right, as in the Schiavo case). There was even a temperate "establishment" (from Teddy Roosevelt and FDR onward) that could draw itself up and curb some of the worst demagoguery, enough so that something more democratic and resilient could live to fight another day.
Many of us thought we were seeing and sharing in such resilience during the Obama campaign and victory. But now I'm not so sure that, with the 'new media,' we didn't trick ourselves into mistaking a simulacrum of democratic, civic-republican revival for the real thing. In this short space I can't say more about what I think that that suggests, but I'm sure that I'll get to it again in future posts.
December 3, 2009 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes and no.
My gut reaction was: hysterical but wrongly so. Like most of us I'm sufficiently accustomed to the way things are that I'm taken aback when you dwell on how they could be.
Where I somewhat disagree is on What else is new?. On the cusp of ..defeat ? When was it ever better? We're not slipping, just running in place.
The 9/11 cluster of sentiments is new only in adopting a new symbol for entrenched positions that used to be summarized by "Love it or leave it".
I don't agree we're on the process of losing something. Just continuing not to enjoy something that we never have enjoyed.
December 2, 2009 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
America's main product, other than destruction, has always been fantasy. This speech was a classic example of the genre.
December 2, 2009 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think it's a fantasy that in 18 months we can train an Afghan army. It took a lot less time than that in 1942 to create a US army.
In eight weeks we can train a US high school drop out to be a competent infantryman. Ditto for an Afghan goat herder. Literacy isn't a requirement any more than it is for their opponents.
In 20 weeks we can train a 2nd Lt. The Afghans will have exactly the same proportion of natural leaders so the raw material will be there.And after those goat herders have actually pulled a trigger in combat maybe those leaders will emerge.I admit that'll be the stumbling block.
Had Obama said we intended to create a "city on the hill" that would be a fantasy. He didn't.
I take it his objective is to leave behind a shrewd corrupt leader who knows how to deal with the shrewd corrupt war lords who defeated the Taliban in 2001. But now with an army good enough to hold its own against the Taliban. Which might position Karzai- who almost joined them in the 90s-to negotiate with the Taliban on reasonably equal terms.
We're not going to leave behind Tom Friedman's vision of a model muslim country. Just one that won't give Al Quaeda a safe haven.
December 2, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
"I don't think it's a fantasy that in 18 months we can train an Afghan army. It took a lot less time than that in 1942 to create a US army."
I could not think of a more inapt analogy than this one. When the US issued a draft, it was not an occupied nation.
And that is just for starters...
December 2, 2009 9:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course nothing is ever exactly the same as anything else. But we really did start from almost nothing in Dec 1941 and embarked an enormous invasion force in North Africa 11 months later.
Precisely because there was a draft the basic training intake was of very unmilitary civilians who were converted into fairly well trained soldiers in 16 weeks.
During the Korean War the Officer Candidate schools performed similar alchemy on Korean candidates as well. I don't know the details but apparently we have continued to train foreign officers , judging from the steady flow of South American coup leaders.
December 2, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The US drafted its own citizens. and had the benefit of America's vast wealth, burgeoning industrial base, virtually 100 percent literacy, and an immediate, plausible pretext (Pearl Harbor). And we had a strong central government, whose corruption was probably less than we have now, and a single language, and we were not in the midst of a civil war.
The Afghans may be afraid of the Taliban, they may be in favor of the Taliban, they may be in Karzai's pay and providing incompetent services for astronomical bribes, they may be just ordinary people like you and me, with no desire to be drafted by anyone. They are anything but a homogeneous group, such that it would be willing to spring into action overnight as a disciplined corps in the service of a foreign empire.
Really, this is a ridiculous argument.
December 2, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed. Further the Taliban are to parts of Afghanistan as Confederates were to parts of the South.
December 2, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Flavius:
You assume that the Afghan army recruits we will be training is analogous to the American army recruits of 1942. American recruits were made up of a group of citizens who, by and large, had consented to the authority of those whom they were governed by. Afghanistan is a different place, perahaps no better or worse in a cosmic sense, but it doesn't have the same national structure that the United States of America had in 1942. For better or for worse, the loyalties of the Afghan people are far more complex than the those of the American people, certainly as it was in '42.
December 2, 2009 9:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
They're not going to be fighting Erwin Rommel.
December 2, 2009 9:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe that exacerbates the problem!!!! :)
December 2, 2009 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
In Ghost Wars (which Obama read) Coll describes the Northern Alliance commanders radioing to the Taliban commanders who are often relatives or friends.
"Our" guys are no different than their guys.
December 2, 2009 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Surely then they can resume their comradely war without our help, and the CIA can discreetly pay some of these comrades to inform us about al-Qaeda types we can discreetly decapitate.
Of course, the problem is that we don't receive reliable intelligence, and it is not for lack of money we've pumped into their hands. That won't change no matter who is mayor of Kabul.
December 2, 2009 10:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
And why the best and brightest in DC haven't figured that out is a mystery to me. Bribery and just putting people on the payroll is at least as effective as the absurdly costly invasion and occupation of a country. They just love war is the problem. We need to disarm our country so the rest of the world can be at peace.
December 2, 2009 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
We need to disarm our country so the rest of the world can be at peace.
There you go,oleeb, YOU should be President!
Are you frickin' kidding me?????? Of all the lame ass things you've ever said,that is about the lamest...
December 2, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
StillI, face facts: our country is the most violent and menacing military force on the planet. Has been for about 60 years now. Mostly that power is asserted to protect American corporate or other business interests. We have invaded dozens of countries in the past 100 years. No other country on earth has a record that even comes close to ours. So, even though I was being snarky about disarming, it is a very reasonable position. Considering we spend more on preparing for war (not including the two wars we are currently fighting)than all the other nations on earth (friend and foe) combined, I'd say we're pretty irresponsible and dangerous and with our newfound self righteous proclamation of being above international law, we're the premier rogue nation on earth.
December 2, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I'm glad, at least, that your disarming comment was snark... I was beginning to wonder if you had gone completely off the deep end. :-)
December 2, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
oleeb,
when you remember what Madeleine Albright said to Colin Powell; 'What's the sense of having this great military if we aren't going to use it,' you just know that a Defense budget of over $600 Billion buys toys that many are going to want to use, and that's when we get into trouble around the world.
Since that kind of spending didn't protect us on 9/11, nor did it protect our Embassies around the world, nor did it protect the USS Cole, I say cut that budget in half and maybe we won't be getting our ass in the wringer so often.
December 2, 2009 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
An immediate 50% cut would be a good start but not nearly enough. We face not one major threat in terms of military threats at this time. We do have a problem with terrorists which is only exacerbated by the use of military force. Even at $300 million we would be spending obscenely more than anyone else. The Chinese, for example, spend $65 Billion/year on defense. If we were down around $150-$200 billion tops, we'd be just fine and we'd still have a fat, bloated, gilded, and pretty useless miltary establishment at that level.
December 2, 2009 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your not including basic realities in your calculations about training these guys. At least 25% of all recruits desert. One news report I saw on Monday characterized it as "they are leaving as fast as they are being recruited." This demonstrates the lack of enthusiasm (to be kind) on the part of the population for being trained as we'd like them to be. Desertion levels like this haunted the training of the ARVN troops in Vietnam and will make it improbable if not impossible for our military to even come close to creating an army and police force in Afghanistan on the scale they are advertising. It just won't happen. The population there is opposed to our presence in their country. We aren't helping in their view we are simply another foreign army invading and occupying their country. Nothing will change that basic perception. There's very little chance that the "Aghanization" of this war will be any more successful than the unsuccessful Vietnamization of our last lost imperial war in Asia.
December 2, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
They're poor.For money they'll fight. Enough of them to deal with the Taliban whom they will resemble.
December 2, 2009 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, in some parts of Afghanistan common people trust the Taliban more to provide them with basic services, because they are less corrupt than Karzai's criminal empire.
(Which is saying damn little, but the problem in Karzai's enterprise, which we back, is of staggering proprtions.)
December 2, 2009 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
The smugness of that comment is something you really ought to take a look at.
Plus, you are wrong. There are no facts whatsoever indicating that because they are poor they will fight for a little money. The reality is they are deserting despite being paid just as the ARVN deserted.
December 2, 2009 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another and even worse problem: We are supposed to be 'partners, not patrons,' in Afghanistan.
But we can throw money at them and they'll happily do our bidding. After all, according to flavius, shooting at each other is not something that Afghans see as an interpersonal problem, Northern Alliance leaders phoning their Taliban buddies after a good summer's seesaw fight in the trenches.
The Afghan civil war that we stepped into was a picnic, just like WWI was a family squabble.
December 2, 2009 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I take your point re smugness. In trying to be succinct I sound dismissive. Of course each one of them is a human being with all the things that go with that. Like the Taliban fighters . And lots of them will die .
But if we are trying to discuss objectively the chances of success , our money and their need are factors to consider.
December 2, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
When they desert their training goes with them .... so if they come to see the Taliban as the more deserving side?
And, oh, who was it who trained the Taliban in the first place?
December 2, 2009 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Factors yes. But the key factor is their willingness to do what we want and on that there is no evidence we have any chance of success. This entire effort is an expensive and bloody excercise in futility. we have no business in Afghanistan and we will someday withdraw without having achieved any of the stated goals and in fact, I am confident that history will conclude our presence in Afghanistan helped to destabilize Pakistan. If we stay long enough, our presence will cause the Pakistani government to be overthrown. But our vital national interests demand that we do this. What a load of snake oil!
December 3, 2009 1:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I actually agree re national interest.My various posts have not discussed whether we should do it but whether we can do it.
December 3, 2009 4:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
flavius,
I think you may be a little too optimistic regarding training infantry.
We can pretty much trust American soldiers we train, I can't say the same about the Afghans. In Afghanistan, as with Iraq, people we train quite often turn on us.
As for how quickly we can train an infantryman,
the eight weeks you mention is just basic training which is the first phase. It took me a year to get through basic, AIT and jump school during WWII.
Then again I have no doubt the Army has changed.
December 2, 2009 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I took 16 weeks of basic. I went on to OCS but my training company went direct to Korea and unfortunately right into combat.
December 2, 2009 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
flavius,
I was in for 13 months when I boarded a ship in NY Harbor bound for Europe, Dec 28, 1943.
I still remember the name of that ship; USAT James Parker.
December 2, 2009 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Virtually none of us can speak to the real meaning of this decision as folks like Flavius and John who saw what combat means. Don't be shy guys.
December 3, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Garbled sentence! lol but I think you know what I mean!
December 3, 2009 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
We're . . . going to leave behind . . . a . . . country . . . that won't give Al Qaeda a safe haven. flavius
Maybe; but is that goal worth the cost in lives, injuries and wealth -- and lost opportunities?
December 3, 2009 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Probably not.
My suspicion is that Obama has accepted Henry the K's "credibility" argument that delayed our exit from Vietnam- we shouldn't be seen abruptly abandoning allies. We can let them down, but let them down easily. Or at least slowly.
Three years ago there was a certain amount of discussion about whether we were going to climb onto the rescue helicopters hovering over the Baghdad embassy leaving behind the same sort of people we shamefully left behind in Saigon. Clearly there's no guarantee what's going to happen in Iraq but the "Surge" at least means we avoided the helicopter flit from the cradle of civiliation.
I prefer to imagine that what Obama is signalling,
and means, is that it fish or cut bait time for Karzai. For all his deviousness
-assuming that is a problem ,he's a survivor. And I remember in 2002 when Sarah Chayes made the decision to leave NPR and move to Kandahar she gave as one of her reasons that she was impressed by Karzai.She sure ain't any more but in the kingdom of the blind........(yeah, I know the real moral is the one-eyed king ends up blind)
December 3, 2009 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jim:
Respectfully, could you try and get off what comes off as your high horse and write more like a regular person, at least in your comments. Your pen might be fancier than mine but I don't think you're making yourself very clear. Then again, maybe I'm just a dolt but, to me, what we have here is a president who promised to engage in Afghanistan and he's doing it. Now, please, how does this impact on the Republic now, as opposed to during the heat of the campaign? Thanks.
Bruce
December 2, 2009 8:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce, If we're going to get off our high horses and write like regular people, how about saying what we all actually know: that in his campaign for president, Obama "promised to engage in Afghanistan" at least partly because he needed to offset his long-standing opposition to the Iraq war with something that would appeal to the many people who still think that our best strategy is to fight unwinnable wars. Okay? I think I said as much in the post: "To become commander in chief, Obama had to trade in much of his ability to change what he's commanding." Sorry if that sounded too hifalutin'.
December 2, 2009 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fair point Jim. My horse has been accused of being a bit high at times as well, notwithstanding that my eloquence could never approach yours. It is indeed more than fair to say Obama's campaign promise was hardly made in a vacuum.
December 2, 2009 9:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce, Jim,
regarding horses....and ponies;
"You didn't tell me I could have a real one."
December 3, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
... how about saying what we all actually know: that in his campaign for president, Obama "promised to engage in Afghanistan" at least partly because he needed to offset his long-standing opposition to the Iraq war with something that would appeal to the many people who still think that our best strategy is to fight unwinnable wars.
Or maybe he just meant what he actually meant what he said.
December 2, 2009 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Starting a new career as a professional apologist Mr. Sleeper?
December 2, 2009 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Apologist for.....?
December 2, 2009 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
The status quo...
December 2, 2009 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
I thought that President Obama did the C-in-C part of his speech effectively. He addressed himself first to his soldiers, spoke directly to them, and said clearly what he was ordering them to do and why.
For those who look at everything as bi-partisan bargaining, it looks like what he is doing is "split-the-loaf". It is not. He is actually taking the riskyiest course but the only one that measures up to demands of a "necessary war" with a just end. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln, who did not want to be a War President, but who rose to the task given an implacable foe and, it must be recalled, the less than reliable military-political-economic regime he was given and had to take to war almost immediately.
Yesterday's speech actually breaks the the pattern of 1964 and reminds me of extrication -- planned withdrawal -- orders JFK issued in 1963 just prior to his death. His plan is strategic escalation in support of a tactical de-escalation. I would call it a fighting withdrawal, something like what Xenophon did.
It is based on a very different notion of the war itself from that of epic battle over end-times ideology. What the GOP has beaten Democrats to death with over and over.
Here is what Barack Obama said nine months ago:
“In addition to freeing up resources to take the fight to al Qaeda, ending the war in Iraq will allow us to more effectively confront other threats in the world - threats that cannot be conquered with an occupying army or dispatched with a single decision in the middle of the night. What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What's in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What's whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator's bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.”
That is consistent with the present decisions and coherent in a way that bargaining over war like it was just another Congressional appropriation has not been.
It is unfortunate that the President departed from the short speech to his junior officers and addressed other audiences at home an abroad. The short speech was that of a commander. The other speeches tacked-on were pitches to others not in the room.
Nonetheless, I think the President demonstrated a deep understanding of the only part of his administration he is truly in command of so far.
December 2, 2009 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is the fairest and most insightful defense of Obama's speech and policy on Afghanistan that I've seen so far in this thread. Especially, "His plan is strategic escalation in support of a tactical de-escalation. I would call it a fighting withdrawal, something like what Xenophon did."
I hope that you're right, although I still think that he needs support (or push) from deeper domestic mobilization against the folly this war could too easily become.
December 2, 2009 9:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
The public will not be behind a President they do not trust.
That is a sign the public is waking up, and it should be commended as an expression of civic-republican virtue.
December 2, 2009 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't understand how the level of trust in the president should be affected by this decision.
December 2, 2009 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
His plan is flawed not only in execution but in goal. That any government we prop up for 18 months will be able to stand on its own is not one that is even remotely realistic. But even worse, the real problem is in Pakistan, and then in Yemen, Somalia, etc.
Kabul is irrelevant to America's problems, and the public knows it.
December 2, 2009 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know if Kabul is irrelevant, but I do agree that 18 months, which Obama asserted with caveats, appears arbitrary, and as I wrote in MJ Rosenberg's thread, I also agree that the "problem" about which Obama spoke, to the extent we accept it as a problem, is hardly confined to Afghanistan. On trust, however, my point is that I don't think Obama is deviating from what he said he would do in the campaign. To the extent we didn't flesh out his intentinos back then, that is the function of the campaign, namely, a candidate can fairly say he won't say exactly what he will do, and in this case we had a press that has been accused by many, even by some of us who voted for Obama, of giving Obama a free pass during the campaign.
December 2, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I meant "trust" in a slightly different sense, not that he can be trusted to carry through his intentions, but that he can be trusted to make the correct decisions.
December 2, 2009 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce,
I fear in 18 months the only thing that will have changed is the number of dead GIs. And maybe we'll again start hearing of "Friedman Units",
Harumph, why I think we'll know in 6 more months....
December 2, 2009 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
As John Maynard Keynes famously said, "In the long run of Friedman Units we are all dead."
December 3, 2009 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen,
truly. Here's some food for thought; it might be easier for you to die than to watch your best friend die.
December 3, 2009 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I certainly agree that the Afghanistan government is corrupt. Much of the country is tribal. This may make the mission impossible.
However, I have problems when we complain about Afghanistan corruption and fail to mention our own.
What about the bank robbery we have just experienced? And, what about the connections between Hank Paulson, T. Geithner, L. Summers and the rest of the crowd? Bank of America, Citicorp, AIG, and of course Goldman Sachs. These guys and their banks created a world wide recession.
Corruption is a problem in both countries. And now finance capital is preventing legislation to prevent future raids on the treasury.
So, while I have problems with the arguments on Afghanistan, the argument on the pervasive problem of corruption seems to apply to New York- Washington as well as Kabul.
Perhaps we should send 30,000 troops and 75,000 mercenary contract soldiers to control Wall Street and K Street.
December 2, 2009 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
This decision is entirely about politics. The US political system has evolved in such a way that politicians are continually campaigning and decisions are based on the next election. In this case, the Republicans will not be able to claim that Obama is weak on terror and he has the provision to pull out troops by next fall in time for the mid-term elections if the anti-war movement gets too noisy. This worked for Bush with the surge. Nobody can really believes that sending more troops is going to turn Afghanistan into a striving democracy. The US has very limited interests in this country. It is a poor, resource limited landlocked country.
December 3, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo to you Jim Sleeper for calling for an engaged electorate to rescue Obama from the dangerous course he has chosen to pursue. You lay out the tragedy of his position very well. Even if he isn't capable of listening, it is very important to try. It is the only hope left.
December 3, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
We can pretty much trust American soldiers we train, I can't say the same about the Afghans. In Afghanistan, as with Iraq, people we train quite often turn on us.
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