Obama: The Man Who Would Be King

All day yesterday, the media played up Obama’s pending speech. Obama cheerleader and NBC reporter, John Harwood, for example, claimed this would be the most important speech of Obama’s Presidency. “This was the moment the Afghan war would become Obama’s war,” he said with awe. As expected, Obama failed to live up to the challenge.

And it’s not just me that thinks Obama flopped. Within minutes of the speech, a series of normally-reflexive-Obama-supporters put out articles blasting Obama. Let’s start with those:

What Our Friends On The Left Said

Let's start with the most glaring. German leftist magazine Der Spiegel said this:

"Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.

One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly."

Time magazine blasted Obama for leaving out a key detail from his speech, namely how exactly we get the Afghan army to grow. They also criticized the entire strategy, pointing out that:

• US officers have described the Afghan forces as “slipshod and corrupt”;

• They are incapable of more that basic daytime operations;

• They have been unable to master the vital bookkeeping needed for a military to function;

• Deadlines and calendars are foreign concepts to their army, and their officers have a “God-willing mentality” that “delays progress for all routine and major actions”;

• They only respond to paper orders, which “freezes subordinates into doing nothing until specifically ordered”; and

• The relationship between US and Afghan forces are “plagued by mistrust, with the living quarters of allied and Afghan troops separated by walls, razor wire, guarded gates and machine-gun nests.”

The Christian Science Monitor noted that Obama’s speech did nothing to convince the Afghans that our intent isn’t to occupy their garden spot of a country. The Monitor wrote that across ethnic lines, Afghans believe that the foreign troops are there as occupiers -- a line of reasoning promoted by the Taliban. Many believe that the troops who are already in Afghanistan could defeat the Taliban if they wanted to, but the United States is using our supposed failure to defeat the Taliban as a pretext for bringing more troops to occupy the country. Said Jabar Wafaie, “The troops that are already here, they can do well now, if they wanted they could destroy the Taliban.” He added that “the additional 30,000 troops is going to be a good opportunity for the Taliban to recruit more.” Others agreed.

Waliullah Ramani, director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, criticized the 18 month deadline Obama created, noting that the insurgents can merely wait out the 18 months. “For the Taliban, this is good news. If the Afghan government remains in the same situation that is today, it cannot remain in power for even a month when the US leaves.” The Monitor published these comments uncritically.

The Washington Post and the Associated Press both fact-checked Obama’s speech and found it lacking in several areas. The Post criticized Obama for setting a deadline, noting that “the administration has had real trouble meeting deadlines.” It noted that Obama’s claim that he could not have sent troops sooner was technically true, but really isn’t. And it criticized him for planning to use a supplemental appropriation to pay for the war -- “a practice Democrats heavily criticized during the Bush years and something Obama had said he would not do.”

The AP criticized the idea that we can “train competent Afghan security forces.” They noted that the problem with the Afghan forces is “an unwillingness to fight. Too many get into the fight but don’t remain or don’t perform.” The AP tossed cold water on Obama’s assertion that Europeans would provide additional troops: “history has shown that these troop contributions often are incremental, sometimes slow in materializing and frequently come with conditions attached.” They also tore apart his claim that Pakistan was helping defeat the Taliban:

“It's true the Pakistani army this year has launched offensives against extremist elements in the areas cited by Obama. What he did not mention, however, is that the groups being targeted by the Pakistanis are those that threaten the Pakistani government — not those, also based in Pakistan, that are focused on attacking U.S. and Afghan forces on the other side of the porous border. . . . [those] have so far not been confronted on the Pakistan side of the border, other than by air strikes from U.S. drones.”

So much for the speech of his Presidency.

Obama went into this speech with a 35% approval rating by the public on his handling of the Afghanistan situation:


And that support is even lower among Republicans and independents:


Nothing in his speech or in the coverage of his speech is going to help those numbers much, apart from the brief short term boost that normally follows speeches of this kind. But in this instance, I actually doubt he’ll get that large of a boost. Here’s why:

My Problems With The Speech

Obama’s speech was dull, yet petulant. It was arrogant, yet pleading. It was contradictory, and most importantly, it was uninspired. There was nothing in Obama’s speech to tell the average person why we are in Afghanistan, why we need to stay, why we should risk one more American life, or how we are going to prevail. Obama just assured us that he decided that it was important to our security that we stay.

Most of the speech was spent trying to walk a contradictory line: (1) Bush left the war in such a horrible state that it’s virtually unwinnable, but (2) I, Obama, fixed all of his mistakes and made it all better, but (3) the whole thing is messed up and will be a struggle to set right, but (4) I, Obama, fixed it and I will fix it.

And the policy behind the speech was worse.

Obama tried to placate the right by sending more troops -- a position that I disagree with. But he tried not to look like he was placating the right by cutting the number down from 40,000 to 30,000. He tried to placate the left by setting a firm deadline, which really isn’t very firm when you realize he only set 2011 as the date we “begin” to come home.

In the end, the only people he really placated were the Taliban. Indeed, those idiots issued a statement that seemed almost giddy:

“Obama will witness lots of coffins heading to America from Afghanistan. Their hope to control Afghanistan by military means will not become reality. The extra 30,000 troops that will come to Afghanistan will provoke stronger resistance and fighting, They will withdraw shamefully. They cannot achieve their hopes and goals.”

And, sadly, they are correct: they won a tremendous victory last night. All they need to do now is wait 18 months and we will leave, handing them Afghanistan on a platter. In the meantime, they can swing over more and more villagers who know that once the Americans leave, the Taliban will return. What villager will stand up to fight the Taliban now, knowing that in 18 months they will stand alone?

Moreover, try as I might, I could find no solutions in his speech, just promises of more of the same. As you know, I have come to believe that we are wasting time, money and lives in Afghanistan. I see no reason to believe that any mission to stabilize the Afghan government can succeed because Afghanistan the country is a fiction. Not only does it consist of a collection of warring tribes rather than a people with some common interests, but it lacks any of the history, culture or institutions needed to hold a democracy together. Thus, no matter what we do, I believe that our efforts will fall apart once we leave. And nothing in Obama’s speech last night told me that he recognizes this.

But even putting my views aside, where was the path to success last night? He offered more of the same, which hasn’t worked, and all he did was assure us that this time it would work. Why? How? And if all you're going to do is repeat what Bush was doing, why did we need you in the first place?

Does this man have no ideas?

Indeed, rather than enlighten us, most of the speech was spent blaming Bush for Obama's failures to come. When Obama first did this after his election, it was understandable. Every president inherits the messes of the prior president. And with the left in such bloodlust for Bush, it made sense to use Bush as a sort of boogey-man to hide behind when things weren’t working out. It wasn’t presidential and wasn’t the kind of behavior in which successful people engage, but it was understandable. But that was a long time ago.

Obama claimed during the campaign that he had a plan for Afghanistan. He replaced the command team there with his own hand-picked successors. He’s sent troops, sent diplomats and thoroughly reformed the war to his own liking. It is too late to blame Bush. And trying to blame Bush now just sounds whiny and weak.

But the biggest failure in the speech, the one Obama will regret the most, is that he failed to set a clear list of conditions that constitute an exit strategy. Yes, he set 2011 as the beginning for withdrawal, if conditions are right, but he never said what those conditions were. Nor did he set up a fall guy, i.e. Karzai, that he can blame for failing to meet those (non-existent) conditions. This all but guarantees that our leaving will be seen as Obama simply giving up. Talk about bad politics.

Other than that, it was a great speech.


** Update: Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and nominal Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent the day playing down the 2011 date. So they're already backtracking on the only real "decision" Obama made? Failure, they name is Barack.