I'm Worried: Barack Obama and Afghanistan

How did things ever go so wrong; ergo, get this bad? You know what I mean -- things. Everything(s). The economy, the stagflation, the countless crises from energy to education, the war, the other war, the other yet possible war.

Well, I suppose -- I hope -- there's time to sort all that out later. Right now, we've too large an avalanche of pressing problems to stop, look back, and reflect much. Jesus, they're gaining on us, so let's keep peddling.

But heaven forbid that we not stop, however momentarily, to look where we're going -- way down the road, that is, and at some other, not improbable destinations of supreme wreckage. 

What first leaps into view? Or, at least, my particular line of vision? Afghanistan.

I have a bad feeling about this, and sense a really, really bad moon rising -- one every bit as bad as what we still suffer sight of in Iraq; and one even worse, given the cumulative effects.

But first, a brief look at where we stand; which is to say, we're most likely approaching the starting line of a change-filled Obama administration. It's exceedingly difficult if not nigh impossible to envision an electoral scenario in which McCain triumphs. You know the commentators' drill: this election is on the economy -- an unpopular GOP president's economy -- etc., etc. There's no need to repeat the details here, on that.

But another reason to intelligently and even strongly anticipate a President Obama is the approximate parity he now holds in the polls on foreign policy matters with our would-be, commander-in-chief McCain -- especially on the issue of Iraq. 

According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, "Americans continue to side with Obama and McCain, his Republican rival, in roughly equal numbers, with 47 percent of those polled saying they trust McCain more to handle the war, and 45 percent having more faith in Obama."

That's a rather staggering dead heat, when one stops to consider the vast differences in their biographical portfolios and the traditional GOP advantage on war and national security issues.

It took a while, and a lot of needlessly spilled blood and wasted treasure, but the body politic finally understands that the Iraq war was, and is, an unmitigated blunder. Again, no need for details at this late date. Yet, as the WaPo-ABC News poll further revealed: "public views on Iraq stand in stark contrast to those about the conflict in Afghanistan. A narrow majority -- 51 percent -- said that the war there has been worth fighting. And 51 percent also said the United States must win in Afghanistan to succeed in the broader terrorism battle."

Hence, presidential Obama is forging a new and different emphasis in Middle East and terrorism policy -- a drawdown of our forces in Iraq, with a concomitant buildup in Afghanistan and some possible (horrifying) spillage into Pakistan.

As Obama outlined his dissatisfaction with current policy in his address yesterday:

It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahari are recording messages to their followers and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.

And so, the shift -- in manpower, policy, financial resources, planning, national security emphasis, the future, and war. Always war.

But to what end?

If history has taught us anything, it's that even good American presidents don't like losing wars, even the bad ones. They'll hang in there come hell or the high water that's infested with damned torpedoes out of the same vigorous determination that got them into the highest office to begin with.

George W. Bush doesn't count, because he was never a decent man or good president. Lyndon Johnson, however, will forever stand in history as an instructive warning: He wanted to devote his presidency only to the domestic good, to the fashioning of the greatest of societies, yet he derailed himself, his presidency and his nation on the catastrophic tracks of Vietnam.

Johnson believed he had no choice. Your daddy, he told his daughter, won't be the first American president to lose a war. But it wasn't all ego. He continued waging the fight out of a failed ideology as well: one that said we could, through armed force, defeat an idea -- communism.

Soon, Barack Obama will stand on a similar precipice: the tempting extermination of a tactical concept -- terrorism -- through the extermination of men (not counting, of course, the mere 'collateral damage' of women and children). But how, in the long run, will Afghanistan prove any different from Iraq?

Afghanistan's internal difficulties are mammoth enough -- just ask the Russians -- but there's always the problem of 'mission creep,' too. And the creeps in Pakistan (and you are now permitted to think 'Cambodia') would soon enough become yet another focus of our attention, and our mission.

And, just as in Iraq, for every one terrorist we kill in Afghanistan or Pakistan, two more shall be born.

As the New York Times reported yesterday:

In a series of interviews, statements, advertisements and speeches over the past week, Mr. Obama has been laying out a broad vision of America’s role in the world in an Obama presidency in which he has emphasized the application of soft power -- the use of diplomacy and economic aid -- over the use of force. And he has spoken of reducing American combat forces in Iraq and adding as many as 10,000 more troops to battle al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Here's to the first part of that passage, and to hoping that the second is largely -- if not wholly -- derivative of campaign pressures.

I think Obama knows better -- that he knows that Afghanistan is no place to reattempt, in effect, an Iraq. Still, the whole business, full of more than mere intimations, scares the hell out of me.