Obama, Afghanistan, Politics and Promises

Because he's not yet president, and because he's on foreign soil, and because his Iraq/Afghanistan trip has been billed as merely an honest exploration of facts on the ground, Barack Obama is being understandably mum on matters of U.S. policy.

It's considered poor form for an American politician, while overseas, to suggest that his president is an idiot and that his policies are idiotic -- even if both 'findings' are profoundly conspicuous -- although I imagine that once the Democratic nominee assumes his White House duties, Republican politicians will swiftly decide that such traditional political amenities are outmoded.

At any rate, for now, mum is indeed the word on Obama's part. We're in a kind of opinion-information lockdown until he returns to domestic soil and resumes his campaign. We have, however, become privy during Obama's trip to some rather interesting crossfire chatter by the powers that be, over there.

For instance just as Obama was touching down in Afghanistan, Iraq's Prime Minister was barking to German journalists -- largely for domestic Iraqi consumption, probably, but still, he said it -- that George Bush's five-year adventurism in Iraq should come to an end "as soon as possible." "A.S.A.P." translation from Arabic to English: roughly 16 months.

"That," said the Iraqi leader, "would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes," known here as "fine-tunings." "Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic," he continued, leaving adventurist John McCain looking more battered, dazed and confused than ever. "Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems."

Same day, there was this word from Afghanistan, specifically, from Afghan warlord-politician Gul Agha Sherzai: "Obama promised us that if he becomes a president in the future, he will support and help Afghanistan not only in its security sector but also in reconstruction, development and economic sector."

That public disclosure was scarcely any cat out of a bag. If Obama's foreign policy sensibilities could be boiled down to only two words, those words would be "soft power," as amplified by the Afghan pol in self-explanatory terms of "reconstruction, development and economics." So far, so good, and positively knowable.

What is unknowable at this point, however, are the defined limits of "hard power" in Obama's Afghanistan playbook, vaguely amplified by the regional pol as "support and help [for] Afghanistan ... in its security sector."

What does that mean? Well, it can mean anything you want it to. Currently, as we know, it means two additional American combat brigades, assuming two combat brigades that aren't busy enjoying all that "success" in Iraq can be found. That, anyway, is Obama's campaign promise for the hard-power inclined, who just happen to pack a lot of electoral power.

Yet, as I argued last Wednesday, so John Nichols of The Nation argued Saturday: "More troops will not cure what ails Afghanistan.... There is nothing right or smart about deepening the US troop commitment in a country that has a long history of thwarting the best-laid plans of great military powers."

An emphasis on the "soft." This is what I hope, and even trust a bit, that Obama promised those Afghan leaders in his private counsel. For he can ill afford Bush's Iraq, or Johnson's Vietnam, or Gorbachev's ... Afghanistan.

That's not to say that greater special-operations "security" efforts can't be made on the ground, or that roving predator drones can't search and destroy terrorist nests from the sky. No one will weep at, or regret the military cost of, the annihilation of women-and-children killers.

But beware of an emphasis on the "hard." In Afghanistan, especially, it's a seductive but suicidal mission.