In Afghanistan we've lost, so prepare for victory

A military escalation in Afghanistan was one campaign promise I fervently hoped the president would break.

I appreciated the politics of it when Barack Obama was on the trail, seeking what has amounted to a thankless job, especially since Americans, by and large, believed then that the conflict in Afghanistan was our "good war." And I understood his early commitment of 21,000 more troops. I didn't agree with it, but I understood it. He promised, so he committed.

But Obama's enduring pursuit of what he's called our "necessary war," nine years in and with little to no hope of recognizable success, seems quixotic at best -- at worst, Johnsonian. The historical parallels to 1965 are downright eerie.

Still, what I once thought was mostly a rather conventional campaign appeal has, it seems, revealed itself as a genuine conviction. And in that sense, I can't help but feel a grudging respect for Mr. Obama's decision. For though I remain convinced that his decision was the wrong one -- that it was a mistake, perhaps even a "tragic mistake," as the Times' Bob Herbert wrote yesterday -- it was not, as Herbert further contended among a rising chorus of liberal disapproval, the "easier option."

"The tougher choice for the president," ventured Herbert, "would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario."

Here, Herbert was almost literally only half right. True, a vast supply of "political courage" would have been necessary in confronting the hordes of jingoistic Republicans on a political "field day," along with roughly half the country in agreement with them; yet no courage at all would have been required in bowing -- wisely, in my opinion -- to the other half.

Indeed, contrary to Herbert's musings -- which, obviously, I'm using here as the representative embodiment of seemingly consensual liberal opinion -- the easier choice for Obama, in terms of indulging his base and a substantial portion of his party and in statistical fact a full half of his country, would have been "to tell the public that ... it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago."

Which of course it did -- and which of course I and millions of other Americans fully expected. I recall writing in 2001 in opposition to any sizable deployment of American troops in Afghanistan; I supported surgical strikes and the engagement of whatever the necessary number of special-operations personnel might be, to "get the bad guys" -- but no long-term commitment, not even six months. Any U.S. military occupation had FAILURE written all over it.

Just being in Afghanistan with any marginal permanency has veered us, in my durable and rather proven opinion, "wildly off track." Obama disagrees -- and again, I believe his conviction is genuine -- but for the life of me I can't quite determine why. He's no Bushian cowboy, he's no hopeless captive of hard-power theory, and he is absolutely no fool.

Well, perhaps a little. Because the components of this "tragic mistake" in the (continued) making appear ineradicable.

If President Karzai's corrupt incompetence doesn't do us in, Pakistan's hypersensitive "dithering" will. Or, there's the increasingly apparent failure of multilateralism: Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised a walloping 500 additional troops, while President Nicolas Sarkozy has informed Obama, according to the Times, that "Instead of [more] troops ... France was putting its focus on a conference in London sponsored by Germany and Britain to rally support for Afghanistan." Is that some form of sick French humor?

Or, there's another $30 billion withdrawn from our unemployment account. Or, naturally, there's the human cost, already intolerably high and about to get higher. Or -- and this complication is the only insulting one to empirical intelligence -- there's that resistance from many of Obama's Democratic allies in Congress, who complain that an escalated war will likely interfere with the execution of their progressive agenda. Right. They were making all manner of headway until last night.

Yet, through this dense fog of war-torn complications, Obama sees hope. I just can't see the path, and in time, I'm convinced, Obama will lose sight of it as well -- but only after thousands of more lives are lost and billions are blown, and just before a fraudulent going-home victory is declared.