October 26, 2009--Dithering

Famous Chicken Hawk Dick Cheney, who wangled five deferments from the army during the Vietnam War, who in 1989 imperiously said in an interview for the Washington Post that “I had other priorities in the ‘60s than military service,” last week accused Barack Obama of “dithering” rather than acting decisively in regard to what next to do in the miserable war in Afghanistan.

Never mind that it conveniently took Cheney six rather than four years to graduate from college because, as he falsely claimed he needed to work his way through (in fact he was a terrible student and needed the extra time to complete his studies and undoubtedly to work the Selective Service System student-deferment safe track), but what were he and his alleged boss doing prior to 9/11 to keep us safe but dithering on vacation in Crawford Texas (Bush) and Wyoming (Cheney) during the summer leading up to that dastardly attack while the intelligence data about Al Qaeda, untended to, piled up.

Never mind any of this for a moment while we contemplate what he and George W. Bush did after that attack—how they pursued the ruinous and unnecessary war in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan where the terrorists who attacked us were trained and the Al Qaeda leadership were harbored. Guided by Cheney they took their eye of the real problem—Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and later Pakistan--to pursue their crusade, call it what it was, in Iraq. And in both places, great military minds that Cheney and Bush will in history be famous for, they made messes as our chief executives as they both had made messes during the course of their entire lives.

So Joe Biden had it right the other day—when asked about the dithering comment, the current vice president dismissively quipped, “Who cares.” That gets it right.

Cheney has been wrong so often about so many things that he and his hypocritical family (which of his children, also beating war drums, deigned to volunteer to serve while Joe Biden’s son went off to Iraq?), they got things so consistently wrong that it would have been better for us and the world if he and Bush had continued to dither after 9/11 as they clearly were doing prior to it.

But it was something else that Biden said, which was echoed by Bush-appointee Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, that is worth paying attention to: that since the US and our allies have not had a comprehensive review of our strategy regarding Afghanistan since 1980, since Ronald Reagan was president, it is worth the time now to think through carefully what we should do next because what we have been up to since at least the fall of 2001 has been so ultimately ineffective (Osama bin Laden, remember him—“bring him back dead or alive,” Bush swaggered, is still actively directing Al Qaeda) that our so-called strategy to this point could rather accurately be described as a version of dithering.

I am inclined to want to get us out of there. It is feeling to me like a contemporary version of a Vietnam-like quagmire that will continue to literally bleed us until we in humiliation are forced to withdraw. I am too aware of Afghanistan’s multi-thousand year history of successfully defeating invaders and occupiers. And make no mistake about it this is how we are currently perceived by Afghanis. Would we feel any differently if they had invaded and occupied our country? They repelled Alexander the Great, the Brits during their empire years, and most recently, with our active help, the Soviets.

Thus isn’t it obvious that our days on the ground there are numbered? If we do not begin to get out during Obama’s first term it will inevitably be during his second—if he is reelected—or his successor’s or the president we elect after that. This is one certain lesson of history. In Afghanistan we will ultimately confront the fate of the Greek, British, and Soviet empires. We are on the same historical track, and our decline will surely accelerate if we indulge in the same kind of hubristic self-delusion about our exceptionalism as they claimed for themselves.

As one hint of how complicated the situation in that region is, please read all of the linked New York Times article. By attempting to understand via sound bites conditions on the ground in the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban seem to be the Taliban and the connections between them and Al Qaeda appear to be uniformly strong.

But, if we take the time, we will learn that not all Taliban are alike (minimally there are the Afghani Taliban who was the host to bin Laden and want to overthrow the Karzai government and reassert itself and the Pakistani Taliban, who are primarily nationalistic and seek to overthrow the government of Pakistan) and not all the Taliban by any means have a worldwide agenda or see the United States and the West as their primary enemies. Nor do they all support al Qaeda. And so on.

Thus we should be pleased that the Obama administration is taking its time to think things through. I wish that Obama, feeling the political need back in March to present himself as a credible Commander In Chief (he too chose not to serve in the military) began to talk tough about Afghanistan, calling it a “war of necessity” and authorized the deployment of 21,000 additional troops, I wish he had been able to restrain himself until after a careful review of the situation. But here we are.

So I say, “Dither away, Mr. President; and here’s hoping that you have the courage to do the right thing.” Because it will take more courage for him to change course there than just to accede to the generals’ request for tens of thousands of additional troops. When our presidents did that during the past 40 years invariably it has led to disaster.