Although the war is
in its 98th month, Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” banner will be
unfurled 19 months from now — when Afghanistan’s security forces
supposedly will be self-sufficient. He must know this will not happen.Tuesday the Taliban heard a distant U.S. trumpet
sounding withdrawal beginning in 19 months. Also hearing it were
Afghans who must decide whether to bet their lives on the Americans,
who will begin striking their tents in July 2011, or on the Taliban,
who are not going home, because they are at home.
Of course, their real worry is how to wriggle out of their
endorsement of the “necessary” war in Afghanistan, which was a merely
tactical endorsement intended to disparage the “war of choice” in Iraq.
The president’s party will not support his new policy, his budget
will not accommodate it, our overstretched and worn down military will
be hard-pressed to execute it, and Americans’ patience will not be
commensurate with Afghanistan’s limitless demands for it. This will not
end well.A case can be made for a serious, meaning larger and more
protracted, surge. A better case can be made for a radically reduced
investment of resources and prestige in that forlorn country. Obama has
not made a convincing case for his tentative surgelet.
George Orwell said the quickest way to end a war is to lose
it. But Obama’s half-hearted embrace of a half-baked nonstrategy —
briefly feinting toward the Taliban (or al-Qaeda, or a “syndicate of
terror”) while lunging for the exit ramp — makes a protracted loss
probable.
